Random Thoughts and Manufactured Music

You know how sometimes seemingly random thoughts just pop into your head? Usually these thoughts aren't all that helpful, like when I find myself singing twenty-year-old commercial jingles for no apparent reason. Occasionally I will come up with something more interesting, though. For instance, here's a very strange line of thought that has occurred to me:

A bat "sees" by emitting a noise and then listening for it to bounce back, and surely too much surrounding noise would hinder that capability. What if our own vision worked similarly? What if, instead of passively perceiving ambient light, our eyes could only process light they generated--like a flashlight in the dark except that we could each only use our own light, and others' light interfered with our own? What would be the effect on human social interaction? Maybe it would be rude to look steadily at anything in public since nobody else could see it while you look at it. What would rock concerts or church services look like since nobody could see if everybody was looking at the same people? It would probably put a premium on one-to-one and aural interaction.

Wow. I hadn't really tried to put that into words before. Like I said, very strange.

Anyway, I recently had a bunch of old Backstreet Boys songs stuck in my head. I find the best thing to do when this happens is to listen to the songs again. Now I have never actively listened to the Backstreet Boys (but I heard plenty of their work back in the day when they were everywhere), so I don't have the albums, but thanks to the magic of Rhapsody I listened to some of their hits. Here are some of my thoughts from that experience:

First of all, this is not good music. On this point I must agree with Ben, who is a music snob and was nearby during my Backstreet marathon. In fact, as he noted, 99 percent of my enjoyment of the whole experience was watching his reactions to it--anger, revulsion, snide commentary, depression, begging for mercy...

Some of it actually doesn't sound too dated--in fact, some of it sounds like Britney Spears. In fact, I think if you dropped Spears voice into "Larger than Life" you could almost pass it off as her latest. This brings me to a point about "manufactured" music-- most of the lyrics aren't written by the idols themselves, but by middle-aged English majors on caffeine and a deadline. Either that, or by a computer program (Love + heart + baby + forever = POP HIT) or by 10,000 monkeys with typewriters (this is Ben's theory). I think the music is handled by all of the same computer jockeys, which would explain why the Backstreet Boys from the nineties sounds similar to Britney Spears of today, or why all of Spears' hits sound the same.

Finally, Josie and the Pussycats has some very funny things to say about manufactured music. It features a boy band called Du Jour which is funny because du jour means "of the day". They're the boy band of the day! Get it? (Warning: It's rated PG for "sensuality and language", kids, so be advised.)


filed: etcetera; entertainment