The State of Music in the US

I love music. It's one of my driving forces. If music didn't exist like in Lorne's home dimension, I'm not sure how I would function.

Decent music in the US is almost no where to be found. There are a few exceptions like: The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Evanecence, Rob Zombie, and a few others, but there aren't many. There isn't even any good pop anymore. It's become so bad that pop automatically means bad. There's so much crap. It's getting impossible to sift through to find the good.

All the rap, pop princess albums, and whiny fucking emo bands flood the market leaving no room for anything good. It's amazing that anything good gets played at all. Lately, I've been seeing some decent music trickle in, but none of it is from the US.

For the past ten years easy, I've had to search for good music in places other than the US. There's so much that we never even hear. These bands and singers could have some decent careers here if the people stopped bitching about them not singing in English. Some of the bands do, such as Within Temptation, Xandria, Nightwish, and even some of X Japan's songs are in English. A lot of the ones I've found don't, and that's just fine. The band's have amazing talent, and shouldn't be precluded just because I can't understand what they're saying. I can always look up translated lyrics.

It's starting to get a little bit better, some of the good bands are getting record deals in the US, and now they're touring. A few great bands that have finally come over are Dir En Grey, Within Temptation, Nightwish, and even X have had releases here. The first three have even toured here which is great.

Some other amazing bands that have come over in recent years are: Lacuna Coil, Dragonforce, and Arch Enemy.

There's some great pop that hasn't reached America yet. One of them is Johnny Depp's partner, Vanessa Paradis (NSFW) she has a great voice. The sound of her earlier stuff reminds me a lot of The Beach Boys. Listen to the song Sunday Monday to see what I mean. I can't think of any other decent pop right now. I know there's more, but it escapes my mind.

There is so much good rock in Japan right now. Bands like: An Cafe, Versailles, D'espairs Ray, Gackt, and Miyavi. I could write so much about Japanese music that I will probably write another article about it later.

This is good music. It's not rap, or shitty emo stuff. It's quality music where the bands know their instruments, and the singers can actually sing. This is the stuff that gives me hope for better music in the US.
-VampKei