Music Today: What Happened To It??? And Who is Considered a "Great Artist"?

Let me just get right to the point, I think a lot of today's music is nothing really special. I mean a lot of songs are about sex, money, drugs, alcohol, etc. And its not just one genre, its basically ALL genres!!! In other words, I see a lack of creativity in music these days. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all songs are like that. As a matter of fact, I'm somewhat into multiple genres of music, but usually if the song gives me motivation in my workouts (whether its the music, beat, the artist's style of how they do their music, lyrics, or all of the above). What I am looking at is music as a whole.

So who is really considered a "great artist"? Who actually makes good music? Well, truth is I think people define "good music" as something that is based on their own opinion. But let's take a moment and look at who is a legitimate musician and who I believe gets "overhyped".

First, let's started with the overrated artists (NOTE: This is my opinion, it may not necessarily be your opinion). Taylor Swift has won multiple awards like Entertainer of the Year, Country Vocalist of the Year, etc. But the thing I've noticed in a lot of her awards is that she won them IN COUNTRY MUSIC AWARD CEREMONIES! To be honest with you, Taylor Swift gets way too much credit as a "country singer" and she hasn't been doing country since like 2007! Actually, she's never really been true country singer, she's more of a pop genre singer. Next, let's look at Justin Bieber. Now I could just ramble endlessly on what I hate about him such as his "wannabe gangster" looks, the fact that he barely hit puberty, question what Usher was thinking in making him famous out of YouTube, or even his attitude, but there will come a time and day for that. For now, I'll just look at his music. I think his singing voice is annoying, the music is bad, and I don't even think a lot of his songs have ANYTHING to do with what he has went through! So you guessed it right, I DO NOT have "Bieber Fever"!!!

On the other hand, lets now look at who I think is considered one of the greats. This one is a bit tough because the music industry has had great musicians from back in the including Queen, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, etc. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking of Carrie Underwood and Eminem.

Since she entered the scene in American Idol back in 2004, Carrie Underwood has been able to showcase herself as arguably one of the greatest country singers of all time. Underwood, at least in my opinion, has a great voice, a well deserved American Idol winner, can be known as a role model to many people, and is a very gorgeous individual. On the other hand, Eminem creates powerful messages in his songs, raps extremely fast, and he's one of those one of a kind rappers. I think what Eminem has that a lot of modern day artists never really had was that he had to work his way to the top. In one of his latest albums, Eminem has a picture of his old house before he became famous. Aside from the language being pretty strong, the movie 8 Mile showed what Eminem actually went through before he became, as he proclaimed himself to be, a "Rap God". Here is a video from 8 Mile to give you an image of his past, but I must warn you that the following contains very strong language. And here is also a picture of his old house on his latest album.

Regardless of what we think about any artist/musicians, each of them have different life stories and whatever they have done throughout their entire lives, it has what has brought them to where they are today. As long as these artists have a fan base, they will keep doing what they love to do, and that is make music, entertain the fan base, and making a living.