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Turn on your radio. What do you hear? It’s the sound of musical degradation. Modern day artists in the music industry are decreasing in terms of quality and originality and increasing in vulgarity. The worse part of musical degradation is that younger generations must be exposed to this vulgarity at such a young age.
Kegan Zema (“Thieving artist Ke$ha is ruining music,” Jan. 14) says Ke$ha is a “slap in the face to every artist who has tried to make anything original” and adds that he’s “horrified” if this is the direction that music is headed in.
It is clear that music is already far down that path. Ten years ago, we heard things on the radio along the lines of “It’s my life and it’s now or never / I ain’t gonna live forever,” or even “Say it ain’t so / I will not go / Turn the lights off / Carry me home.” Now we’re hearing “That party last night was awfully crazy / I wished we taped it / I danced my ass off / and had this one girl completely naked.”
Zema refers to Ke$ha as “unoriginal and mind-numbing” but seems unwilling to acknowledge that we’ve been hearing music like this for years now. He argues that Ke$ha has a chorus “dangerously close” to choruses by Lady Gaga and Uffie, but the material does not sound similar enough to be a “blatant copyright infringement” of Uffie. Yes, the styles are comparable, but I can find the artist “Uffie” stole her “originality” from.
I could easily argue that the choruses played by Lady Gaga and Uffie are dangerously close, in both structure and theme, to the Jennifer Lopez song “Play,” from 2001: “Play, come on play that song / Play it all night long / Just turn it up and turn me on.” The artist Zema’s defending is not truly original at all.
Zema refers to Ke$ha as a “women’s studies major’s worst nightmare.” Now, I’m no feminist, but if male artists can produce sexually suggestive music about women, why can’t a woman reciprocate? “Blah Blah Blah” by Ke$ha suggests that the guy she’s dancing with should stop talking because all she wants is … well, you know. Granted, Ke$ha is trashy, but how can Uffie be viewed as anything better, with lyrics such as, “Now you know I made an anthem for all my hot chicks / And it ain’t about how we girls are raisin’ your [male genitalia].”
Come on Zema, every popular song is about partying it up, and we all love to listen, for whatever reason. Though I enjoy running or dancing to Ke$ha’s music, I can’t say this music accompanies my peaceful thinking or long drives. It isn’t even suitable as background music.
Ultimately, Ke$ha is not what’s wrong with today’s music industry. The likelihood that Ke$ha would have produced this type of music even 10 years ago is slim to none. In USA Today’s most recent airplay charts, under the urban section, the top songs titles blatantly express musical degradation, with songs such as “Bedrock,” “I Invented Sex,” “Sex Therapy,” “I Get it In” and “O Let’s Do It.”
These songs are significantly more vulgar than anything Ke$ha sings about. Although I don’t particularly support Ke$ha in her musical endeavors, I feel sorry Zema feels the need to attack her over anyone in the music industry. His argument is clearly in defense of his beloved Uffie, whom he thinks is original. Sorry Zema, but originality is hard to find, and Uffie just doesn’t cut it.
Doreh Taghavidinani is a third-year psychology major.
