Years ago, we had guitar heroes like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Drummers like Dino Danelli, Ginger Baker and John Bonham. Keyboardist like Kieth Emerson, Jon Lord and Rick Wakeman. The sad truth is that we have no younger musicians coming up the ranks to take their place. But what about the quality of songwriting?
Let's just go back to the Great American Songbook era. The songs had rich melodies and intricate chording. The verses and choruses were different. Really different. And they had bridges and intro verses too.
In the 60's and 70's the songs remained great. Each melody was distinctive and could be played on the piano or guitar or with a group. You could remember the songs.
Let's come to this day and age. It's hard to pinpoint the problem The songs kind of sound like songs, but with closer inspection, they are not real tunes. It's sounds like someone wrote something based on a riff or an improvisation. But there's very little distinction to the verses and no distinction between the verses and the choruses. Most of the Adele or Bruno Mars songs sound identical to me.
They say we deserve the low quality politicians we have because we elected them. So do we deserve the low quality songwriting that we're getting because the average listener thinks they're great?
Probably. The good news is that there's still a lot of tremendous music being made. It's all over the Internet. But don't look for it on TV or the radio. It's not there.
Tom, this is a very good blog. One thing you don't mention though is that we have a whole generation of junk music with Rap and Hip Hop that was forced upon us by the music promotors and the entire music industry as a way to prop up black culture. Now that they have all made their big bucks, it is disappearing from the scene. It is refreshing to see our current and younger generation getting back to the American Standard Song Book and maybe since I am tuned in, I see more and more musicians and vocalists taking up jazz.
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