Okay, rant time.
Music Appreciation.
I am currently sitting inside the journalism classroom between fourth and fifth period with three other students and “thebrownguy.” (by the time you read this I probably won’t be in the classroom, but whatever)
I am playing Queen on my computer.
One of students raised their head from their computer screen with a confused look on her face, “What band is this?”
I look at her, stunned.
“You don’t know what band this is?!?” I’m shocked.
“Um, no, should I?”
“Um, YES!” I exclaim, “Queen only wrote We Will Rock You, We Are The Champions, Bicycle Race, Fat Bottomed Girls, Bohemian Rhapsody, and that’s just naming the famous songs!”
The rest of our time goes like this:
“Do you know who Aerosmith is?”
“No.”
“Guns N’ Roses?”
“No.”
“Led Zeppelin?”
“No.”
“Oh my god what is wrong with this generation?!?”
“I know Drake and Rhianna, that’s pretty much it.”
“WHAT?”
I want to cry.
How can we live where the only music people appreciate is written by someone who isn’t the artist, the chord progressions are so generic you can find 100 other songs with the exact same ones, and that the voices are doused in auto tune and pitch correction the listener doesn’t even know how the artist really sounds like?
What ever happened to real musicians?
The Beatles, Bessie Smith, Queen, The Turtles, Tom Petty, Michael Jackson, Andrew Anderson?
Have we really reached a point in history where those who are “musicians” have a pretty face and cheap software to make their voice sound like a robot on crack?
Oh world, please come back to your senses.
Please?
OVS Journalism Blog 
Couldn’t agree more. This was apparent on “American Idol” this week when the youngest contestant mispronounced Charlie Chaplin (she’d never heard of him) and classic songs were credited not to the original artists but to current pop icons who’ve re-recorded those songs. Music is such a rich part of our history and culture. And I’m not talking pop culture either. To understand the 60s is to hear the music and songwriting of that era, which evoked the protest movement and sexual revolution of that time. Jazz is arguably the only true American art form. And don’t get me started on how students don’t know the difference between Mozart and Beethoven, or Bach and Mahler. Music education is sadly being cut from many public schools, and thus the odds are that fewer young people will learn to appreciate, play, and have their lived be enriched by this art form.