Quoth Frank Zappa- "If it sounds good to you, it's bitchen, if it doesn't, it sucks."
Ahh, but let us also recall that the Funky One said, in the liner notes for Freak out:
On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of
thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express CREATIVELY his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole.
Also:
Modern music is a sick puppy.
Also:
I write the music I like. If other people like it, fine, they can go buy the albums. And if they don't like it, there's always
Michael Jackson for them to listen to.
Music doesn't commercialize itself. People commercialize music. Big, corporate-minded labels tend to motivate their artists to produce regularly, and produce toward the lowest common denominator. I mean -- this is truistic -- that's how you make a buck. In no way, never, can commercialization be good for music, to the extent that we seek spirituality, meaning, and inspiration from music. But on the other hand, if you see music as something pleasant you put in the background while you're doing something else, commercialization can be
great for music.
In sum, "commercialized" music doesn't necessarily suck (hey, I liked Gorillaz), but music, by dint of being "commercialized", can never be improved, and almost always suffers in its artistry. And Zappa would agree with that, I think, even if he would make fun of me for how I expressed it.
