Is ‘music’ becoming more mindless?

I grew up working in the garage listening to old country music. Hank Williams Sr. and Jr., Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Buck Owens. Sometimes I listened to some of the older rock, like Creedence Clearwater Revival or Buddy Holly.

But around the time I started junior high, the influence of friends started to take its toll on my brothers and I. The look on Dad’s face as he walked into the garage to the sounds of Bruce Springsteen, Phil Collins, Flock of Seagulls, Def Leppard or INXS was usually enough to send me scrambling to the radio to hurry and flip it back to country. Or, if it was Sunday, Prairie Home Companion — heaven forbid we miss Prairie Home Companion on Sunday!

To be fair, even if I was listening to the music, I still found the fashion and style a bit odd. Unlike most of my friends, I was in no hurry to grow my hair out and start teasing it until I looked like a girl. Same goes for the copious amounts of make-up and lipstick. No, I kept my flattop (albeit a tall flattop, just like the one guy from U2!) and denim jacket (yes, with the collar popped).

And so it was that I was watching Willie Nelson perform on television one night and I mentioned, “You know, I’ve never been a Willie fan. He sounds like he’s got cotton shoved up his nose.”

Without missing a beat or looking up from his newspaper, Dad said, “Unlike Cindy Lauper who looks like she has cocaine up hers.”

Hmm, touché.

So I learned about how every generation grows up, gets old and complains about the music the next generation listens to. Lord knows I’ll never understand this fascination with rap (I refuse to call it “music”). I would point out to my boys how this noise they listened to was awful, talentless and only entertaining to the feeble-minded and they would point out that Grandma and Grandpa said the same thing about the music I listened to when I was their age. Hmm, touché (dang kids).

While I try my hardest not to pay any attention to the garbage that constitutes modern (ahem) “music,” with five children still in the house and a few friends who are a generation or two behind me, I can’t help but be tortured with it now and then. And while I have tried to tell myself that it’s just a typical generation-gap thing, dang it if I just can’t help feeling more and more as if — no, I am right, it’s just becoming mindless. Seems that each new song has to be the musical equivalent of a porno in order to sell. Ever listened to what constitutes a “love song” these days? Ugh. Lyrics by Larry Flynt. No wonder today’s young people have such a casual attitude about sex.

So there I was about a week or so ago watching the “MTV Music Awards.” Ha! Just kidding! Of course I wasn’t. I would rather spend the evening trimming my lawn with a pair of fingernail clippers than watch that. But of course I couldn’t help but see the headlines blasted all over the Internet the following day about some risqué show put on by Hannah Cyrus, or whatever her name is. At first I ignored this story, as I tend to do with 99.9 percent of all “celebrity news.” But man, by day two it was still there. Right at the top, apparently more interesting than some little issue in Syria, stagnant unemployment, the crumbling economy or whatever Iran was up to.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “let’s (sigh) see what the hubbub is all about.” I assumed she had performed a duet with Julian Assange or something. No, what I saw was much more disturbing. In fact, it was embarrassing to watch.

Here was this under-aged, big-eared, goofy-looking little girl tramping all over the stage, a flesh-colored bikini barely covering the naughty bits of her stick-figure body. Bending over, rubbing this, rubbing that with one of those big foam hands. But I must admit that one part of me felt a bit sorry for her. Apparently, she suffers some condition that compels her to stick her tongue out of her mouth every few seconds like a frog wiping his eyes or a dog on a hot day. Or perhaps she has a pet cat and grooms it in the same fashion the cat grooms itself and she didn’t have time to get the hair off her tongue prior to her little, um, spectacle.

Either way, it became painfully obvious that I’m right; smut has replaced talent as the driving force in “music,” if you can call it that. All part of the dumbing-down of America, I suppose. But I have noticed that my boys have been listening to a lot more music from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s lately. Even an old country song once in a while. Good. There’s hope.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.