Rihanna’s new single was released this week (if you know me, you know there’s no way I can say “dropped” without sounding ridiculous, so just chill).

In this new creative endeavor, her pithy Gilbert-and-Sullivan-esque lyrics included use of the word “diamond” 38 times in a two-minute musical journey. Spoiler alert: “Diamonds” is the title of the song.

Look, I know I’m not the first person to berate pop music for sucking so much, but now it’s starting to get pretty bad out there. I was hoping the record industry would just collapse on itself like a dying nebula in a massive auto-tuned and glitter-filled explosion after Rebecca Black’s album “dropped.”

See? I really can’t say it.

But no, the whole system is still here and we still seem to feel OK supporting Chris Brown’s artistic efforts.

So, now my overall thesis seems to be “Wow guys, why are we listening to some of this crap?”

I’m no Rolling Stone writer (I don’t have the hair/tattoos/extensive drug experience for it), but it seems like the conventional songwriting process of today goes thus: Come up with a vague phrase that sounds really deep — think something a guy with a guitar would say on the Quad to get dumb girls to touch his scraggly five-o’clock shadow.

Once you’ve got that one phrase nailed down, just repeat it 11,000 times over the top of a generic beat and boom — instant Top 40 hit.

Along with that, it seems to help if your overall theme has a hint of apocalyptic desperation — something along the lines of, “Girl, you better sleep with me tonight because the world might vaporize tomorrow, or you might get hit by a truck, so let’s get hammered.”

By the way, does saying that kind of stuff actually work in the real world?

If so, clearly I’ve been going about it all wrong. I didn’t realize chicks dug the “we’re all going to die” motif. Explains why Ernest Hemingway was such a pimp.

We’re living in a society with the aesthetics of the Jazz Age — our music has largely taken on a carefree, forget-about-tomorrow tone, but it’s a tone that’s pretty dissonant with reality.

We have an economy in the tank, a whole bunch of foreign relations imbroglios and a culture hopelessly divided on social issues. I don’t see a whole lot of people doing the Charleston over how great everything is.

I hope what we’re listening to isn’t reflective of a generation that’s becoming more and more disengaged with what’s really important. I hope it’s just that we’re currently embroiled in a second, massive Payola scandal, and eventually justice will be done to all those who have perpetrated these offenses to my ears in the past decade.

Which is not to say all pop music is bad, but we’re getting pretty close. Close enough to become creatively bankrupt? I’m not sure.

Trey Songz is apparently only here for the ladies and the drinks, and Rihanna, the reigning Queen of Bad Mixed Metaphors, wants you to lick the icing off her birthday cake, despite the fact that it’s not even her birthday.

So we could be fine. This could just be a blip on the radar screen.

Or this could be the beginning of society’s death spiral where we finally decompose into a brain-dead seething mass of drunken fornication, and the machines finally take over and use our bodies to create their own nutrients to rule the universe.

But failing that, let’s all remember to “shine bright like a diamond,” everyone. Whatever that means.

Kevin Slack is a senior television, radio and film major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at khslack@syr.edu.

 

Published on October 2, 2012 at 1:00 am