(originally posted to Facebook)
Big beat... has there ever been a genre that has done more to ruin popular music? Punk might have fractured rock, but at least all that did was take one genre and split it two ways, with room for new wave and alternative rock to grow and eventually hit big in the 90s. But the big beat genre has succeeded in doing what disco briefly flirted with in the late 1970s- a complete takeover of the pop scene with terrible dance music. And it has managed to do so with songs best suited for video game soundtracks.
The thing is, it's not like I hate electronic music. Some of my favorite video games like Half-Life 2 have excellent soundtracks composed electronically. I guess it's different in a game sense because the music blends in with a scene, so every time I hear the song I can picture the location in the game in my head. Also the songs tend to be much shorter, around 2 to 3 minutes long. The songs on The Fat of the Land average about 5 and a half minutes, which typically involves repeating the key section note for note about three times. I know most songs involve repeating sections a couple of times, but with electronic music it's less impressive because on a computer it's as simple as copy/paste. Of course then there are the samples. I'm not sure why it's considered an artform to take a soundbite from another song and paste it on top of your beat, but enough people are impressed by it for this album to sell over 10 million copies.
In short, holy crap I hate dance music. I don't mind music you can dance to, but dance music oddly enough is usually terrible. 1 star.
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