Since when did the guts be removed from music? It seems that most artists today aren’t pissed off at anything! Surely something must rile those living in fancy houses with their video reaching the number one spot? Or is it the fact that now music has become something of a competition, it seems that money is the main objection and the risk to release something soulful and relatable to an audience is somewhat of a cliché? I remember music that had balls, strength and most of all a speciality to it, a separation from other forms, genres, bands, and not just a constant array of lip-synced facelessness that we have all been so accustomed to in the recent years that we no longer care.
Of course, one has to separate themselves from their audience; you can’t be truly open and engaged to the public all of the time. However, there was a time when those lofty fellows on stage who believed themselves to be gods would let the people in once in a while and show their audience who and what they are rather than opposed to some flaky, untouchable stance that so-called artists do today. (You know who I’m talking about, and they know who they are).
Once people were dissatisfied with their lot in life, hence Punk; once musicians had the power to inspire as well as reveal intimate pieces of their own psychotic breakdowns. The best examples for this are Bob Dylan’s Blood On The Tracks, The Who’s (or should I say Townshend’s?) Who By Numbers, and Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night. The songs on these albums deal with dependency, separation, heartbreak, loss, redemption, and most of all, an anger at the fact that their lives had become so worthless.
Now, it’s not for everyone, but in my eyes, it seems that with examples like this and the weight that these albums carry is a need to reach out and be more than just figures on a stage routing through their back catalogue. There are many things that are needed to save music from becoming something if but a novelty. Now I can’t name them all right now and I don’t have any answers for you, but the one thing is that the anger needs to be vented upon an audience. All the rage and vulnerability need to be reinstated so that music can reimburse itself into becoming an art form rather than some simple two-minute, nonsensical gibberish that holds no passion, no fire and no truth.