It is Just Music

“That’s just emo!” “What happened to Hip-Hop?” “I hate mainstream crap.” Everyone keeps on telling me his or her negative opinion on music. While growing up in the United States, I was fortunate enough to listen to many varieties of music. I always had my favorites in each genre, but people keep on telling me that some of my choices are crap. They literally think that I care about their opinion, to the point where they will get angry with me when they think I do not get what they are trying to lecture me about. The sentence I hear the most is, “Music isn’t what it was when I was growing up.” This is coming from a person that is my age. Each time they ask who are my favorite bands or artist is I ignore the question and talk about politics.

I love music; I understand that music evolves and adapts over time. What a band or artist was, when they started, is not going to be what they are going to be now. The good band or artist adapts to their listeners. Some people believe that they are betraying their fans when they change their sound, but what they are doing is trying to get a new generation of fans. For example, the band Green Day had a sound that would appeal to most audience when they had their first album, Dookie in 1994. It was mellow and the album was easy to relate to their main audience since it dealt with boredom and wanting to get away from it. Yet their second album, Insomniac, was more of a punk album, with more power chords and a harder sound. This album related more to the people they played for in the past, the punk crowd.

Other people believe that mainstream music, is commercialize and money is the only thing they want out of their experience. These people like to trash the artist from companies like RCA, Arista, and Sony. They like underground artist from independent record labels like Look Out Records and A&M Records. Even though their artist is in their taste, it might not be for someone like me.

People need to get that music is a form of art that is judged only by personal opinion. It is not something that people should trash just because they don’t like the band or artist. Music is something that people should just listen to and shut up about it because in the end, its just music