America's Got Talent?

I'm not allowed to choose the radio station at work.  

Not only does my shift start six hours later than everyone else's, but I'm not exactly an integral cog in the bakery's inner machinery, and so such a responsibility supersedes my authority.  Thus, when I come in at 11 every day, the radio is usually full blast on some pop station that repeats the same 12 Top 40 songs every hour until I'm about to go crazy.  Not only have I heard these songs ad nauseum on the radio/in stores/in my car/just around, but to have to listen to every trite and formulaic pop song over and over again day after day makes me roll my eyes and sigh.  

It's not that I inherently dislike the songs themselves; it's what the songs represent as a whole.  Whenever "Come and Get It" comes on the radio, I chide myself for singing along to the catchy tune because, while it may be a little fun to sing, I can't honestly accept it as a SONG.  These "lyrics" are repeated four times as the "chorus":

When you're ready, come and get it, na na na na, na na na na, na na na na 

When you're ready, come and get it, na na na na, na na na na, na na na na  

When you're re-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-ady, when you're re-e-e-e-e-ady

When you're ready, come and get it, na na na na, na na na na, na na na na 

That right there takes at least 24 seconds to sing.  When she sings it four times in the course of the song, that takes up 1 minute and 36 seconds.  That's a minute and a half to sing 8 syllables.  While I realize the the concept of a song is pretty subjective, this doesn't quite make the cut for me.  I don't really have any opinions or feelings about Selena Gomez herself, I'm just using this as an example of what our popular music looks like these days -- a thumping electronic backbeat against which the star singer usually speaks more than sings their lyrics, and yet their voices are still autotuned.  When did we start thinking of this as acceptable music?

Not to be specifically ragging on JBiebs and his lady friend, but what about his song "Baby?"  This is his chorus, except you'll need to repeat it five more times to really get the gist of what he's trying to say.  

And I was like baby, baby, baby, oh 
Like baby, baby, baby, no 
Like baby, baby, baby, oh 
I thought you'd always be mine, mine 

Does that actually even convey any kind of a message? Since when does repetition count as actual lyrical songwriting?  Speaking of repetition, what about John Mayer and his infamous "Say What You Need to Say?"  Why don't YOU just say what you need to say, sir?!? Mr. Mayer repeats that simplistic phrase THIRTY-SIX times in his whole song.  36!  He says "say what you need to say" more times than there are lines of lyrics.  

How did we get here?  Why do we venerate and esteem these celebrities parading as musicians when their songs are barely even that?  My guess is publicists, agents, good looks and money.  But unfortunately, that's not all.  They keep making music like this because we buy into it.  We listen to it, we download it, and we sustain the popular music circuit.

I'm not trying to sound like I think I'm above any of this, because I do find these songs catchy, I'll sing along to them, and I even have some of them in my iTunes library.  Heck, I don't even mind doing Zumba to Pitbull even though half of his songs are incoherent and the other half are essentially just him reading off of a map.  

But looking around at our current music scene, I can't help feel a little disappointed and let down.  What would Ludwig think about today's state of auditory affairs?  I understand that he came from an entirely different musical culture and era, but I also think that the musical environment that bred the likes of him, Mozart, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Schubert, Ravel, and Brahams would not be able to create such musicians today. Sure, we have Yo-Yo Ma/Itzhak Perlman, but we don't have musicians churning out concertos and requiems the way they used to. 

Yes, I know that classical music is very much alive and well today, but on the whole, I would guess that most people don't listen to it.  There's almost a stigma surrounding it, that it's pretentious and snobbish.  Would people understand your references if you were to allude to Shostakovitch in your quotidian conversations?  Probably not, but his name is fun to say and he looked a little like Harry Potter. 

I would warrant that while many Americans can name all 5 members of One Direction, those same individuals would hem and haw over naming 5 twenty-first century composers. I don't even know if I could, and I would probably just be referencing the harp pieces I've learned most recently.  

Granted, I'm using the broad spectrum of classical music as my measuring stick here, but I personally feel like of all the genres available to us today, this one requires the most skill, discipline, technique, and TALENT, which coincidentally, is the greatest void I see lacking in our selection of popular music.  I know that there are popular musicians who actually can sing, but for every one of those, there are myriad sub-par wannabes with an inflated ego and a record deal.  

This weekend I was sucked into a trifecta of Netflix documentaries pertaining to things which both interested me and in which I have dabbled -- pastries, the harp, and ballet.  While I don't profess to be a master of any of those (especially ballet), the competition to which I most related was the USA International Harp Competition.  I know that in my wildest dreams (crazy crazy talk!) I would never be asked to participate in such an examination of skill and technique, but I have had my fair share of ensembles, rehearsals, solos, performances, lessons, exams, and auditions enough to relate.  I know what it's like to spend hours upon hours in the subterranean practice rooms of the HFAC, actually practicing until my fingers bled.  I can understand the determination, the dedication, the tears, the frustration, the memorization, and the hard work that mastering an instrument requires.  

I figure the same pertains to the voice.  Having a sister who specialized her collegiate studies in vocal performance, I glimpsed a peek of what training and dedication the refinement of her voice demanded over a period of years.  Oh, and have you ever listened to an opera?  I realize that they're vastly different genres of music, but do you think a pop singer (no, not the publicity stunt that was Nick Jonas in "Les Miserables") could handle an opera -- 3 hours of belting, usually in a foreign language, in a way that requires full usage of your vocal scale?  Not for the faint of heart, I say. 

So what I'm getting down to is the disappointing realization that I don't think today's music requires as much talent as it used to.  Keep in mind the caveat that there are still incredible classical musicians out there, but I don't think our society values them as much as they used to appreciate composers and instrumentalists, nor do I think we recognize their skills as much as we laud our popular singers for having money and being hot.  

And now, I really want to know.  If you've managed to trudge this far through my opinions on the matter, do you think our music scene requires less talent than it used to?  Is that just on account of laziness, a shifting in our cultural values, or is it attributable to the prevalence of technology, which not only facilitates our music-making but disguises our inadequacies in order to make up for that which we lack in natural talent and ability?