I agree. There is some good music still being made, but you have to go outside the “mainstream.”
My son is only interested in “Dad rock.” Looking back at this music with a sense of historical perspective, I’m pretty horrified to realize that no popular music act was allowed to do anything without first establishing their perversion bona fides... or at least allow their music to be used to promote perversion.
Taken in isolation, Duran Duran’s first hit music video or U2’s or Nirvanna’s first album covers seemed reasonably likely to be innocent at the time. As an adult, I’m rather sickened at the pleasure Duran Duran takes playing with little boys IN THAILAND. Why does “Boy” feature an adequately cropped but nonetheless unclothed child? Why did Nirvana have to angle the photo to make sure the baby’s penis was visible?
My all-time favorite band is Pink Floyd. They had the incredible luxury of spending years experimenting with sounds and melodies and actually publishing those experiments as modestly successful albums before everything came together with “Dark Side of the Moon.” But they never would have had that freedom without “Arnold Layne,” a single-only release about a man who stole underwear and then modeling it in his mirror. The guy who wrote that, Syd Barrett, lasted only one album before he went completely bonkers, but his mental breakdown provided inspiration for an embarrassingly large portion of Pink Floyd’s greatest works, like “The Wall” and “Wish You Were Here.”
Why did ALL 1980s heavy metal bands have to dress like queers?
What’s up with the use of “Daddy” in sexual songs in monster-selling albums like Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA or Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors.
Why did the Police have to sing about falling in love with a whore to get attention?
David Byrne and Rick Ocasek are actually straight, and talented songwriters, but what record company executive said, “No, no, no... the guy who sounds like a flaming homosexual should be the lead singer.” Come on, you may not prefer its slow-ballad, synth-pad sound, but can anyone listen to “Drive” and insist that Ocasek is the better singer?