September 11, was a life changing day for everybody with a heart.  It was a tragedy that shocked the country and made everybody feel a little vulnerable, after all you usually think your safe at work.  Most of us could never imagine what the people in the planes the towers or their loved one waiting at home to find out if the person they loved survived that day.

It was also the day that changed music.  The music industry wasn’t the greatest at that time, but it was much better than it is now.  The songs were at least well written and well produced and the artist were still making full albums and not just one song surrounded by filler music. 

So what caused this change?

 I blame it on two things and both of these thing were caused by Clear Channel Communications.  Clear Channel rules the radio world.  They own 1,100 AM/FM radio stations, 11 satellite radio channels, and more than 30 T.V. stations. 

After 9/11 they put a ban on 166 songs that they felt inappropriate after the attacks.  I disagree, butt I can understand songs like “Crash Into Me”, “Knockin’ On Heaven Door”, “You Dropped A Bomb On Me”, “Learn To Fly”, “Jump”,”Stairway To Heaven”, and “Great Balls Of Fire” being insensitive.

I don’t see any reason why every Rage Against The Machine song was banned or why “What A Wonderful World”, “American Pie” or “Imagine” were banned.  Shit they even banned songs that never get played anyway.  The see the full list look here.

This made artists cautious about the music they released.  The majority of the songs Clear Channel started playing were stupid songs.  It was like they were afraid of any song with meaning, so the dumber the lyrics the better chance it would make it on the radio. 

The other problem was tribute/patriotic songs.  This was a sure fire way to get your music played and everybody tried to get in on it.  Thanks to everybodys new found patriotism, we had some of the worst music ever being played on the radio.

Terrible songs like Paul McCartney’s “Freedom”, Neil Young’s “Let’s Roll”, The remake of “What’s Going On” by a whole bunch of shitty artists, plus the reemergence of “God Bless The USA”.  That is just a few of the songs that made their way to radio simply by being a tribute song.  There was also the old songs with audio from 9/11 added in and God were those all terrible.

The combination of these two things has ruined music.  People stopped trying to be creative.  It just became out how meaningless and safe your song could be.  Music has yet to recover and the future definitely isn’t looking up.