This should go without saying, but lets get it out of the way Miley Cyrus and One Direction suck. Its not an edgy or a controversial opinion, but the promotion of teen pop idols is a mystifying perversion of the very word music. Frankly, Justin Bieber CDs should not even be considered musical products they have more in common with trading cards and glow sticks than they do with music. These poor kids are groomed to appeal to our basest consumerism, unveiled to the world once every year or two like an iPhone by proud corporate parents like Disney who parade them around like child pornographers. If you manage to get past the cult of personality and listen to the recording itself, youll quickly learn that the word disposable doesnt begin to do it justice razor blades are disposable but at least they have a function. Until the artists grow up, break down and become unsafe for marketing, they serve kind of the same function that TV does a cheap babysitter to keep kids busy for a while. But as Bill Hicks once asked, When did mediocrity and banality become a good image for your children? Kids who grow up listening to this will one day have to be deprogrammed, like victims of a sinister, smiling cult.
Kyle Schmidlin is a writer and musician living in Austin, TX. He manages the news blog at thirdrailnews.wordpress.com. Follow him at facebook.com/kyleschmidlin or twitter.com/kyleschmidlin1.
