Last weekend the music world, or at least a small segment of it, came together for a giant circle jerk called the Grammy Awards. As a general rule, I pay no attention to the world of “entertainment” and especially not the music world as most music made since the 80s is absolute garbage. That doesn’t mean I don’t like music, I listen to some form of rock almost all the time in the car where I spend most of my day, I frequently listen to classical music at home while writing and reading and I occasionally have been known to listen to some older country, George Strait and Hank Williams Jr. kind of stuff. But I don’t follow the “music scene” and I don’t intentionally support the music industry. I haven’t purchased music for so long that I can’t remember the last time I did, listening almost exclusively on YouTube on my desktop so I don’t even see ads.
That said, I was listening to our local rock station early yesterday morning and the hosts were talking about the Grammys. The latest flash in the pan, Billie Elish, apparently won a ton of stuff but her incoherent warbling music is so generic and forgettable that she will be gone from memory soon. What caught my notice was the winner of the “rock” category. The entire rock genre gets very little attention from the music industry, they are more focused on glowering rappers, fat women yodeling about what whores they are and the flavor of the day pop singers lip-syncing some banal lyrics. So when the hosts, and this is a rock station that plays contemporary rock along with classic rock, mentioned who won several awards in the “Rock” category, they were as confused as I was. Some guy named Gary Clark Jr. was the winner of Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance for some song called “This Land.” I have never heard of this guy. The hosts of our local rock station had never heard of this guy. They played a short clip of the song and I have never heard the song, and little wonder as it sound like it was more accurately described as a rap “song,” which by the way already has it’s own category. Here are some of the lyrics from “This Land“:
Uh, yeah, Paranoid and pissed off. Now that I got the money. Fifty acres and a model A. Right in the middle of Trump country. I told you, “There goes a neighborhood.” Now Mister Williams ain’t so funny, I see you looking out your window. Can’t wait to call the police on me
Oh, an anti-white and anti-Trump song. How original and edgy! Remember when “rock” used to be counter-cultural instead of parroting back the prevailing elite opinions? More from this noble troubadour in the chorus….
“Nigga run, nigga run, Go back where you come from, uh Nigga run, nigga run. Go back where you come from. We don’t want, we don’t want your kind. We think you’s a dog born.” Fuck you, I’m America’s son.
This is where I come from, This land is mine, This land is mine, This land is mine, This land is mine…
Well, that certainly is poetic. I can’t imagine why a rapper bellowing about how much he hates white people in “Trump country” and pretending like he is oppressed doesn’t get any play time on stations that have an almost entirely white listener base. Must be racism.
The (actual) rock band Tool released a very long awaited and very well received new album in 2019. There were lots of other great bands releasing quality rock music. Rival Sons had a solid new album. The Black Keys released some new material last year after a hiatus. Ozzie Osbourne released a great new single, “Under The Graveyard.” Slipknot released “We Are Not Your Kind,” which gets a ton of airplay on rock stations. The Glorious Sons had a new album. Nope, none of them won.
Gary Clark Jr. being black is irrelevant to me. If he made actual rock music and that music rocked, I would rock out to it. No one, me included, has a problem with Jimi Hendrix being played on rock stations because he was playing rock music. But at least in the case of “This Land,” while what he produced might be artistically pleasing to a lot of people, it isn’t rock music. Furthermore, in spite of being unknown in rock circles, he won several Grammy awards in the rock category for one simple reason: his screed against Trump and white people (aka Trump voters) is pleasing to the acolytes of the zeitgeist.
Imagine the response if during the Obama administration a white guy won an award in the “Urban Contemporary” category where he talked about how awful Obama was and how he has to lock his doors when he drives through black neighborhoods. People would be burning down cities. But a non-rock song wins in the rock category containing lyrics attacking the only people who listen to rock music and we are supposed to applaud.
In a not at all shocking twist, the Grammy awards had their lowest ratings ever. This doesn’t matter to the glitterati. All that matters is pushing their assigned agenda, so a “rock” award is presented to someone because he a) isn’t white and b) produced an anti-Trump, anti-white song. Hollywood and the entertainment industry keep pumping out political propaganda that lacks any artistic or entertainment value and doesn’t seem to care whether actual fans like it, or consume it, or not. They would rather wreck a beloved franchise like Star Wars for the sake of being woke than make something decent.
At some point a few decades ago the entertainment world shifted away from being a business driven by pumping out commercially viable crap and into the propaganda arm of the globo-homo Left. I don’t care how much you love music or movies or sports. If you spend money directly subsidizing those industries, you are essentially funding the most vocal and militant group seeking to displace your people and extinguish your civilization.
Stop it.
“If you spend money directly subsidizing those industries, you are essentially funding the most vocal and militant group seeking to displace your people and extinguish your civilization. ”
Yes, Mr. Sido, you’ve gotten to the point very incisively. And this is exactly why I don’t own a TV anymore, don’t watch TV anymore, don’t go to movies anymore, and don’t purchase modern music.
However, I haven’t watched any kind of award show for decades. I’ve always viewed them as self-congratulating propaganda for famous narcissists.
Ditto.
That is a tough sell, so many of our people are completely immersed in the popular culture without realizing it is destroying us. People weep and rend their garments over the death of a rapist sportsball player even though that guy wouldn’t give any of us the time of day.
Am I still a bot?
Ok I guess I’m no longer a suspected bot.
Rock is dead. Has been for a while. Most of it sucked anyway. All of it was “progressive”.
Rock is/was a commodity just like country, rap, pop, etc. Its no surprise that the producers of these products would seek to combine them and lower their overhead.
Morn not, for everything is fake and gay and no real loss
Good point, but let me advocate another way.
Music is powerful and it can move the culture. Concerts are powerful venues to push cultural and political messages. Look at old Skynyrd concerts and see the Beautiful Flag waving all over the world.
Last year I went to a Disturbed concert with my wife, fantastical done. They pushed diversity brilliantly. However, a quick glance across the venue and you could count diversity one two hands. There message was wasted.
If fortune smiles once again and we could just get a few Southern musicians to embrace their culture, in song and concerts, you could reawaken the Southern spirit. It’s just waiting for the harvest. I live among these musicians, and they can be turned.
So, support Southern musicians that openly talk about the South. Yes, others will benefit, but profit is an unstoppable force in this industry and could be used to our advantage.
Just another perspective.
Calling that “song” a song is criminal. Songs have to have many elements to be considered one. Anyone can make a bunch of noise and string together sentences that don’t flow to some key. There is hardly any talent left in what is left of the music industry which is among the reasons I listen to old stuff and generally not anything that would be considered new. I wrote an article about this in the past that I’ll repost talking about some of these points.
There’s a reason I tell people I don’t sing or dance because I can’t. I don’t have the talent for it and talent is something you are born with which comes from your heritage among other things but I digress. There’s much more I’d like to comment on but some of the other commenters are touching on them or saying them for me so I’ll stop here before I get carried away.