“I’ve been to the year 3000, not much has changed, but they lived underwater, and your great-great-great-granddaughter is doing fine.”
No, these aren’t the writings of a drunken man. These are the lyrics of the Jonas Brothers, siblings I call the initiators of the downfall of music.
The Jonas Brothers seem innocent enough, just three brothers who sold their souls to Disney for a record contract. With their purity rings and love songs, they took the world by storm. However, it’s what happened after the Jonas Brothers that really started to destroy music — a process that I like to call the Jonas Brothers’ Effect.
It started off with just the Jonas Brothers. Put some talentless, yet semi-attractive guys on TV, give them purity rings so it’s not considered “selling sex,” target young girls, and you’ve got yourself half a billion dollars.
Disney could have stopped there, but the Jonases’ success led to another idea: Hannah Montana. Yes, the name strikes fear in me too.
For those of you who lived under a rock for the past few years, Hannah Montana is a billionaire pop star with her own Disney show. Calling it a show is a huge overstatement. Billy Ray Cyrus can’t act, but his performance is next to godliness compared to the other actors’ performances on that show.
Miley Cyrus tries to live a double life as both herself and the famous Hannah Montana. It’s fine to have a show about this, but the show’s songs were so overplayed that I wanted to tear that blonde wig off of Montana.
I found one main problem with almost all of her songs: they are all about her double life. So how does she keep the identity a secret? It makes no sense. That would be equivalent of Peter Parker’s saying “I’m Spider Man, Spider Man. I do whatever a spider can.”
Regardless, the Disney Corporation made millions off the concept. The people at Disney are maniacal geniuses who could sell just about anything. If they wanted to take over the world, they could, and we’d all be saluting Mickey Mouse.
But this nonsense isn’t limited to Disney. Teenage musicians are crawling out of the woodwork, and besides a few exceptions like Taylor Swift, none of them have songwriting talent. They became popular because they targeted young teenage girls. For example, Justin Bieber didn’t even try to hide his target audience — he has his own nail polish brand.
Sadly, this trend shows no signs of slowing down. The newest addition is Willow Smith, daughter of Will Smith. She’s ten years old, and she raps. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymKLymvwD2U&ob=av2n). You do realize that with the money that was put into the music video, we could have fed a Third World country, right?
The worst part about this song is that I know it’s going to be a hit because young girls will relate to Will Ow-this-music-hurts Smith, plunging music into a deeper, darker hole. I sure hope I’m wrong.
Ryan Lina can be reached for comment at [email protected]