Bars, notes and lyrics, in proper order

I've discovered I'm very picky when it comes to the music I listen to. First and foremost, if I dislike the sound of the lead singer's voice, I will not listen to the track. Plain and simple, I will skip over a song if the voice I hear had a strange twang or quirk to it. Notable examples are Joy Division, Interpol and the Hot Hot Heat. Whenever I hear these strange sounding voices, it makes me cringe and wonder why everybody thinks imitating Eddie Vedder's voice is a good idea. It's not. I suppose it's also a product of the music I've listed to previously, as well as the conditioning of American musical sensiblities. There simply isn't any sort of historical precedent for a deep, almost bass-like lead vocalist in modern rock. Most American rock requires a high pitched, almost lilting male voices driving the vocals of rock bands.

Another thing I despise is when the lead singer, even if they have a fine voice, begins to yelp. For some reason, over the last five years or so, several lead singers in bands decided it would be a really good idea to yelp in the middle of their songs. Most of the time, it catches me off guard. A seemingly good, normal track, and then all of a sudden, I hear a dog yelping, except, no, that's the lead singer, yelping some word. It's worse than hearing nails across a chalkboard. I can't listen to any of the early stuff by Bloc Party because the lead singer seems dead set on yelping every other word into the microphone, resulting in probably the first album made for dogs.

Finally, the thing that grates me the most is nonsensical musical twists, i.e., the lead guitarist in a band suddenly deciding that, to push the boundaries of musical vision, they will play the guitar with their tongue. At least, that's what some of this shit sounds like. I personally don't get it. I understand that you believe that the sound you're creating sounds revolutionary, novel and completely cool, but trust me, it's just shit. If the music isn't catchy and foot tapping, why make it? Boundaries are made to be broken, but not at the expense of being able to listen and enjoy the music. I don't mean this in term of selling records, I just mean this in terms of sparing the ear drums of the sorry fucks who have to listen to you try to channel your inner-Hendrix.

What gets most frustrating for me is when people begin recommending this stuff to me, thinking it's right up my alley. Everybody seems to think I should love the White Stripes. After all, they're an indie rock group, they have a nice little blues rock sound going, and they have a number of catchy little tunes. Well, I hate the White Stripes. I can't fucking stand them. Seeing Jack and Meg White play all by their lonesome, hearing the same repetitive lyrics for three minutes drives me fucking crazy. I honestly can't stand it. Even worse is Last.fm. I signed up on last.fm in an attempt to try and expand my musical horizons, feeding it my tastes in the hopes of finding a cool new bunch of bands to listen to. What do I get? Fucking Dave Matthews Bands, The White Stripes and The Smiths queued up to listen to. These are all bands I hate. It makes me question the quality of this shitty site. It also makes my life harder, as I have to try and find good music by scouring for it and spending all kinds of time digging around when that's what the job of last.fm is. Ugh. The future is not much easier than the past.