Sampling

I had to watch the VMAs on Sunday night. It's outrageous fashion, mucho musical performances and the occasional drama. That's the best kind of theater, people!

There's undoubtedly good music being produced these days, but I have concern that so much new music is born of sampling reliable and familiar old tunes. The feel good association with certain tunes is already inbred--so where is the originality in this equation? Where are the songs that will be sampled twenty years from now?

I was reminded of this while watching the VMAs on Sunday night. Kid Rock appeared with Li'L Wayne performing his new single "All Summer Long." It's an adequate tune that opens with a sampling of Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and segues into a sampling of Leonard Skynard's "Sweet Home Alabama." We hear the rift and we buy in. The song could actually suck but we associate the rift(s) with positive association so we like it. It's like subliminal brainwashing. Under the skin, this borrowing of an already proven winner strikes me as cheating.

I had a conversation with a colleague (who was around my age) on Monday. I mentioned that I watched the VMAs. He clearly had not. He then mentioned his daughter who had been playing a modern song recently on the radio which he couldn't fathom. How so? I inquired. It was repetitive, he said. He thumped his chest with gravitas and looked at me earnestly. The songs of our generation--the 70s, he said gravely, had some depth to them.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that they still did.