Better late than never. Maybe.

Anecdotally, externally, and academically, all that I’ve discovered and presented seems to convey the diversity, creativity, and very personalised and individualistic nature of music to people in general. While top 40 draws in adherents in massive numbers, the appeal of such performers is either short-lived, contrived, and uninspiring to people who prefer something more authentic, [...]

Hear ye hear ye….

As I’ve progressed through this blog, I’ve got more and more interested in the reasons why certain artists and genres find it so hard to break into the mainstream, and why the mainstream music industry is the way it is. The artists that I featured in this blog, while having very different sounds, had something in [...]

Concluding statement

One of the obvious gaps in ‘Top 40′ music is clearly alternative music performances. ‘Top 40 music misses all the good stuff and I chose to focus on dance music as it is very rarely represented in mainstream music charts, and is what I think is good music. When dance songs are in the charts [...]

Pole Dancing Tunes – top 40 SMUT!

Hurra! I did my first pole dancing class last night at Pol-arise. (Orginial name huh! :p )
 It was super fun and super sexy and I wasn’t suprised at the choice of music for our routines….
The first move we learnt was called the “Kate Moss” (no, it wasn’t compulsary to get high first! :p ), and [...]

Wiseman sheds some light…

I’ve found it really easy to write about music journalism, but then really difficult to write about music itself. I just can’t seem to get it right; to do the music/musicians justice. I feel like it’s too multi-layered and complex to be summed up concisely by a lone writer with only a single perspective. But [...]

Rant Rant Rant – damn you Rolling Stone!!!

So yeah…
check out this article from music magazine Rolling Stone’s online website, called Artists to Watch: Ten Artists and Bands Who are Bringing the Future of Music, Today. Note that the artists are mainly rock, female singers, electronic and rap/RnB acts…….AGAIN. Are there any other genres of music besides these???? Apparently not!! In particular [...]

Making Money: Consumerism and the Capitalist Influences of the Music Industry

The struggle for non-mainstream music acts to be recognised is long and hard. The relationship between the development of music genre and style is now closely linked to the music industry and consumption. Simon Frith notes that in writing about music,”The sociologist of contemporary popular music is faced with a body of songs, records, stars [...]

Gaps between metal and top 40 – MUSIC/ALBUM PRODUCTION

I’ve spoken about many different themes and gaps between heavy metal (and other styles) and top 40 music, in terms of performance, composition, culture, etc. I have saved a bombshell for last however, as I have not yet discussed anything to do with the production of the music, in terms of recording techniques, mixing processes, [...]

Heavy metal culture – more intimacy/meaning/dedication than top 40?

The culture of heavy metal music and the culture of top 40 music are on two completely different spectrums, and appreciated in many different means to one another. I love how devoted metal-heads are to their music/artists, especially in contrast to how fans of top 40 music’s attitude differ so much.
I have asked many fans [...]

Rip-offs? More examples can be found here.

Starting with Lacuna Coil, Nightwish, The Gathering, and Theatre of Tragedy, these were acts that shared common influences and sounds, and thus a term and genre was created to describe the aforementioned performers; namely “female-fronted gothic metal bands”. A multitude of variations on this term exist, but sadly, the efforts of many of these original [...]