I don't know about angry and self-obsessed, but simple and repetitive has been a staple of music for a long time, especially 'dance' genres. Take Silver Convention's 1976 hit, “Get Up And Boogie”.

If you count the background singers (in parentheses) it's a total of 7 words. The album version is 4 minutes long, and just repeats even more Here is the single version:


(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Boogie, boogie

(That's right)
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie
Get up and boogie, get up and boogie


There are plenty more almost this repetitive.

What about angry? Some of the protest songs of the 1960s were pretty angry. With good cause, kids were getting drafted, sent to Vietnam to kill and be killed. I'd be angry, too.

But I will concede that the language used to express the anger is more vulgar than it was in the past. But that is probably only because censorship rules have largely been abolished.

Self-obsessed? I don't know how self-obsessed you want to go, but there have always been songs written in the first person. “Baby I Need Your Loving”, “My Ding-a-ling”, “The Piña colada Song”, “I Write The Songs”, “I'm Too Sexy”, and the list goes on and on and on.

So are they getting worse? Or just different?

Basically, there are two kinds of songs, ones that I like, and songs written for other ears.


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Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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