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Monday, April 28, 2008

Music, Past and Present

Some songs are meant to last eternity. Those who grew up listening to Danny Chen Bai Qiang's (陈百强)cantonese ballads will remember how his songs and the lyrics have touched our hearts about.

While nursing my stubborn cold and cough the past few days, I dug up some of my old collections of Danny's popular songs in the 90s (偏偏喜欢你,等,涟漪). So nostalgic...It's enough to remind me what many modern songs are lacking, a good well versed lyrics with tunes that can cross decades and perhaps centuries. Danny's songs are good, no, they are great! Its a pity he had to die at 35years....

A good tune is just not enough. I cannot relate to some mass produced lame nitwit tunes and genres like hiphops that are just a bunch of words strung together so that the singer can sound cool. A good example, whatever is so great about Britney's new album? Is that even a proper song? The lyrics are crap. She was trying to sound horny saying "you want a piece of me?" in the tune and i was like "what utter rubbish"! Its no wonder my friends and I often switch radio station in frustration for a proper song to come on...

I miss good old proper music where it really can withstand the test of time. Alot of music nowadays are all screeches, screaming or idiots trying to rap with a half baked tune. Many are so forgettable... No wonder we are still listening to good old jazz and ballads of the 60s and 70s. Even the 80s had great hits. Thank god for BeeGees, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett etc...

In the last few years, thank goodness we still have soft rock bands producing decent songs... (thank you lifehouse, U2 and many more!)

The African Americans have great voices but often overused with the dragging of vocals in attempt to impress (think the likes of Fantasia, Mariah carrey, and many more), but unfortunately, there is only so much "vocal stretching" one can take...

Plus if they are not trying to break a window with their voice, they are mumbling some words that is grammatically wrong or spelt wrongly. Like one of the Pussycat's hit, what the hell is "Don't-cha". When has the word "You" been globally accepted and pronounced as "CHA" and worse, spelt as one? Modern funky word huh...

When I was listening to the lastest Maroon 5 album, I was shaking my head thinking "how could they sing "You" as "Chu-U"? Sigh....I think I expect too much....its just music afterall huh....

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