Have you noticed how music is trending now?  It seems as if we are listening to the same chorus one too many times and that we’ve heard that one particular song about a half of million times before.

Let’s look at Johnny Cash’s/June Carter’s “Ring of Fire”.

“Love is a burning thing And it makes a fiery ring Bound by wild desire I fell into a ring of fire

I fell into a burning ring of fire I went down, down, down and the flames went higher And it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire The ring of fire.”

When this song was released in 1963, it was talking about what love is all about.  A burning desire like a wild fire.

Now let’s jump to 2011 with Tygra’s “Rack City”.  Let’s take a look at those lyrics.

“Rack city bitch, rack, rack city bitch; Ten ten ten twenties on ya titties bitch”

This song talks about throwing money at a girl to see boobs and do the dirty deed.  How is this love?

Now let me ask, how did we migrate from how love is like a ring of fire, to “I’m chucking money at you to see you boobs while calling you a bitch.”  How is this music?

Want another example of how music evolved in the wrong direction?  Let’s look at Lionel Richie’s 1983 hit, “All Night Long”.  The original party/dance club song.

Nowadays, we can’t go five minutes without hearing a cousin of this song, i.e. Usher’s “Yeah” and “Climax”, or Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”.  What happen to original music?

It seems like our world today can’t break out of it’s funk of copycating similar artist’s songs.  Crap we got bands doing covers (re-doing another persons song’s).  Look at this, rock music has reduce itself from Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Bob Sager to not just doing covers but rap rock even.

Here are some examples of bands doing this:

Metallica.  One of the metal god of the 1980s.  In 1998, they were doing covers of Blue Osyter Cult and Bob Sager, the polar opposite of the hard rock they did with Master of Puppets or Ride the Lighting in the 1980s.

Non rock singers doing rock covers.  We’ve seen country singers, Dolly Parton and Sheryl Crow doing rock covers.  Crow did a cover of Gun’s N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, whereas Parton did Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”.  Former Disney star, Hilary Duff did a remake of The Who’s “My Generation”.  Even Britney Spears attempted to do “I love Rock and Roll”.

Rap Rock.  I can’t even comprehend this one.  It is a slap in the face of rock and rap music.  How can you combine two genre’s into one?  Korn made it work for a while, but it went downhill however with Limp Bizkit and hit rock bottom with Rage Against The Machine.  Sounds like we are desperate in order to create new music that we are resorting to combining genre’s to make something new.

Let me pose these questions now.  What has the music world come to?  Why are we resort to repeating or creating songs single-handly based on chorus?  Why are we resorting to doing covers of previous songs or to make our songs sound like another person’s songs?

Do we honestly believe that this is real music?

Let me end with this, when I listen to music; I like to hear things similar to what I like.  But if I’m listening to Godsmack, I don’t want to hear Metallica.  If I’m listening to Drake, I don’t want to listen to Lil Wayne.  Same with Toby Keith and Trace Adkins.  I want similarities, not the same.  There is a difference.