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| quote: | | Sorry to sound new age: You can't save the world!!! |
Yeah, I agree with this. Trying to argue that trance is the best form of music in the world is like trying to argue that green is the best colour, or that chocolate is the best ice-cream: it's too much of a subjective thing. I already went into massive depths on a different topic about why we can't assume that trance is the best form of music, so I'm not going to start again here, but I can sure as hell tell you why it's got a lot more going for it than pop does:
Music should be about aural creativity. It's the art of the ears. I've always said, if a picture can paint 1000 words then music can paint 1000 pictures. I love music as an art, which is why I hate pop music so much.
They don't give a shit about art, or musical ability, or anything else apart from releasing a few million pieces of plastic and making a shitload of money. Virtually none of the artists write their own material, they all get accountants to write it for them, and because the bottom line is to make money with as low a risk as possible, they all end up copying whatever's making it big: so now, for instance, all the bands are going for a Destiny's-Child-esque pseuo-2-Step-R'n'B mash-up. And it all sounds the bloody same:
a) because they all have the same writers writing for them
b) because all these same writers are doing their best to copy each other
Now electronic music is, for the most part, an incredibly creative genre. Sure there'll be the occassional artist who's in it just for the money, like Alice Deejay (or BT  ), but for the most part, the artists can't be in it for the money, because electronic music isn't popular enough on a world-wide scale to be genreating that sort of cash. It's purely about the music and it shows: while all pop bands end up sounding exactly the same, you can take the work of two different electronica artists and immediately identify what their particular sound is, even among artists of the same genre. Just look at the euro-trance genre: Ferry Corsten, AVB, VDM, Tiesto, they all have their own unique sound. It's a kind of variety that you don't find anywhere else.
And of course that's just the variety within one tiny sub-genre. Just think of all the other electrnica genres, artists and sounds there are out there, and think about how diverse it is. To your friend who says "its too repetitive" or "Trance/techno is all the same beats with female vocals", play him some AVB, then some progressive, then some Olav Basoski, then some Aphex Twin, then some Hybrid. After you've given him that variety, force him to listen to mtv or FM radio for an entire day, and then ask him whose music is "repetitive" or whose music "sounds exactly the same".
There are no genres I hate more than pop and r'n'b (which is, afterall, just pop music for people who think they're cool) and I'll be glad to twat anyone who disagrees with me. 
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