Unless your name is David Bowie, I could care less about what you or your band is wearing. OK, I’ll give some credit to Devo as well, but this six-costume-changes-per-show shit is weak. Don’t even get me started on all those kids who saw some My Chemical Romance video and decided it was time for a ridiculous hairdo, a pierced lip and pants so tight they make you pray you don’t drop anything. 

 

“Lady Lumps?” “Let’s Get Retarded in Here?” Congratulations, The Black Eyed Peas…You suck. I imagine that if I were suffering from either breast cancer or some form of mental disability, I would hate you even more than I already do. The shocking thing about The Black Eyed Peas is the sheer enormity of fame the group has garnered. The band’s fame makes me think I just might be the last sane person on Earth, and I consider it a sign of the impending apocalypse. I use this group merely as an umbrella face for all the mediocre groups out there that somehow made it big, thanks to America’s malls, their fans not being any older than 15 and the evils of a capitalism-driven music industry.

 

It used to be that if you couldn’t sing, people either hated you or it became your trademark. The singer for pop/punk outfit Piebald, Travis Shettel, is terrible, but it works for him—partly because you’ve got to respect someone who is not great but doesn’t doctor his voice. But now suddenly every rap and R&B song has become an unintelligible mess of effects-laden vocals that attack on two fronts: No longer can anyone tell one song from another, and any tone-deaf asshole who owns a computer can release an album ripe for blasting too loudly out of some douche-lord’s Jetta.

 

If you’re one of these musicians walking around constantly telling everyone how amazing your songs are or how your band is the greatest thing since the dawn of creation, you need to realize this not only makes people feel miserably awkward, but it speaks volumes about you as a person. I see it as a need to prove to yourself that you don’t suck and are not boring. I mean, if you say it out loud enough it becomes true, right? Look, everyone appreciates quiet modesty, and all the best bands around just get the job done without all the talk and hype—except rappers, but they’re all using auto-tune anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

 

Pitchfork should change its name to hipster-lessons-for-preteens-who-don’t-listen-to-anything-unless-we-tell-them-to.com. Now, instead of actually forming an opinion based on a group’s talent or musical merit, you can simply visit this website and be told what you’re supposed to like from a panel of idiots that leads the mediocrity-in-music campaign with such sanctimonious vigor, it makes me sick. Yes, criticism has a strong and valid position in the music world, but should be used as guidelines rather than words to live by. Do yourself a favor and choose for yourself. If one more person tells me what pitchfork said about something, it’ll mean a pitchfork in the face for that person.