If Everyone Cared.

The title of this blog is also the title of a shiteous song by the equally horrific Canadian band Nickelback that has been infesting the radio for far too long. Personally, I believe in what I like to call "musical darwinism," in that I believe if fans of real music come together and boycott horrible bands like Nickelback, their combined efforts will eventually phase out this type of pseudo hard rock, radio friendly music and thus, force record labels to sign and promote worthy musicians currently being stifled by the over eager and unimaginative buyers of current music. However, Nickelback's popularity seems to be growing. In a way, I understand it. Their songs can be catchy and they are on the radio so often any listener could be forced to listen to at least a few seconds of their drivel whilst simply changing the dial. That part I understand, but there is a big difference between listening to their songs in your car and actually buying a record or going to a concert. Their popularity completely puzzles me. I'm not campaigning for any particular type of music here, but I am campaigning for music that doesn't completely suck the will to live out of you. When I hear a Nickelback song a little bit of my hope in the future of music dies. Sure, they sell records and they sell out concerts and their videos are on V-h1 (whenever they play videos), but that is simply due to the fact that people can no longer distinguish between good music and shitty music created for consumption by the masses. But 30 million albums is a lot. And the fact that even when I was in China, I was unable to escape their music doesn't give me much hope for the future of music. Also...it's their look. I don't like to judge people on the way they look, but come on! Their lead singer reminds me of Sideshow Bob and he's not even bad looking in a good way, like Metallica circa Master of Puppets. And if you want to play rockstar you should at least look the part, even if your music does signal the end of the world as we know it. So anyway the whole reason I felt like creating this post is because of Nickelback's song "If Everyone Cared," which I'm pretty sure is the worst song ever written.

Honestly, it sounds like something a third grader wrote. An example, if you will.

If everyone cared and nobody cried
If everyone loved and nobody died
If everyone shared and swallowed their pride
We'd see the day when nobody died
And I'm singing

Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive
Amen I, Amen I, Amen I, I'm alive

And in the air the fireflies
Our only light in paradise
We'll show the world that they were wrong
And teach them all to sing along

Seriously Nickelback, that's the best you can do? Died, pride, lied, cried? You're fucking geniuses! What's next? Two syllable words? Look out world, Nickelback's on the loose and they're taking no literary prisoners! Who needs Whitman when you have this brilliance?

But in all seriousness these lyrics, and I'm being generous in calling them that, are so simple and contrived that any self respecting ten-year-old could have written the very same thing. AND THIS WAS NOMINATED FOR A GRAMMY. Am I missing something here? The fact that this song is simple does not mean that all simple songs are bad. John Lennon's "Love" and The Beatles' "Yesterday" are two of the most simple and most beautiful songs I have ever heard. It's the complete lack of imagination and just...feeling in their music. If Nickelback doesn't care enough to create a work of music that means something or at least has some feeling in it, then why should the public care enough to buy it. But they do! For some reason people eat this shit up. 30 million albums worth of pure crap sold. I don't know whether its the generation in which we live, the soul sucking music industry, or the slow decline of western civilization as we know it, but I do know that Nickelback must be stopped. It's sort of like that South Park episode where Barbara Streisand morphs into a giant robot intent on destroying South Park and the only one who can save the city from robot Streisand is Robert Smith and his musical genius. But this isn't a cartoon and Nickelback has gone too far. And the question still remains: who will save us now?

Miley...are you listening?

Little Women

So today I walked to the library to take back some books and pick up some new ones. One of the books I checked out was a 1977 printing of a 1947 illustrated edition of Little Women. It looked pretty well read and it was falling apart so badly the librarian had to tape it up before I checked it out. But the inside had something pretty cool in it. Apparently a woman had donated the book to the library in memory of her friend and after the title page she had written a prayer:

"We are not all artists, God. But our eyes can shape our own masterpieces, whatever the landscape of our lives, wherever we look.

Let us see all things in this world with the enthralled naked eyes of the artist, Lord.

Let us find the beauty that lies in all the substance of living, in the grim as well as the good."

Pretty neat, huh?