F10 - G

Back from my extended hiatus. I'll be sure to gather you guys around for the slide show of my vacation photos in the near future. For now, there's rants to have!

I've noticed something interesting recently about the music scene of late. Yes, this is another music rant. And yes, it will have much to do with the poor state of the music of our generation. Am I that predictable?

I've noticed that there no longer seem to be any one-hit-wonders in today's music. There are several varying definitions of one-hit-wonders out there, so to clarify my definition for will be an artist that is remembered for having one hit song, usually being a pretty huge one that many people have heard, and then disappearing. That is their legacy. Sure, they may have sold millions of records, and that stuff that the lead singer did on his own was nice, and the reunion tour was pretty awesome, but when people think of this musical act, their first, and often main, thought is of this one song that they've heard a million times.

But like I said, nowadays such a beast no longer exists. And it seems to me that it should be in existence. Quite heavily so, in fact. Par example: an artist like Ke$ha. She had that one single, "Tik Tok" come out a few months before she even had an album to her name. Before that, she was a feature artist on one of Flo Rida's songs (im puking a little just realizing that I know this stuff...). Tik Tok was huge. You couldn't go five minutes without hearing it blaring out of a car window as it passed by, preteen, teen, and post teen girls alike screaming along. And realistically, that's where it should have ended. She had one big song. She had no album, no previous hits, nothing but that one song. But now she has, what, three singles? All of which seem to be extremely popular with that sort of crowd?

Another example for those of you less interested in the antics of pop princesses? What about Cage the Elephant? They were a bunch of nobodies from Kentucky with only a low-selling self-titled album to their name until "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" got some serious radio air time last summer. After countless months of nothing but that song wouldn't be safe to assume that Cage the Elephant would return to obscurity? The name alone screams one-hit-wonder, not steady recording artist. Yet now they have another single, which is apparently just as popular if not more than their first one. Impossible!

Given, my discovery lends itself much more easily to the Virgin Radio/KISS 92.5 music scene than anything else. But that doesn't make my theory any less reasonable, does it? Whatever happened to the Blind Melons and the Chumbawambas of yesteryear? How is it that some twenty-year old guy who wrote songs for other artists can suddenly have TWO consecutive platinum hits? Or that someone can go from acting on a canadian teen drama television show to being one of the most sought after artists in the world with just a few songs ON A MIXTAPE and NO ALBUM TO HIS NAME?

In my mind, the music industry is a constant struggle. You can work your entire life to try and make it big, and never make it past playing in run down bars in your hometown on open mic nights. But, if you're lucky, the right person will be in the right place at the right time and hear one of your songs and think it just might have what it takes. And for a brief moment of gloriousness, a nobody can see what it feels like to be a sensation. One-hit-wonders are the true heroes of music, because they manage to get a small piece of the action that so many other people fail to touch. But now it's like somebody entered the God-Mode cheat in the music game, so now nobody ever has to stop winning. And the result is hundreds of look-alikes and clones clogging the air waves with the same synthetic, autotuned beats as everyone else, and still raking in the money for it.