i-want-to-hear-more-bad-music

I want to hear more bad music.

I'm so so sick of our sterilized, pre-recorded, society. Where everything we hear is pre-made, pre-recoded, and comes with it the entirely of human achievement. Michael Jackson is amazing. Yes, many songs of his deserve play time. On radios, in stores, on personal devices. Yes, yes, yes. He's the king of pop. One of the greatest of all time.

Even your idea of the worst of the music of the modern era, take you pick: Nickelback, Fred Durst, Justin Beiber, all of them are full time professional musicians that will eat whatever pathetic dribble that pours from your soul for lunch, and I'm sick of hearing it. I want music to be live. I want it to be bad. I want it to be out of tune. I want it to be out of rhythm. I want little to nothing to be pre-planned, or pre-recorded. I want it to have achieve zero rewards in the past, and if it were to have competed, I want it to have finished last.

Why? Because I'm a musician and I want to make music. I want a stranger to join up out of pity, making the song infinently better by taking over briefly at the airport on their short layover for their business trip for their employers. I want egos to be demolished, be it of the proper singer or of the person who dared to try and be better. I want music to suprise me. I want bad music to become good, given the context and the meaning. I want the message to be immediate and relevant. I want a sloppy, out of tune, impromptu performance about how much the airport sucks, rather than the #1 hit by the #1 artist playing on the radio, no matter how much better they are across all regards. That's "good". I don't want that. I want "bad".

I want what used to exist in humanity all thoughout history. People being compelled. Doing it because something compels them inside to have to, not because they're good at it and have somehow "earned the right". I want lyrics to bubble up from the soul, not read from the page. I want the spontinety of the moment to dictate what is chosen to be played, not whatever happens to be selected next by the shuffle setting on the spotify playlist.

We all care too much in our society about whether or not something is "good". And thus, we've come to accept, far too often, "bad". The best Michael Jackson song is not appropriate in all settings, in all contexts, in all occasions. It's bad to play something good in the wrong context. This is not the kind of bad I want.

I want the kind of bad that comes from the heart. You can't help but to do it badly, because otherwise the moment will be gone. It's already a common phrase that "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right", but that never sat well with me.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing wrong.