Sampling Mediocrity

Sure, I'm getting old, and that may partially explain why music today typically sounds like "that same song." I intentionally use that phrase to annoy my teenage son when he has some tune playing in the house. "No, that's not the same song, dad, you just don't know the music!" 

Okay, maybe not, what do I know about it? I grew up listening to James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Beatles, Cream, The Band, please! Don't try to talk about originality, none of my old favorite musicians ever sounded alike! Everyone actually wanted their own style and sound, imagine that! 

Hendrix wasn't Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin wasn't the Stones, Bill Withers wasn't David Bowie. Chaka Khan wasn't Joni Mitchell, and you so loved them all for their unique, inimacable styles. All the artists created their music to set apart from the rest, to develop a brand based on unfettered originality and innovation. The worst, most embarrassing thing was to be criticized for sounding like someone else; today that ethic is somehow sadly reversed.

Formulaic, machine music, seemingly written by robotic, programmed parameters of pedestrian similarity. The same beats, the same vocal gimmicks and instrumental effects, the same generic styles repeat in today's tunes with shameless, sometimes even nauseating plagerizing that is euphemistically referred to as "sampling". 

Basically, it's using snippets of very successful songs, like from the Bee Gees, or the Temptations, and reframing some boring "new" thing that's hardly new at all. Same old same old, repackaged, reproduced, offered up again for your musical dollar--just pretend it's cutting edge. 

No one questions much of anything with this redundantly inocuous sampling! Originality in contemporary music today is on life-support, and no one is concerned that many, many performers cannot find the creative courage to leave behind the banal rhythms of safe, commercial conformity.