Well, this is my 100th post. I'm almost tempted to stop blogging here, because, really, 100 is a great number, but maybe I won't. We'll see how I feel about it tomorrow.


As I've been loading our hundreds and hundreds of CDs onto our computer, I keep coming across CDs that we purchased only to be completely underwhelmed, and irritated that we spent $15 or so on a CD with only one good song on it (thank goodness we now have iTunes, even though it's sort of killing the music industry and ruining the whole concept of an album...I won't even start on that one). It gets me thinking about how crazy it makes me that we've decided that songwriters have to be performers, and vice-versa.


Why is it necessary for someone who is really good at writing lyrics to be good at composing the music to go with them? Is it so ridiculous that someone could be an amazing singer and have no talent for arranging? Pavarotti never wrote any of the stuff he sang, and everyone liked him pretty well. Elton John has his Bernie Taupin. What's wrong with that?


I totally see the value of multi-tasking. There are definitely people who can do it all. I get that we want people to be multi-faceted, and we want the most for our money, but this is art; no one should be expected to be as great at writing as he is at singing, or composing, or arranging. 


It makes me want to scream every time I hear the comment, "Yeah, she's got a good voice, but she doesn't even write her own music." Really? First of all, I don't write my own music, either. Does that, in some way, diminish what I do? Does that make the hours I spend at the keyboard, trying to perfect each little note, meaningless or even worth less than the 15 minutes some pop musician took to record a track, because he's a great songwriter but can't sing a note so they'll just go over it with Auto-Tune and he'll be fine?


I think not.


I think that mindset is absolute crap.


I'm glad the music industry is tanking. Maybe we'll get some new people in there, with new ideas and a better appreciation of what it is to be an artist. Britney Spears is no artist. She's a glorified prostitute, but with lower moral standards. Think about it: If she gained fifty pounds or started wearing turtlenecks to hide her lady bits, there's no way she could sell an album, right? Yeah. And, unlike real working girls, she doesn't even have the integrity to admit that that's what she's doing, and she doesn't work half as hard for her money. Plus, her voice is, at least to me, like nails on a chalkboard. Baby-talk is highly unattractive, especially in singing form.


We all need to realize that writing lyrics and writing music are completely different art forms, and requiring a person to be as good at one as she is at the other is like requiring a painter to do equally well running an art gallery, or wanting a children's book author to be able to direct a movie based upon one of her books. It's ridiculous. We're encouraging mediocre talents to do a mediocre job at putting out a bunch of mediocre music. It's not realistic, and it's insulting to those of us who spend a great deal of time on our instruments and our craft. It's catering to the lowest common denominator.


Plus, it means that I have about seventy-five CDs that only have one good song each, and that just irritates the heck out of me. At $15 each, with 9 crap songs on each CD, that's like I threw away over $1000.


Okay, so really, that's what it's all about. Argh.