Mozart and Snoop Dogg

I was riding in the car with two other people and listening to Howard Stern on Sirius/XM radio. I have been listening to Howard for seven years now, so I understand whats going on, but others in the car weren't that familiar with him and they suggested listening to music on one of the many music channels.

So we listened to The Pulse, a top 40 pop/rock music station. And they were doing a countdown of, what else, the top forty songs of 2010. We got there at the tenth most popular song. They all sound alike to me so I can't tell you what song it was, but this guy was singing and he had a warbling/underwater sound quality to his voice. I wondered what it was like to be in the room when that decision was made. Did they listen to his rice paper thin voice and think to themselves that something was missing? And then think that making him sound like he was singing underwater was the solution? Maybe that is the reason its number ten? (As a matter of interest song number one sounded like he was singing above water.)

I'm not a fan of pop music. I'm a metal head myself, but I listen to classical and a lot of others. See, the thing with me and music is that if I think it is difficult, technical or skillfully done I tend to like it, and if I feel like it doesn't require much skill, ability or technique than I am disinclined to like it. Rap for example, often times I feel like it doesn't require much skill, or isn't equivalent to say an opera singer or a violinist. The sounds in rap songs are usually computer generated and spaced and timed and layered in such a way that sounds like it was constructed by a person at a computer. In my mind it can not compare to the likes of a Yo Yo Ma playing the cello with his hands, which is what I'd rather watch and listen to.

At a concert all the sound is coming from his cello, if he makes any mistake we will hear it, and when we don't we can appreciate just how sharp his brain is, how much practice he had to reach this level. At a rap concert the computer will not make a mistake leaving my interest to fall on the rapper alone, and I'm usually disappointed in them because they don't sing well, and the rap, or poetry in some cases, isn't so hot either. Maybe I'm totally ignorant of rap and can't appreciate it, but I want you to think of Mozart and ask yourself the question, will anyone know Snoop Dogg 219 years from now?

I think I'll end there because my eyelids are getting heavy.