Copying the Copy Cats

One of the downsides of my lovely wife is that she is a big Nickelback fan. It's not the only band of hers I'm not a fan of, and to be honest, there are worse bands, but it is the most noticeable. I've been known to wade into the debate of if they are good or not before but these days I mostly just say I don't like them and leave it at that because people can like what they like. AC(lightning bolt)DC have been playing the same song for decades and I enjoy their music so I'm not one to talk.

One of the things that I never enjoyed about Nickelback, and many of the other bands at the time, is that they were copying the popular bands from their time. Nickelback came out of Pearl Jam. Limp Bizkit came out of Rage Against the Machine. And so on.

With my wife's music tastes though, and a few of my own, I've discovered something new about copying the old bands. There are groups that are coming out now that are stealing that same Eddie Vedder voice, but it's done better. Instead of ripping off those bands, they are taking inspiration from them and making some actually good music. Bands were excited about grunge and went way too far trying to copy them and now it seems that it is swinging back to the middle.

I can't remember the name of the guy but she listens to one that sounds very close to that typical voice but he sings slower, Viking inspired songs. Another group, Silly Goose, is doing the rap rock thing very well with their song "Rap Rock Jesus." I haven't listened to any of their other music to confirm though.

In fact, this whole post is just a passing notice and I'm sure if I were to dig deeper I'd find out that I am completely full of shit. But this is Randomization, baby! We are happy to talk nonsense! Just as long as it doesn't make the world a worse place.

But, if even one additional person listens to Rap Rock Jesus then I think the world will be a better place. It's a delightful song that combines some Limp Bizkit style without the douche-ness.

Of course, this could also just be that the algorithm is feeding me the good stuff. I know that back in the day there were good Nirvana rip-offs too. They were just surrounded by a lot that weren't as good (I'm looking at you, Madonna. You don't sound anything like Kurt!). This whole discussion also assumes that you are just getting influenced by a single genre rather than multiples. I think someone I know did a blog post on how this is a bad thing some time ago.

I think the real solution is to get rid of all genre's entirely and rebuild them in the following 12 new genres:

- Pizza Punk

- Viking Metal

- Pirate Rock

- Hipster Folk

- Elevator Jazz

- Silly Rap

- Gangster(1930's) Rap

- Weird Al

- Jackson Pop

- Cowpoke Western

- Headbangers Classical

- Other (Including your Grandmas rock)