how green day ruined music
I was born in 1979, a true child of the 80's. But I did all my real growing up in the 90's. So I was there when Nirvana broke the mainstream, and I cheered as Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains followed. I thought Stone Temple Pilots were a cheap rip-off of the afformentioned bands, but I learned that they were unique to the scene also. The decade pressed on; the music flourished.
And then in 1994 Green Day released their first major label album Dookie.
There is no dictionary entry for the word "dookie" but people have widely accepted that it is a slang term for feces, much akin to the word "shit".
Back to the record. This aptly titled release spawned a whole new genre of music which we new call "pop-punk". Pop-punk is easily recognized by it's catchy hooks laden with 80's punk-ish guitar and non-sensical lyrics. An example from Dookie:
"Bite my lip and close my eyes
Take me away to paradise
I'm so damn bored I'm going blind
And I smell like shit"
How stimulating (har har).
Anyway, it's this kind of drivel that has completely ruined music. Right around this time my beloved grunge started to die away, and the entire landscape of pop music changed. Similar bands started popping up - The Offspring, blink-182, Presidents of the United States of America and later The Vines, Sum 41 and Simple Plan. The line between mainstream and alternative was skewed even further. People began to think that listening to Bowling for Soup made them alternative; the fact of the matter is people are listening to that because it's being shoved down their throats.
I was at Barnes & Noble with Melissa a few months ago. She was skimming over some music magazine, Spin or something or other, and showed me a few articles. All it did was tell me how great Deathcab for Cutie, The Killers and Franz Ferdinand are. Wait a minute, those are the "alternative" acts that are supposed to be all popular with the underground right? So is it alternative or is it pop? Is there even a difference??
In closing, I would like to once again thank Green Day for ruining music.
posted by Josh @ 3:09 PM
1 comments... of DOOM!
1 Comments:
While I have not heard all of American Idiot, I can tell it's not a bad record. Nothing wrong with artists evolving their sound, take U2 and Madonna for example. The point I am making is that Green Day's Dookie (as well as the Offspring's Smash) brought the pop-punk sound to the forefront. And today music fans have to suffer the consequences.
I was having a conversation about favorite bands with a co-worker, a 17 year old girl who dyes her hair pink and claims to be "punk". She asked who my all-time favorite band is and laughed at me when I said Radiohead. Then she tells me hers is blink-182. Wow.
Kids these days listen to what their told to listen to. MTV told us that *NSYNC was the next big thing and people who watched bought into it. If you read alternative music press, they tell you to like FF and the Killers. If a girl decides she's "punk" she will undoubtedly find blink-182 and the Ataris.
Honestly, I think Nirvana (with help from MTV) can be blamed for this. When someone said "alternative music" back then they meant grunge, which was clearly mainstream. I chose to pick on Green Day because grunge is long dead and pop-punk is now what people are talking about when they say "alternative music". Green Day was the first band to bring pop-punk to the mainstream. So it's their fault. :)
Post a Comment
<< Home