The Radio in Today's Era

Let me talk about one of my long-lost friends; the radio.

Even though I was born when the 90's were more than half over, I still consider myself a 90's kid. I watched 90's Saturday morning cartoons, I didn't own any technology newer than the first GameBoy, and yes, I listened to 90's radio stations. I remember "back then", when people would actually flip on the radio to listen to some quality music, not three minutes of an extremely repetitive tune that was probably thought up in thirty seconds. Yes... let me introduce you to: modern day music.

So you're driving down the road with nothing to do...

Okay well maybe that station just isn't having a good day, let's try the next one... Nope. The next? No. Ew. No. Uh-uh. I don't think so.

By the time you're done scanning through the channels, you've ended up wasting enough time to listen to about three good songs. But no, you didn't even get to listen to one because nothing worth listening to was on.

Now before I sound like I'm completely biased, I have to admit that sometimes, a really good song will come on the radio. And I know that not all people listen to/like the same genre, and that's fine, but why then won't radio stations mix it up a little? Why do they continue to play the same songs over and over? I have a theory. I think that now, just as long as a song is catchy and has almost no meaning (no offense to Lady GaGa fans), it can be put on the radio. And because the song is so catchy, you end up humming it forever, so you flip on the radio again to get it out of your head, and so on and so on. All this time you're humming it, it's almost like you're sort of advertising the artist's song.

"Okay well if you hate the radio so much, why don't you just, I don't know, not listen to it?"

It's not that I hate the radio (I'll admit Call Me Maybe is pretty catchy), I just hate the lack of quality being put into the music that is played on the radio, or at least the lack of variety. Not to mention the fact that listening to the radio is a lot more convenient than trying to shuffle your iPod through it's speakers or putting in earbuds that just keep falling out. CD's are a good alternative, but I'm not always in the mood to listen to a certain artist over and over, and I'm not willing to lug around my entire CD collection just for an opportunity to listen to some music.

Wait a minute, that's it! I'll become a DJ and start my own radio station!

On second thought, maybe catchy repetitive music is a better idea after all.