To me, overproduction is a big killer. Like you said at the end, a sound that's *too* perfect. It feels like I'm listening to the sound of money being poured into a studio with a bunch of suits watching from behind a semi-mirror to make sure everything is going as profitably as possible.

Any music that feels like it has to make a distinction between a business decision and an artistic decision, letting the business come first. Having to overcompress an album, raising the percieved loudness, so that it comes out through car stereos at higher volume, allowing it to be heard over other sound sources. Big labels with selfish wallets have this as a requirement to any album they release.

Lyrics don't usually play a large role for me, but the times that I find myself balking at them is when they simply fail to interest. Not failure to entertain. Failure to interest. I don't want the lyrics to say something I'm already thinking. I want it to show me something new to think about.

Overall, for me, it's simply a failure to introduce a new or interesting or different musical idea. It's not impossible. It's being done every day.

I read once that that metallic tinge to the voice that you hear in most songs on the radio these days means that a computer program took an artist's sung-words and auto-adjusted them to be pitch and tone perfect. This means everything from Akon on the like.

I have never forgotten this and it sticks with me; any time you hear a metallic tinge in the music this means that you are listening to (and may have paid for) a performance by someone who is not perfect in the field. Nor are they even good, or semi-decent. It means that they got lucky and studios are willing to pay to make them look like musicians. So they crowd the background noise with standard rock beats, or in the case of Rap or R&B, four-beat long patterns prepared by some stoner DJ somewhere off in Hollywood making bank off his beats. This is all to distract you from the fact that you're listening to sub-standard quality.

Then take into account the lyrics. Some songs have awesome lyrics. Metallica's "Of Wold and Man" (I often think of this as Belgarath's theme song for the Belgariad literary-nerds out there.) But what about the songs out there today?

"IMA BUY YOU A DRANK
THEM IMA TAKE YOU HOME WIT ME
I GOT MONEY IN THE BAAAANK"

Seriously? Is this what we sing about today? I admit this song is fun to grind to in a club, but shit, it's permeated every airwave for the past 12 months. TIme to give it a rest. Does nobody even TRY to make a decent song anymore? There's no effort put into creating lyrics; It's just throw together words that maybe rhyme.

That's why I have respect for those artists that actually make an effort. Ludacris, Eminem and the like.

Plus, I consider myself a classically trained musician. 6 years of band will do that. I respect songs that have musicality. I don't respect songs that are shitty remixes of songs that once were good. Like apparently it's cool to take songs from.. what I think The Blue Man Group and add new words to it. Kanye West didn't do TOO bad but that shit got old.

Anyways, the point is: It must have thought and musicality, and beyond all, a purpose. I don't think anything we have these days fits any of these criteria.

Oh, PS, I bought a DVD off Amazon called "Before the Music Dies" featuring artists like Dave Matthews, Erykah Badu, Eric Clapton, Elvis Costello, and Branford Marsalis. That wasn't supposed to be bold but formatting on this shit gets wierd. Here's the website with a little preview clip of what it's all about. It's a nice little grassroots effortby some big names to expose the shit that is the Recording Industry and the farce that they call talent. It was worth every penny.

Joke's on you, it seems.