Thursday, March 8, 2018

Musical Disaster

Former Michelle Obama chief of staff to head Grammys inclusion group

Alright, it's time to stop.

I just want to start off by saying, and you probably know this, is that you listen to music with your ears, not your eyes.  If not, you're doing it wrong.  And music isn't a competitive sport you only enter into it to receive an award.

So the Recording Academy is creating a Task Force focused on inclusion and diversity. Really?  And to uncover unconscious biases?  You don't say.  They have this type of training for race and it's proven to either do two things: nothing, or make things worse.  https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rabble-rouser/201712/mandatory-implicit-bias-training-is-bad-idea 

And I rolled my eyes again when they mentioned it's for "inclusion and diversity".  Since diversity in this case is an adjective and not an abstract noun (you can't just add "ity" to any word and expect it be a noun), it's unclear what type of diversity they're referring to.  And inclusion.  What exactly are they being included in to?

Wait a second... is this about diversity and inclusion for winning awards?  There's also a type of Olympics where everyone gets an award.

If you get into music for anything but music, then you'll be a failure at it and if this is all about being a celebrity, stop now.  If your sole purpose in life is seeking validation from others, don't even pick up an instrument.  You'll be doing no one a favour. 

Music is great.  You either love it, like it or you don't.  You don't even have to analyse why you like or dislike it.  It's immediate.  I hate New Country because it's highly irritating to listen to.  It's every bad cliché in every song.  It's annoying.  I feel the same way when I'm in the waiting room at the Dentist and some pop "singer" like Beyonce comes on.  It's highly annoying to listen to and I'd rather not hear it, meaning I don't like it.

But now there's is a push to give music awards to girls because...they're girls?  The CEO was right in this case: you want an accolade, do something worth receiving an award for.

I'd consider myself a fan of music.  So much, I took up the guitar and started making my own songs and CDs.  I started buying my own records at 14 and I have quite a decent collection now but I think I have maybe a total of 10 female artists in my collection.  Really, everyone should have a healthy sampling of Aretha or Irene Reid but females make up about 2% of my collection.  The only bias I show is I love English hard rock which happens to have been made mostly been by men.  Sorry, that's the brakes.  Guys make better hard rock, plain and simple.  I'll buy another copy of Deep Purple In Rock before I stream Kesha for free.  Just saying.

Apparently this task force "plans to uncover barriers that impede women's success in the music industry".  This sounds like Feminists playing the victim again while trying to get into another field of entertainment since they wasted their tuition on women studies courses that couldn't prepare anyone for a real world job (I'd still like to see a better representation of female garbage collectors).

If you want to make a living off of music, don't get involved in the dying record industry.  Your best bet would be to make songs for TV, movies and video games.  That's where the money's at and it's been like that for about 20 years now.  You'd make more money doing that than slugging it out on tour or selling t-shirts at the Merch Table.  But the catch is, your songs have to be good and no one cares what gender you are.  Also, nobody's buying music anymore since Millennials ruined that whole business model by not buying anything, so the options are limited these days.  Or you could get a day job but like I mentioned earlier, a Women Studies course isn't going to get you too far unless you like saying, "Do you want fries with that?"

For those of you who actually value awards, would you really want to receive an award because of what you accidentally popped out of the womb as or because of some work you created?  I think everyone would agree you would want an award based on an accomplishment.  Awards are supposed to be a symbols recognising an accomplishment.  I'd actually feel embarrassed and ashamed if I won an award because of solely on my physical appearance: it's confirmation that I wasn't really good enough.  That's called being a failure.

I almost forgot to mention that Tina Tchen, who was put in charge of this task force is a veteran lawyer who is also working on the Time's Up Legal Defence Fund.  Putting someone in charge who is completely unqualified for the position should make everything better.  And isn't the Time's Up thing about sexual harassment?  Why is that even being mentioned in an article about giving undeserving people awards?  And what's with the Michael Obama name-drop?  Here's some advice: stop trying to make music political.  It doesn't work.  I cringed when dumbass Kumail Nanjiani said that "music has always been political"  No it hasn't.  Stupid people say things like that.  Music's been around a lot longer than politics.

Anyways, this whole task force idea bad all over but if this actually catches on, get used to hearing "She only got an award because she's a girl".  I’d say that's more demeaning than not getting an award at all.

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