This is the season of Thanksgiving, wherein we take stock and give thanks for the things that bring us joy and comfort in our lives. Today, I feel like doing the opposite, and instead talking about a few things in music I'm not thankful for. There are plenty of people, bands, trends, and sounds that have pained my ears over the course of my lifetime, and while they come up naturally from time to time, right now I'm savoring the irony of taking this opportunity to list a few of them.
So without any further ado, here are a few of the things in music I am saying 'no thanks' to:
Ozzy Osbourne: He may be called The Prince Of Darkness, and Black Sabbath might not have ever established metal as we know it without him, but I cannot stand Ozzy. He has always been, to me, the least talented person in music who achieved that level of success. At least Britney Spears could dance and take a good photo. Ozzy was a terrible gimmick, not very responsible for the songs that shot him to fame, and the possessor of one of the few voices in the professional ranks I actually hate even more than my own.
If you ask me about Black Sabbath, the answer will invariably be about Ronnie James Dio, or even Tony Martin. They are the singers of Black Sabbath to me, and no matter how often I hear the early records praised, I simply cannot listen to them with Ozzy's warbling all over the songs. Luckily, I also think Randy Rhodes had the absolute worst guitar tone in recorded music history, so I don't feel any shame at all about ignoring Ozzy's first solo records. I would like to enjoy Sabbath, as the Dio stuff is among my favorite metal of all time, but I can't hear Ozzy without thinking about how much higher our standards have gotten since then. He wouldn't get a record deal if he was just starting out these days, would he?
Even worse is that half of all doom bands try to copy him. Ugh.
Led Zeppelin: Of all my opinions, the one I feel most sheepish about putting out there is the fact that despite trying several times to get into Led Zeppelin, I just can't seem to do it. I know they are important, and I know pretty much everyone else in the world thinks they're one of the greatest bands of all time, but I hear them completely differently. They are still a foundational piece in the development of rock music, and they illustrate to me that I don't particular care for those embryonic states.
It stems from the blues. Zeppelin built so heavily from the blues, and that form of music doesn't speak to me the way you would think it should, given my personality and penchant for brooding. The fact of the matter is that the blues rhythms tend to drive vocalists in directions that don't mesh with the kinds of melodies that stick in my head. Robert Plant wails away, and I can barely remember anything he's ever sung. Much of the classic rock of that era suffers from the same problem, as the idea of integrating pop-ish melodies to catch the listener's attention hadn't yet become a big thing. That's the one way I will praise KISS. Don't ask me to do it again.
Zeppelin defines my belief that the vocal line is 90% of most songs, and because Plant and I don't hear music the same way, I find Zeppelin's songwriting to be too slippery to embrace.
Lazy Harsh Vocalists: You might get the impression I hate extreme metal, and I understand why. I have rarely talked positively about death metal, and even less so as the years have gone on. In fact, I don't actually remember the last time I listened to a full album of pure death metal. The reason for that is quite simple; I find death metal to be lazy, in one particular way.
There's an album Dan Swano released called "Moontower", and on that record he growls 90% of the lyrics. It also happens to be one of my favorite records. So what gives? Swano somehow mastered the art of growling actual melodies. I can listen to a song like "Patchwork" and hear it as a melodic metal song, and it would be amazing. For almost all other death metal I hear, the vocal patterns are flat and static, barking out syllables that have little pitch movement. If you sung those with a clean voice, they would almost be talking. You could make the argument that Meshuggah is just harsh spoken word. There isn't a need among the fans to do better, so the artists don't bother.
I cannot be thankful for how many times I've been told a death metal album is finally going to win me over again, only to be smacked by the same old issue.
Concept Albums: Music really isn't the right format to tell long-form stories. I've heard way too many concept albums over the years, and here's an admission; I don't actually know the story to a single one of them. Songwriting and narrative writing are completely different, and the odds of being great at both of them are very low. Just on that factor, most concept albums fail to deliver simply on the basis of telling stories I'm not interested in. I don't know how many story-lines about battles and magic I've run across. It's great if you're a fantasy literature fan, but that's not me.
Beyond that, concept albums suffer from the fact that there aren't enough words in typical songs to properly tell the story. Either the lyrics get turned into clumsy narrative that has no musicality or flow to them, or much of the narrative gets put into liner notes that try to explain what the songs are trying, but failing, to get across. At least in a theatrical setting, you also have dialogue and visuals to get more of the story across. Narration on record doesn't work well, gets incredibly annoying on repeated listening, and only proves that the songs themselves can't do the intended job.
Don't even get me started on prog concept albums that have five-minute long instrumental passages. How exactly do those relate to the story?
'Balls Caught In Their Zipper' Singers: Whether it's Robert Plant, or Jon Anderson of Yes, I hate how much of rock and metal has been defined by singers who perform at the highest limits of their register. Even if they aren't going into full-on painful shrieking like Rob Halford is famous for, it's a sound that hurts my ears. Those high notes are painful like a whistle being blown directly in my ear, and they often don't sound like they belong with the music the rest of the band is playing.
It also plays into a bit of culture I've never quite understood. Why exactly does a musical culture that is mostly made up of guys who only hang out with other guys, and who only listen to other guys, love singers who often sing in the same range as women.... and in the past would often have even longer and more teased hair?
Part of me wonders if there's a degree of projection in here, where these people are trying to find a safe and sanitized way of having something they don't want to tell their friends about due to embarrassment. Was a band like Poison really a big and popular rock band, or were they filling the role women weren't allowed to fill? I can't say for sure, but since I've come to hate 'bro' culture so much, it's a thought I keep coming back to.
There are more things that annoy me, including covers albums, double albums, instrumental music, worthless introductions, and the trifecta of band/album/song all sharing the same name. We'll save those for if I do this again next year. Perhaps 'No Thanks-giving' will become a tradition.
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