Music, again

[timepiececlock]

I recently started to watch a PrincessTutu AMV, but I had to stop after about 58 seconds because the song was annoying me.

It was by Yellowcard.

Every time I've ever heard a song by Yellowcard I have failed to understand why anyone thinks it ought to be heard. It's not that I have anything particular against the band. It's that they, well, suck.

They suck the same way A Simple Plan sucks and Good Charlotte sucks. They all suck by being completely indistinguishable from each other and then ripping off the an even more vanilla version of the formula used by Hoobastank who in turned ripped their formula off Linkin Park Lite.

Honestly it's so much garbage that I cringe to hear it. I know where the song is going from the first notes, I know exactly what the chorus will sound like, and when it ends I know what the verse will sound like, and then the bridge. BECAUSE THEY ALL SOUND EXACTLY THE SAME. I sometimes literally cannot tell them apart on the radio, by music or by vocals or by lyrics. Certainly not by music. And the sound they're so dilligently copying is really pretty boring in the first place, and only comes in two flavors.

1) Sing verses; yell chorus with banging drums and crashing background junk.

2) Yell verses with banging drums and crashing background junk; sing chorus.


Option number two is the mainstay formula of Linkin Park, but although most LP songs sound the same to me, at least they have a more interesting variety of background noise, some variety in their styles, visual artistic ambition if not musical artistic ambition, and lyrics that don't sound like they were written by a 9th grader.

Why does the radio play this shit? Does anyone over the age of 17 actually enjoy this shit? Am I the only person who hears this on the radio and say "Wow, that is shit." ?

Comments

[jcflygurl.livejournal.com]

Thank you. This needs to be published in TIME or something.

Yellowcard came to my high school once, and everyone was in a tizzy about it. I went to hear them at lunch and I felt my brain die a little.

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

The whole reason I stopped listening to the radio in my car. Music that SUCKS.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I bounce back between a generic rock station, a generic pop station, and an indie rock station. I haven't heard any of those bands on the indie rock station, yet.

[catystorm.livejournal.com]

I really rather like Yellowcard, especially the music that they don't play on the radio. *shrugs* I can agree with the "it all sounds the same" to most music today ... I don't really care for Linkin Park, and Nickleback's songs are all identical, et cetera, but there's something in Yellowcard's music I really enjoy.

There's a reason I don't listen to the radio anymore, and 99.9% of it is crap. So I guess that makes Yellowcard my guilty pleasure. Plus I really love their songs with the instrumentals. And the violiiiiiin.

But then again, I also like Panic! At the Disco and Green Day, so my musical taste is shit. :D

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Green Day is utterly excluded from this discussion, because American Idiot was plain awesome, and Green Day doesn't make any of the errors described above (sounding exactly like other bands, bad lyrics, constant repetition.) There are other reasons to dislike them (not punk enough, perhaps), but lack of originality/pure suckitude isn't one of them. :)

If Yellowcard has more interesting music that doesn't get played on the radio, good for them.

Nickleback's songs are all identical,

I thought of mentioning that, because the exact same thing applies to the bands I'm talking about, at least in terms of their songs that get released as singles. You could take a song by A Simple Plan, a song by Yellowcard, a song by Trapt, and probably about five other bands, and you could overlay them and they would be freakishly similar. I don't care if the songs by a sing band all the sound the same-- that always happens. I am bothered that I can't tell the "rock" bands on the radio apart because they all sound like each other and the sound they picked is so boring anyway after the first three incarnations.


::Rereads::: Ugh. That all sounds really combative. Forgive me; I just woke up.

[catystorm.livejournal.com]

Nah, it is all right. I was actually listening to one of their [Yellowcard] cds on the way to work today ... I really do not know what is released on the radio right now, but I notice the songs I DO listen to the most are the ones with interesting variations in the music, the ones that the stations would never play on the radio because they are not formulaic in the slightest.

Yay for appealing to the lowest common denominator!

Forgive me, my computer apparently ate the apostrophe and I cannot actually type a contraction. Makes my wording sound all stiff and stuff, and it is driving me nuts. Must. Restart. Computer.

[chase820.livejournal.com]

Nope. They suck. And when you consider that the sound is really thrice-warmed over Pearl Jam with a side order of Metallica, they've been ripping off and sucking for a long long time.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Oh I know. But I hate the formula to it the most, those 2 patterns I listed. Pearl Jam and Metallica's styles don't fall under those two categories. Good bands don't have a formula that dreadfully dull.

[yogashiya.livejournal.com]

Hon, tell me about it. I can't stand them. My brother in law listens to them and it drives me crazy. He's 25, come on man grow up. I only listen to satellite radio. Lots of stations to choose from, it's great.