The Great Lamentations

Chris Martin laments another middle-class misfortune

The twenty-first century has seen an explosion in poor-quality, middle-class music suffocate the charts. From Keane to Coldplay to David Gray, these pampered post-ideologues have single-handedly destroyed (guitar-based) pop and rock music (known as the dreadfully inept named 'indie' music) and have killed an entire generation's youth by feeding them empty lamentations.

What is it the Chris Martins and Badly Drawn Boys whinge about? Is it social justice? Is it a lost cause? Has it got to do with politics? Do they address cultural issues? No. They make issue of the most trivial aspects of human existence, some bordering on the absurd: 

"I can only disappoint you" (Mansun, otherwise known as the forerunners of the Great Lamentations)

"Nobody said it was easy, 

Oh, it's such a shame for us to part, 

Nobody said it was easy, 

No one ever said it would be so hard" (Coldplay, about the 'hard-hitting' truths of the interpersonal, which of course has never been done before) 

"Thinking about thinking of you, 

Summertime think it was June, 

Yeah think it was June, 

Laying back, head on the grass, 

Children grown having some laughs, 

Yeah having some laughs" (Stereophonics on, er, well...who knows)

My hope is that the recession will wipe the smug pseudo-victimhood grimmaces off the faces of these musical imposters and spur on a new generation to make proper music with proper lyrics. 10 years of lamentations is more than enough.