[Ranma Matsuri]

Well, for me, it's radio that's absolutely killing me. The Top 40 the last 5 years have sucked so much ass. I used to love listening to radio, all day long and now I can barely listen to it during a car ride for 10 minutes without shutting it off and putting on my ipod. Yeah, I know you can't judge the state of music simply by what's on radio but radio used to be a big thing and the only source of music before mp3 players and CD players so it does worry me when there's nothing on it that appeals to me. What makes it worse is how every pop station seems to have the same *****ty playlist and it's just frustrating how I have to filter the music in my own backyard by searching for it and putting it on my mp3 player much like I do Asian music. I can count on my hand the amount of more recent acts that actually put out something listenable. Riri, Nikki, Gaga, Robyn... can't think of any more. lol Everyone else I listen to has already reached their peak or is "old news" so to speak. It's a shame that to get quality pop music I have to keep going back to Britney, Madge, and basically anything else before 2005.

It's weird... with Eastern music I feel so young because of all the silly, cutesy idol music I like to listen to but with Western, it's like most of what's on radio is too young for me. It's like what ohsixthirty said, when I was younger I used to not care about lyrics (it's partly how I can easily listen to music in languages I don't understand) but I think listening to so much Japanese has had the opposite effect on the music I can actually understand. Now I'm actually paying attention to what's being sung about and most of it is so unbelievably cheesy and juvenile I have trouble believing that adults wrote it. I don't care about the subject matter, it's the actual writing that seems weak and lazy. "Firework" is the perfect example. The song is an absolute cornball and the first time I heard it, I thought for sure it'd be a flop. I couldn't believe how well this song did and people on forums and the like were calling it "the most inspirational anthem of the year". O___o Last year was full of similar hits, songs geared toward the miserable and emo youth of America that need to be told that "you're perfect the way you are" because they need to feel like they're individuals since they're not smart enough to have an identity of their own. I'm just so tired of looking at the Top of my beloved Pop music and feeling lost and intellectually insulted.

*sigh* Meh... maybe I need to go back to Rock and Metal for a while.