Classic R&B has more soul than current tunes
In 2005, singer T-Pain released an album called Rappa Ternt Sanga. Before I go any further, I urge you to take T-Pain's own advice and "marinate on dat." It is difficult to comment on an album title so horrendous due to the sheer shock of seeing it written down.
It seems nearly impossible to imagine a situation in which any of his songs have the ability to comment on his vision of society or to inspire the social ethos. It doesn't seem to matter to him.
To be honest, it doesn't seem to matter for us anymore either. After all, we are the ones making this music popular.
R&B music has taken an embarrassing turn for the worst in recent years. The decade started out promisingly enough.
Music fans were treated to soulful selections like Alicia Key's Grammy Award Winning classic, "Fallin'" and Erykah Badu's "Love Life." Yet the music has steadily deteriorated in quality, emotional honesty and ability to resonate with people on an intimate level.
The intricacies of sound and vocal variety are a very small part of the problem when it comes to absorbing engaging great R&B.
When an R&B song is great, you don't need to have any faculty in musical analysis to know why: You can just feel it.
To qualify what I mean by that, one can simply search the iTunes catalog for Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine."
It only takes a seconds to understand what we hear. It is pain in its purest form. We feel it because he delivers it as such.
Here is a man who appears to be utterly unconcerned with anything but the music and telling a story.
There is no voice distortion here, no electronic club beat and no lady with a bangin' body Â- just a man solemnly expressing himself.
The guitar and drums are just an added bonus to the feeling we get by hearing a man's grief and longing.
Withers' song asks nothing from his audience. His lyrics are like the words from a diary.
But the lyrics are unclear. They have no grounding in time and space. The song employs pathos so perfectly that it can change our state at any given time. Songs like this one are immortal.
It seems nearly impossible to imagine a situation in which any of his songs have the ability to comment on his vision of society or to inspire the social ethos. It doesn't seem to matter to him.
To be honest, it doesn't seem to matter for us anymore either. After all, we are the ones making this music popular.
R&B music has taken an embarrassing turn for the worst in recent years. The decade started out promisingly enough.
Music fans were treated to soulful selections like Alicia Key's Grammy Award Winning classic, "Fallin'" and Erykah Badu's "Love Life." Yet the music has steadily deteriorated in quality, emotional honesty and ability to resonate with people on an intimate level.
The intricacies of sound and vocal variety are a very small part of the problem when it comes to absorbing engaging great R&B.
When an R&B song is great, you don't need to have any faculty in musical analysis to know why: You can just feel it.
To qualify what I mean by that, one can simply search the iTunes catalog for Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine."
It only takes a seconds to understand what we hear. It is pain in its purest form. We feel it because he delivers it as such.
Here is a man who appears to be utterly unconcerned with anything but the music and telling a story.
There is no voice distortion here, no electronic club beat and no lady with a bangin' body Â- just a man solemnly expressing himself.
The guitar and drums are just an added bonus to the feeling we get by hearing a man's grief and longing.
Withers' song asks nothing from his audience. His lyrics are like the words from a diary.
But the lyrics are unclear. They have no grounding in time and space. The song employs pathos so perfectly that it can change our state at any given time. Songs like this one are immortal.
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