Off The Pill #2: On The Issue Of Diversity/Credibility

Hello Everyone,

It's been a while since I did my last opinion piece, and I know a review was supposed to happen last wednesday, but I've been getting progressively busier as my band is coming closer to recording our new EP, as well as my second semester coming to a close at Drexel. But rest assured, the blog is still here, and the blog is still here, and I'm still writing.

Today I'm going to write about a very touchy subject in music, and that is diversity and credibility in the music Industry.

NOTE THAT I'M NOT TRYING TO START A FLAME WAR, NOR AM I TRYING SUPPORT ANY UNWANTED SOCIAL INTEREST GROUPS, I AM PURELY EXPRESSING MY OPINION. I WILL TRY TO EXPRESS MYSELF IN THE MOST RESPECTFUL AND CLEAR WAY POSSIBLE. THANK YOU. 


Instead of just looking at the vein of just a certain genre, we're going to look at music as a whole, and discus the issue of diversity when it comes to ALL genres. This includes pop music, as well the normally discussed metal, punk, and indie rock, as well as hip hop and R&B. Discrimination is a two way street, and although some may argue that the music industry in general has always been a white male dominated industry, that's not necessarily the case. Although some aspects have been unabashedly white male dominated, I think the real problem here isn't the fact that there aren't enough famous all female punk or all african american metal bands. I think the issue comes down to the interest of the groups in question, and how our society either discourages or encourages these groups into taking interest in music that is considered outside the norm. I will also be looking at how this goes into the credibility of an artist's work.

On The Issue of Diversity:

Interest is a heavy factor in the development of a musician. I mean music is a subject after all; just like math or science, you need to have an interest in music to understand music. Eventually that interest in studying music, leads to making music. The way you build that interest is by listening to artists that you can make some kind of connection with, or through naturally having some level of musical ability. Usually this interest develops early in a person's life, and is grown through role models that they can base their own skills off of.

The problem isn't entirely in societal gender roles, that punk rock is for angry teenage boys, and bubblegum pop is for teeny bopper girly-girls, although it definitely has a factor in it. The issue lies in the amount of well known artists within these respective communities. You definitely see a lot more female pop artists than male pop artists who top the charts, such as Beyonce, Taylor Swift, or Katy Perry (I'm not diminishing their work or discrediting them, as they obviously have worked very hard to get to where they are today), as well as way more male punk/metal bands than female bands, such as Black Flag, Metallica, and Green Day. Although there are outliers in their respective genres like Justin Timberlake, Alissa White-Gluz from Arch Enemy, or Laura Jane Grace from Against Me!, there's still some sort of heavily enforced status quo in each of their respective genres.

Because some of these genres are heavily dominated by a status quo, it's considered "weird" or "strange" for a straight man to sing bubblegum pop, a black girl to sing punk, or an asian man to rap. Like I stated earlier, discrimination goes both ways, and when you discourage someone's interest from a young age, it definitely affects what they want to do in the future. That being said, you shouldn't force your children to listen to something they don't want to, and try to beat the status quo. It's like forcing your kid to play a sport; if your daughter would rather listen to Katy Perry than Meshuggah or Bad Brains, then that's perfectly fine.

On The Issue of Credibility:

On the other hand, there needs to be some kind of investment in even making music. In my opinion, music has always been an investment of sorts. There's a difference between being a musician and being an artist, and the difference lies not only in the musicians interest in making music, but also in how much they've invested their lives into the music they make. Some artists may be able to get noticed because they fit a certain image, but the artists that overshadow them are the ones that are able to SHOW that investment.

Not everyone has the passion to be invested in making music, which again comes back to my idea of music being forced to break the status quo. You need to be credible when making your music, and really believe in it. The reason why someone like Taylor Swift is successful over someone like Robin Thicke, is because T-Swizzle (yes I just called her that) is passionate about her music. She believes in the message behind her songs, and writes (most) of her own material, which shows a lot of initiative and interest. The same could be said about Laura Jane Grace, or Macklemore. They make music because they love it, and they want to convey the message/story their telling to everyone in a way in which someone can become invested.

That's why when you force someone to portray a certain image or character, people can tell it's phony and see right through it. When you try to sell yourself as the greatest musician of our generation, rant about how classism is "a plague on the modern world," and then sell a white shirt for 200$, you're just going to come on off as an asshole (not trying to single anyone out). What's even worse though, is when you force yourself to stomp all over the status quo, and market yourself as different or "alternative," for the sake of being a pretentious, holier than though artist (again, not singling out a certain front man who's the main reason a certain band hasn't released an album since 2006).

So what really is the moral of this off the pill rant, you may ask yourself? Although I started to tangent off, my point was that yes, the music industry definitely has some issues with Diversity. But at the same time you can't just force them to change. You have to let the problems solve themselves naturally.  Now that doesn't mean you can't encourage the changes as time goes on, and teach each new generation to learn from the mistakes of the past generation. The ones who continue making problems on either sides of the argument will eventually single themselves out.

This is Jake Bender signing off.