Things that have sprung to mind

Hey!

It's been a while hasn't it?
Hows that rash you had?
that bad huh?

Tough cheese hombre. True story, I stopped posting on this because I was convinced no-one was reading it. But recently, like yesterday, I just though to myself, if I'm ever gonna make it as a mega super media guy, I gotta start somewhere, and that means I gotta have an opinion on it all.
Like everything. So today I think I'm gonna talk about music again. I might end up talking about kittens though, so you have been warned.
I recently got 9 by Damien Rice. It's a pretty average albums. Once you get past the inital beauty of the pure composition; Rice has a gift in the way he can put a melody together, you  realise its not that great an album. In fact it is largely droll and uninspired.
Now I know thats not very informative, but bear with me. The reason this album is not so hot, is because Rice is defiant in his misery. That is, he largely refuses to be happy at any one point. It opens to the title track, 9, a ballad about a broken relationship and a lack of trust. Once you get past the initial melody and the angel like voice of Lisa Hannigan it just meanders on for 2 and a half minutes. Coconut skins is a mild high point to the album but the remainder of it is just dreary and a bit bleargh.
Which is my core complaint with this kind of alternative pop music.
To illustrate another example, lets take a much more popular example. Adele. Why the flying fudge is she so damn miserable? There is no discernable reason for the woman to be so mind numbingly dreary over 120 minutes of recorded audio. Over her two albums, Adele is only happy, like really happy, at the start of 21. After and before that, she is in abject misery and complaint. She derides herself, cursing her mistakes, wishing she could go back and change the past.
Which brings me to the largere point, why does misery like this sell? Damien Rices may not be huge, but both of Adele's albums were best sellers. Are we, as a nation, so miserable, we want to hear another person sing about being miserable? If music is escapism, i honestly think that we aren't doing it right. All this stuff does is perpetuate a mindless misery which has so saviour. There is no sweet aftertaste to the music.Not that its not moving or brilliant. Rather, it is moving but only in one emotion. Adele's music makes me rememeber my darkest moments. What it doesn't do however, is remind me how I overcame them....
I think Adele needs to go buy some kittens.
Peace out