I’ve been told that my “music taste sucks” by my friends, because I know nothing about contemporary pop music. I confess that I’m a grandma in music—I can only talk about the singers I like such as David Bowie, Iggy Pop,  and Lou Reed with my teacher, almost never to my peers. I have no hard feelings towards contemporary pop music though—I just think it is not good enough. In order to get on well with my peers, I tried to be a fan of the contemporary stars such as Justin Bieber, One Direction, or the pretty Korean boy bands.

I never made it. I tried with sincerity, but in the end I failed. Though their songs are neither extremely unbearable, nor do their rhythms make me want to drop my earphone like the songs of some heavy metal bands, something is missing in the music. Since I can play several musical instruments, I instantly recognize the lack of skill and maturity in the accompaniment of the hit songs; and if you ever compare their arrangements, you will find few variations. The lyrics are even worse. Personal relationships have definite monopoly in lyrics. Pop songs today are just like plain yogurt—you can’t say that you hate it, but you also can’t love it because it is just too mediocre.
But the music in the last century did not share these traits. Each prominent band has their own unique arrangements, and the values of the songs often depend on the skills of the guitarists, base players, or the drummers. Veneration towards the musicians is based on their mere artistic achievements.

In addition, music literally changed the world in the last century. David Bowie created his androgynous and surrealistic persona of Ziggy Stardust in the 70’s, nearly forcing the idea of homosexuality and different presentations of gender into people’s head by his majestic musical and visional performance. And he sang the lyrics, “I can remember standing by the wall, and the guns shot above our heads, and we kissed as though nothing could fall” just beside the Berlin Wall, with no fear of the police. After his death, the German diplomat thanked him because he “helped push down the Wall.” The Sex Pistols liberated their fans from conventional thoughts and forced the British government to adopt more efficient economic policies. After being rejected from the record companies because of the subversive ideas in their songs many times, they still insisted not to change. The members of The Plastic People of the Universe were caught and tortured by the Czechoslovak Communist party for 7 times in one year, but once they were released, they started to make new albums that talks about democracy and art. They even inspired Václav Havel to write Chapter 77 and started to show resistance to the former Soviet Union. When you listen to their music, you feel a strong emotional shock and agitation because of their beauty and their ideas.
Music was so powerful. But now, music has deteriorated to a product that talks about some oh-he-cheated-on-me-last-week-I’m-so-sad-what-can-I-do or she’s-so-pretty-I-wonder-if-she-will-marry-me stuff. Suddenly all singers become well built and good looking. Their lyrics are easy to relate to. The rhythms are plain and highly repetitive. People tend not to think deeply when listening to their “lyricized" superficiality.

Ask me what these sentences remind me of? They remind me of the Brave New World—I can even see Aldous Huxley’s furtive, I-told-you-so smile. The prevalence of the worship of superficial enjoyment is creating ignorance among people, commercialization the culprit.

How does commercialization emasculate music, then? The first step is to inspire the musicians to cater to the need of the audience when they create songs. They need to think and compose for the mind of the general people, and express the feelings that are universal, in order to create the golden album. This phenomenon is very common now. If you check the lyrics of the top ten hit songs on BillBoard, you will find out that they are highly related to romantic relationships. You can nearly use the lyrics to describe every phase of relationship you are in. Everyone has crushes on people, everyone has or once had a romantic partner, and everyone experiences cheating at some point in their life. It is easy for the audience to understand these superficial ideas, so they are easier to relate to the songs. When the audience relates to them, they probably will think the songs are “touching” and have good qualities. Under this circumstance, it is hard for the artist to earn a living if they still insist on writing songs about their own ideas—anger, subversion, and other feelings that are present in the work of world-changing bands. Who bothers to figure out why “you can’t depend on your family, you can’t depend on your friend, you need a busload of faith to get by” when they can simply listen to “I love you so much.” It is rather easier to think about your sweet boyfriend than to be concerned about the the Velvet Revolution and Communist party. The voices that talk about issues in society might be considered as “depressive,” and drowned in the overwhelmingly prevalent, light love songs. Despotic policies of the government, discrimination towards minorities, corrupted and and sluggish markets were commonly chided by the voices of folk, jazz, and rock singers. However, these themes are seldom seen in the pop songs now because they are taken over by superficial romances.

Another detrimental effect of commercialization is that people in the show business would pursue profits more than music itself. When their infatuation decreases, the influence of music fades away in the same manner. If musicians have strong faith and infatuation in their music, it is not likely for them to give up the ideas in the songs. That’s why the world witnessed the members of The Plastic People of the Universe continue to spread democracy in their songs even after they were persecuted several times—they were willing to sacrifice their lives for music. When the common people see their perseverance, they may start to wonder what power their music conveys, that it even has the confidence to defeat the despotic reigns and prevail the fear of death. They will also believe that the music talks about the ultimate truth, since it is protected with such tough resistance. It becomes the symbol of power, of the power that prevails over the government, of the power that assembles the will of the people and the truth. But when artists have less interest in the music itself and aim to make money, their infatuation fades. Thus they will have less influence on people. Imagine Justin Bieber tortured by the police for three days, without food and water supply. And the officer says to him: “We will set you free if you never sing Baby again in the public.” Will he be infuriated and say: “Never! Never will I abandon my faith! Never will I yield to the government”? The answer is definitely no. His purpose of making music is money, and it is not worthy to sacrifice his life for it. He is not capable of evoking the anger of most of the people to stand up and say no to the government. Music here, becomes just an accessory or specific way of making money in the musicians’ lives, but not their faiths that they would die for. There are no strong emotional bonds between the musicians and their compositions. When the crowd assimilates the relationship between the singers and their music, they won’t have strong infatuation towards music either.