Last.fm Group Journal: Get the hell out of our shoutboxes

Revamping the similar artists formula, Part II

Mon, 2 Jan 2012 05:27:58 +0000

Last Saturday, I discussed the issues with the current similar artist formula...especially Metallica being top 10 in similarity with The Offspring (like what?).

Well, since then, I put my programming skills to work and well, I built a little program to test to see it would work with other artists. Results were noticed on several bands/artists as their similar artists over went a make over. However, it did lead to new problems as I tried testing it out super-mainstream acts including our favorite band...Radiohead.

Rage Against the Machine showed up as a similar artist.

...well, apparently. Radiohead's top 250 similar artists currently are all over the place in random genres. A bigger batch of similar artists would be needed to get the best results, but the question is...is my new formula better. I'm going to show you some examples of artists top 25 similar artists...before, and after. You guys make the decision.

Oh, you don't remember the formula? Very well...time for a quick summary
*First, grab all 250 similar artists for Artist A. Obtain them in the given order.
*Next, for each similar artist starting with the one with the highest original rank, look at the first 3 tag and count how many of the tags are similar to the tags in Artist A. Resort based on this. You should end up with 4 groups starting from top (matches all 3 tags, matches 2 tags, matches 1 tag, matches no tags)
*Next, break the ties by resorting each group based on matches among the first 4 tags (which will spawn even more groups)
*Then finally, re-sort again, this time on the top 5 tags. If there are still ties, break the ties based on their original rank.

It's a lot of technical and algorithm stuff that is complicated for the average user, so I won't go that deep. See my example in the first journal entry here for an example with The Offspring (though I work a little backwards here).

Also, I have banned several tags...here are some of them
*Tags that are the same as the artist - not all have been banned, but the common ones have been (ex: red hot chili peppers for Red Hot Chili Peppers). These tags simply group together projects involving members of a band...but really, they may not have the same style.
*Tags referring to geographical locations...american, british, swedish, german. The geographical location doesn't make sense at all. I haven't gotten into geo-genre tags much yet as they may require research before banning (some countries may have a genre as a specific style).
*Decade tags. Similar artists do not have to reside in the same decade. If there's a Led Zeppelin clone playing the exact same style of music today that Zep played in the 60s and 70s, then perhaps they should be similar.
*Nonsense tags...you pretty much know them...crap, awesome, heard on pandora, sexy, legend....they don't reflect a genre or style
*The alternative tag. To be honest, this tag was holding a lot of stuff back, especially those that are also alternative rock. This tag is incredibly abused as well to hell, so I dropped that tag. Still no decision on the indie tag...I'll have to run a few more tests through different artists to make that decision.

So there you go...the banned tags. I'll go through several examples...these are the top 20 artists, before and after.

ARTIST #1: RADIOHEAD

CURRENT ON LAST.FM:
Thom Yorke
Johnny Greenwood
Sigur Rós
Portishead
Blur

Muse
Modeselektor
Arcade Fire
Beck
Interpol

Grizzly Bear
Björk
The National
Coldplay
Placebo

Kasabian
Joy Division
Massive Attack
Pink Floyd
The Horrors

BASED ON NEW FORMULA:
#1 Placebo
#2 Pixies
#3 R.E.M.
#4 The White Stripes
#5 Incubus
#6 Weezer
#7 Blur
#8 Coldplay
#9 Kasabian
#10 Arctic Monkeys

#11 Oasis
#12 The Verve
#13 The Last Shadow Puppets
#14 Suede
#15 Primal Scream
#16 Manic Street Preachers
#17 Muse
#18 Arcade Fire
#19 The National
#20 The Strokes

I'm not sure about both lists. Radiohead seems to really have only one similar artist...themselves. But which one is closest?

Lets do another punk rock band other than The Offspring. How about Rise Against

CURRENTLY ON LAST.FM

Sum 41
Billy Talent
Anti-Flag
zebrahead
A Day To Remember

Strike Anywhere
The Offspring
Breaking Benjamin
Three Days Grace
Bullet For My Valentine

Story Of The Year
Papa Roach
Silverstein
Yellowcard
Bad Religion

Nickelback
3 Doors Down
lostprophets
Millencollin
Disturbed

Ugh...I could just puke to hell if I'm told most of these bands are similar...

PROPOSED FORMULA:
#1 Strung Out
#2 Nations Afire
#3 A Wilhelm Scream
#4 Last of the Believers
#5 Good Riddance

#6 Only Crime
#7 88 Fingers Louie
#8 Satanic Surfers
#9 Pulley
#10 Much The Same

#11 Strike Anywhere
#12 Pennywise
#13 Bad Religion
#14 Propagandhi
#15 No Fun At All

#16 H2O
#17 Polar Bear Club
#18 AFI
#19 No Use For A Name
#20 Lagwagon

Not only has every single non-punk rock band has been removed from the current list, but even mainstream punk rock bands like Sum 41 and The Offspring are also gone. The result? More melodic hardcore bands in the top 20. Strung Out is now the most similar. Sum 41 and The Offspring show up between #21-30. And Nickelback? A long way down...at 139. This is probably the main reason why the punk tag was not removed.

So, what about metal? How bout some Metallica?

Megadeth
Slayer
Anthrax
Iron Maiden
Pantera

AC/DC
Black Sabbath
System of a Down
Guns N' Roses
Motörhead

Lou Reed & Metallica
Machine Head
Ozzy Osbourne
Slipknot
Sepultura

Trivium
Testament
Avenged Sevenfold
The Offspring
Exodus

WHAT THE FUCK IS THE OFFSPRING DOING HERE? Literally. Well, for the most part, it looks OK with Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax on top first but...AC/DC, GNR...they sure may have been influenced by them, but would you really call them similar to Metallica? Would anyone even consider Slipknot or SOAD similar to Metallica either? Avenged Sevenfold?

Let's see what our new formula has spawned:

#1 MD.45
#2 Black Tide
#3 Megadeth
#4 Anthrax
#5 Testament

#6 Acid Drinkers
#7 Kat
#8 Turbo
#9 Iron Maiden
#10 Black Sabbath

#11 Motörhead
#12 Ozzy Osbourne
#13 Black Label Society
#14 Dio
#15 Bruce Dickinson

#16 TSA
#17 Lordi
#18 Danzig
#19 Steve Ouimette
#20 Slayer

Hmm...kind of strange here. Slayer actually dropped while Testament on the other hand arised. Now...MD.45 comes up #1...I dunno, many claim it's punk rock, but their top tags are thrash. But what the fuck are Acid Drinkers, Kat and Turbo? They're thrash metal bands from Poland. Both shared thrash metal and heavy metal tags with Metallica, thus the high ranking since thrash metal and heavy metal are also among Metallica's top tags too.

Slayer only shared two tags (thrash metal, heavy metal) while the Polish metal bands shared all 3 (since polish was banned due to location). It's quite interesting to be honest. Similar artists are supposed to get us into new artists. Not sure if they're good or not, but perhaps you might wanna give a spin to those artists.

What bout hip-hop? Let's take a random hip-hop artist....ok, Kanye West (I had to ban the gay fish tag in order to get similar artists).

CURRENT:
Jay-Z
Jay-Z & Kanye West
The Throne
Kid Cudi
Big Sean

Lupe Fiasco
j.cole
Drake
Pusha T
Common

Wale
The Weeknd
Kendrick Lamar
Mr Hudson
Consequence

The Game
Rick Ross
Frank Ocean
N*E*R*D
OutKast

I dunno...but I kind of feel most of the similar artist are affiliated in some way to G.O.O.D. Music.

NEW FORMULA:
#1 Diddy - Dirty Money
#2 Chris Brown
#3 Nelly
#4 Nicki Minaj
#5 Timbaland

#6 Pharrell
#7 Fonzworth Bentley
#8 R. Kelly & Jay-Z
#9 Mase
#10 Puff Daddy & The Family

#11 Drake
#12 T-Pain
#13 P. Diddy
#14 Diddy
#15 Twista

#16 Bow Wow
#17 Chris Brown & Tyga
#18 Will Smith
#19 Usher
#20 R. Kelly

Umm...is it just me or did this get a little more on the poppy/rnb side (well Kanye did do more poppy stuff on the last 2 record). LOL at the different version of the guy known as Diddy on there (hip-hop, rap rnb, pop, soul were the top tags for Kanye West after other tags were dumped...including hip hop (duplicate tag for hip-hop), kanye west (for obvious reasons) and...GAY FISH. TBH, most people tend to consider Kanye as a good musician rather than an MC.

One more example. I have also banned the classic rock because it referred to a radio format rather than a genre. One band I tested was Queen:

Freddie Mercury
Brian May
Roger Taylor
Queen + Paul Rodgers
Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballé

The Cross
Deep Purple
Queen & David Bowie
Led Zeppelin
Pink Floyd

Electric Light Orchestra
The Who
The Beatles
Scorpions
Kiss

Black Sabbath
Genesis
David Bowie
AC/DC
Aerosmith

Well...most of the top 10 consists of random Queen side projects. But do they play the same exact style...or even have a good discography to choose from? Queen & David Bowie only has one song of existence! And the next 10 artists...hmm...feels like Queen takes in a bit of those bands, but they aren't even similar to each other. What bout this new formula?

#1 Slade
#2 Sweet
#3 Suzi Quatro
#4 Queen + Paul Rodgers
#5 Kiss
#6 The Darkness
#7 Mott The Hoople
#8 Styx
#9 Foreigner
#10 Freddie Mercury

#11 Roger Taylor
#12 David Bowie
#13 Alice Cooper
#14 Bon Jovi
#15 Heart
#16 Jon Bon Jovi
#17 L.A. Guns
#18 Journey
#19 Deep Purple
#20 Led Zeppelin

Well, most of the original British Invasion is gone...some of those arena rock bands though are now in (Styx, Foreigner, and Journey to be specific)...Alice Cooper is in, and he's considered glam rock which Queen sometimes goes into...not bad. Most of the Queen side projects are gone, and AC/DC and Aerosmith seems to belong somewhere else (got to go outside the top 30 to find them). The top band is Slade...based on their last.fm page, they seem to also incorporate glam rock and hard rock together. Same with Sweet as well. Remember Queen still has hard rock influences to their sound as well, which is why not all hard rock band on the original list are gone. Seems to feel like a better list IMO, but what about you?

Well, I'm prolly going to go through more artists and search for more tags. Perhaps I could show you some more examples as well from other genres. It should be known that not all similar artists formulas are perfect. And there will always be artists that aren't similar at all.

Remember, I'm only able to resort the original top 250 similar artists. If there are some that are clearly similar to the given artist, but not in that artist's top 250 similar artists, it may not be caught. IMO, this formula is better applied over a similar artist pool of more than 250...probably a lot more artists.

So take a look and pass me some feedback...whether it be on a formula, tags to include, and perhaps ask me for a few examples.

Revamping the similar artists formula.

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 19:45:00 +0000

As you've noticed the last several years, similar artists for bands/artists have gotten worse and more unreasonable. Especially if you keep reading on and on through the top similar artists for each artist. The one that has been baffling me for a while is The Offspring, a punk rock band that's not extreme metal or hard rock (though they do have alternative influences and sounds at times). In fact, as of 12/25/2011, these are their top 50 similar artists in order:

Sum 41
Rise Against
Bad Religion
Billy Talent
Pennywise
Metallica
Green Day
blink-182
zebrahead
Millencollin

AC/DC
Nickelback
Papa Roach
System of a Down
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Disturbed
Anti-Flag
Rage Against the Machine
NOFX
Godsmack

Bloodhound Gang
Limp Bizkit
3 Doors Down
Rancid
Farben Lehre
Slipknot
Static-X
Nirvana
Korn
Dropkick Murphys

Ramones
Iron Maiden
Audioslave
Goldfinger
Rammstein
Drowning Pool
Pidżama Porno
Bullet For My Valentine
DragonForce
Rob Zombie

Bowling For Soup
P.O.D.
Dope
Good Charlotte
Guano Apes
Flogging Molly
Tenacious D
Foo Fighters
Three Days Grace
AFI

You guys can puke now. The current formula is based on what people of Offspring listen to more often. But seriously...we know this. If one person listens to two bands, those two bands aren't necessarily similar...especially The Offspring to Metallica. The Offspring to Nickelback. The Offspring to AC/DC (seriously...). The Offspring to System of a Down...The Offspring to Disturbed and Godsmack (seriously...?) The Offspring to Slipknot, KoRn, and Limp Bizkit (when has The Offspring ever been nu metal?). And worse yet, The Offspring to Iron Maiden, Rammstein, Bullet For My Valentine, DragonForce, Rob Zombie...are we supposed to believe that The Offspring is a heavy metal band?

Anyone should know that this method isn't the best way to find a similar artist. It's not. Simple as follows. A topic on the forums discussed that and some people suggested that the bands/artists be determined by tag clouds. That could work, but a few believe that there could be problems, especially when taking the whole tag cloud as a whole and seeing a ton of hard rock and alternative bands become similar to the one artist (The Offspring in this case).

Actually, there is another way I've been looking at, and it was a waste of several hours.

What if we took the current list and re-sorted it based on just the top 5 tags, taking into account the order of the tags. Of course there are questionable tags like classic rock, 70s, and for some reason, very frequently polish and polish rock (appears that The Offspring has a huge following in Poland), but for now, let's leave them here (already, the infamous seen live tag was banned from the tag cloud).

This is what I did...I grabbed the top 5 tags for every single band and resorted the list based on how many tags a band/artist shared those tags. Those that shared all 5 tags (in this case, punk rock, punk, rock, alternative rock, alternative) came on the top followed by those that shared 4, then 3, and then 0. Here's how the top 20 now looked like:

SHARED ALL 5 TAGS
Billy Talent
Hoobastank
Pezz
Killradio
Alien Ant Farm
Unwritten Law

SHARED ONLY 4 TAGS (missing tag in paranthesis)
Sum 41 (had pop punk, missing alternative rock)
Bad Religion (had political, missing alternative rock)
Green Day (had pop punk, missing alternative rock)
blink-182 (had pop punk, missing alternative rock)
Bloodhound Gang (had comedy, missing punk rock)
Pidżama Porno (had polish, missing alternative rock)
Bowling For Soup (had pop punk, missing alternative rock)
Good Charlotte (had pop punk, missing alternative rock)
AFI (had emo, missing alternative rock)
SR-71 (had pop punk, missing alternative rock)
Social Distortion (had rockabilly, missing alternative rock)
No Use For a Name (had pop punk, missing alternative rock)
+44 (had pop punk, missing alternative rock)
Strachy Na Lachy (had polish, missing punk)

As you can notice now, all of those metal and hard rock bands like Metallica, AC/DC, Nickelback, System of a Down, Disturbed and Godsmack....GONE from the top 20...actually they didn't even break the top 30 as well. What was more disturbing though was the high number of bands that didn't even share a single tag with The Offspring. These are some of the bands that you could hear when listening to The Offspring similar artists radio, and grab a bucket, you're about to puke hard...no, Justin Bieber is not there, but still...

Bullet For My Valentine
DragonForce
In Flames
Pantera
The Prodigy
Apocalyptica
Slayer
Korpiklaani
Sabaton
Children of Bodom
Nightwish
Sonata Arctica
Hammerfall
Clawfinger
Soulfly
Hollywood Undead
Megadeth
All That Remains
Pendulum
Trivium
Blind Guardian
Volbeat
Five Finger Death Punch
Vavamuffin
Sepultura
Lacuna Coil
As I Lay Dying
Machine Head
Anthrax
Spineshank
Judas Priest
Hunter
Alestorm
Eluveitie
Sonic Syndicate
Eminem
A Day To Remember
Jelonek
Soilwork
Hatebreed
Within Temptation
Fatboy Slim
Frontside
Massacration
Alley Life

Take a look guys...enjoy listening to all that metalcore, symphonic metal, power metal, heavy metal, electronica, nu metal, thrash metal, melodic death metal, and hip-hop stuff. According to last.fm right now, they are really similar artists to The Offspring (actually, all of them except for DF and BFMV come up as medium to low similarity to The Offspring). But seriously, a band that doesn't even share any of the top 5 tags with another band/artist has no reason even being on a list with that band. And there's literally a common thread with the bands/artists listed above. Most of them are pure metal to the point they don't even have a rock tag (I suspect Priest would get one if classic rock was barred though). Others like The Prodigy or Eminem are from electronica and hip-hop genres...and..really...I can't see a similarity with those bands to begin with.

So there...we managed to filter in bands that are similar...but it's not over yet. Let's now resort the list again, but this time, only compare the top 4 tags for all artists/bands. Tiebreakers for this sort will be

1). Number of tags shared when maximum 5 tags are used...
2). Their original ranking on the old formula, higher goes first

After the sort, the top 20 looks even more different:

Pezz
Killradio
Billy Talent
Hoobastank
Alien Ant Farm

Unwritten Law
Sum 41
Bad Religion
Green Day
blink-182

Bloodhound Gang
Bowling For Soup
Good Charlotte
AFI
Social Distortion

No Use For a Name
+44
Sugarcult
The Distillers
Autopilot Off

Well for the most part, the ordering has changed here. Some other bands now moved into the top 20 as there's more of a focus on the top 4 tags.

Last but not least, I repeated the resort again, but only comparing the top 3 tags for all artists/bands using the same tiebreakers as before while adding another tiebreaker that takes greater precedence (basically the number of tags shared when the maximum tags is used at 3...followed by the 2 tiebreaker rules listed above). And here is the final product:

#1 Killradio
#2 Billy Talent
#3 Unwritten Law
#4 Sum 41
#5 Green Day
#6 AFI
#7 Social Distortion
#8 Ramones
#9 Pezz
#10 Bad Religion
#11 blink-182
#12 Bowling For Soup
#13 Good Charlotte
#14 No Use For a Name
#15 +44
#16 Sugarcult
#17 The Distillers
#18 Autopilot Off
#19 Transplants
#20 Pennywise

Now where did Hoobastank and Alien Ant Farm go? Even though they shard all 5 tags as The Offspring, the ordering on both bands was different (rock, alternative rock, alternative, punk rock, punk), while with The Offspring, the ordering was (punk rock, punk, rock, alternative rock, alternative). As a result, the bands only shared 1 tag among the top 3 tags and ended up going below those that had at least 2 of The Offspring's top tags (punk rock, punk, rock).

As for some of those disputed bands, Nickelback ended up coming in at #69. Much lower on the list, but still quite high as they did share 1 tag among the top 3 (rock). Also, remember we are re-ranking the top 250 bands artists and remember we are already dealing with a good 45 bands that have nothing in common with The Offspring. I do not know whether they strive to get the top 250 bands and cut off from there, or work out some weird formula there, but perhaps maybe they should apply the current formula to get a batch of even more artists, apply the above formula, and then just take the top 250 artists...honestly 250 might be too much...top 200 perhaps? You could see a real shake up on many similar artists lists.

Many mainstream bands like Metallica, Radiohead, Linkin Park and other bands could see a lot of shake-up too. There are still a few other unresolved issues, like will it actually pick up 100% similar artists? Red Hot Chili Peppers for example has their top tags as rock, alternative, and alternative rock. Didn't some of the bands listed above have those 3 tags as well? Are they really similar? But perhaps it could cut bands that aren't alternative to begin with, like AC/DC, Black Sabbath, etc...

Another issue is potential abuse of tags. I'm talking about a bunch of wackos attempting to give something like Justin Bieber the now infamous brutal death metal tag (honestly though, 1 tag isn't really going to be enough and even identifying a brutal death metal band that a Justin Bieber fan listens too is going to be real difficult...especially if it doesn't share a pop or something. Moderators can assist with issues like that.

Also, the removal of tags could have an effect on similar artists. If we remove something like 70s, 80s, swedish, female vocalists, and all those other tags, can we guarantee that the new tags will make things better, or make things worse? What about tags regarding the same thing (alternative is not the same as alternative rock, but hip-hop/hip hop/hiphop? Nu metal/nu-metal? alt-rock/alternative rock?)? Do we merge these tags into one? Or do these duplicates exist because there's no other major tag to classify them as? What about vague tags like "classic rock"? And abused tags like "alternative", "indie"? And bogus tags like "crap", "awesome", "better than radiohead"? With cases like this, it's all trial and error then, but it's really something that can be done on the go and with the assistance of user feedback.

There is one more thing I thought of regarding my suggested? Perhaps we could start sorting based on top tag for each artist, then by top 2 tags, then by top 3 tags, and all the way until the top 50th tag or something (and if an artist doesn't have a certain number of tags, TOO BAD :P). But that's something that would take a while to look at.

Who knows, perhaps someone might create a last.fm widget tool based on this suggestion. But it is clearly a possibility to use instead of the current formula, which guarantees a ton of similar artists that have nothing to do with each other.

Movement

Thu, 1 Dec 2011 20:44:06 +0000

Hi !

Group Zeru ta Lur

Artist Zeru ta Lur / Cérou ta Lourre, Zeru ta Lur, Cérou ta Lourre, Cérou ta Loure...

Pronounciation Thay-roota loorrr

Founder artist Zuhurbelea

-

Other brand new groups :

For artists and new projects, for cold wave fans or just curious :

Cold Wave Revival

If you want to have a band classified in thematic and alphabetic list :

Afterpunk Directory

Be welcome, and for news to share, historical cold/new wave description of your region and its styles, thank you for sharing it in :

Fanzine,

See you, cheers :-)

Joy Divisial Bureau of Investigation

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:59:01 +0000

Hi !

Hands up. You have the right to keep silent.

If you prefer to speak loud, you can contribute to the Global Enquiry for collecting the list of Bands Known or Obscure who Sound like Joy Division especially concerning the rythmical section .

So, I ask you for the last time : which bands do you know with a big round obsessive rythm ?

Cheeers

Joy Divisial Bureau of Investigation

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:58:14 +0000

Arts and society : historical relationship.

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:02:38 +0000

Hi.

What changes happened in your region under the influence of an art, either music or other arts..?
Did you see it, or did you hear testimonies ?

Cheers

They all saw The Sex Pistols live & made bands, we listen to the bands & forget home-made friendly local new wave !

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:46:47 +0000

They all saw The Sex Pistols live & made bands, we listen to the bands & forget home-made friendly local new wave !

Passive ? Active ? A question of era and comfort, maybe...

Regional news ? Evolution of bands and styles in your town ? Underrated bands you know ?

>>> Fanzine : write a short wiki (even "non"-neutral : special authorization) + links to samples, then share the link to your thread / article with your friends.
Indie, electro, post-punk, psyche, mod, funky, ethereal, pop, transe, dream, doom, punk, stoner... All thing other than L. Gaga & sponsored stuff !

And... Suggest connexions. Cheers :-)

Zeru ta Lur y Los Chichos ... contra la anemia musical

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:13:41 +0000

100 cc Zeru ta Lur, 30 cc Los Chichos, 30 cc Jeros, 30 cc Azucar Moreno, 1 cc Camaron.

Tag krautcold, cold core, cold wave revival, instrumental music that makes you feel-group tag radio, flamenco, gipsy, rumba.

Why? EP

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 14:06:12 +0000

Behold the latest release from itsu jitsu netlabel - Why? EP by Corroded Master.

Crunchy, bounding, pounding distorted beats couple with quick fire vocal samples and quasi-musical segments to compose hard edged, slowly evolving noisescapes, full of interesting textures and shapes. Put it on, crank it up and enjoy a journey into the mind of Corroded Master.

Stream it and download a preview track here on last.fm

or

Download the full album from itsu jitsu

Maplejet's Thoughts - 3/16/2011

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:46:34 +0000

Lot of shit been going down last few days...

Earthquake in Japan, and a close call

It's been a tough week in Japan. Last Friday, one of the worst earthquakes struck the Sendai area. The damage was intense, and now the Fukushima power plant is in danger of a potential nuclear meltdown.

While this has happened, the city of Tokyo had also felt the earthquake as well. And there was a close call for All That Remains. Lead vocalist Phil Labonte was currently on a tour with the band in Japan when the earthquake struck. Apparently, he and the band were doing a soundcheck when the earthquake happened. The band made it out with no issues and few days later made it out of Japan back home to start on their next leg of the tour. CNN was useful for the first time in a while as Phil LaBonte was interviewed on CNN regarding his experience. ATR fans should take a look:

Now, that was probably an adventure for Phil. However, it's not over still in Japan. Anyone following the news knows that there's a nuclear plant ready to go into meltdown status. 50 workers are staying behind to prevent the worst-case scenario from happening. It's nerve-wrecking and my thoughts and prayers go out to those affected by the earthquake. Also, good luck to the 50 workers staying behind and putting their lives at risk to prevent disaster from happening.

One last thing before we move on, mainly to the tasteless Americans who are claiming that the tsunami and earthquake was pretty much divine retribution for Japan bombing Pearl Harbor...you're horrendous. You're stupid, and you deserve to rot in hell. It's absolutely disgusting to see the arrogance of these Americans who pretty much have no sense or sympathy to others...remember that not only did Japan bomb Pearl Harbor, we proceeded to drop nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. It's just sickening. And if anyone else agrees with these people that it's revenge on Pearl Harbor, stay away from me, and if you're a friend that agrees, it only takes 2 seconds for me to remove you as a friend.

In Memorium

Last week, Alice In Chains's former bassist MIKE STARR passed away after a possible drug overdose. Now there's only 2 original members of Alice in Chains left (Jerry Cantrell and Sean Kinney). The time after Alice in Chains has been tough. Starr was ousted from the band in the mid 90s after Dirt due to a growing drug usage issue, and the time after that was a struggle for him, fighting addiction constantly, even showing up MTV's Celebrity Rehab (a show that AIC members found disgusting, though they still gave their support to Starr). Now, both Starr and Staley are up in heaven.

R.I.P. Mike Starr.

But, there was more. Just today, I learned about the death of g-funk legend Nate Dogg. The last few years, Nate has suffered numerous health problems including a stroke in 2007. While Nate Dogg as a vocalist was not known for his solo career, he was known for his appearances on various tracks, most notably Warren G's Regulate. Among other notable tracks include 50 Cent's 21 Questions and Eminem's Till I Collapse (feat. Nate Dogg). The loss of Nate Dogg is a major loss for the hip-hop.

R.I.P. Nate Dogg

A new low for pop music

Now time for something on the bright side...well, not really bright. Over the weekend, a chain of events took place and the next thing you know, another youtube video had gone viral, but it's gone viral for all the wrong reasons.

I'm talking about a 13-year old pop singer by the name of Rebecca Black and her song Friday. It was uploaded almost a month ago, but suddenly went viral this weekend (I do not know who the source of this is). And well...it's pretty much pop music making yet another wrong turn again. Considered to be lyrically one of the worst songs ever with the most nonsensical lyrics. As for the music...oh boy...it's mass autotune to a monotonous voice...and even a "rap" by the producer. It gets better, ready?

A FUCKING MUSIC VIDEO...supposedly a 13 year old gets into a car with her friend...a preteen boy driving a car? WHAT THE?

But wait, there's more. The label for the song is by ARK Music factory...and what do they do, they ask for girls 13-17 who want a career in music. If selected, they go down to L.A., record a song, and release a music video with it...most of the profits goes to the producer himself. And there's more of where it came from.

The aftermath has been...well...I can't even tell if anyone in the shoutbox for Rebecca Black is serious...whether they're for real or just spamming the lyrics to the song:

FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN FUN.

And lyrics that state that yesterday was Thursday, today is Friday, and tomorrow is Saturday, and the day after is Sunday.

While many are still driving through this mess, one thing has come up to me. Who is the root of this? Why are people encouraged to literally dumb down the music?

Folks, it's not Rebecca Black or Ark factory we should be blaming. It's this woman right here:

Kesha Rose Sebert...she's better known as Ke$ha. Electropop artist, responsible for the song TiK ToK. Funny thing is that she is actually smart, scoring a 1400 on the SATs (I'm not making this up). But just look at what happened right after Tik Tok...mass autotune dance pop songs. No originality...just everyone trying their hands at it. Partying partying partying. I say she is the root of the current fad of pop. She is partly responsible for things like this happening.

I blame her for the trend of autotune hits that have been coming out. Yeah, T-Pain was the person responsible for the autotune fad, but Ke$ha is the one that's made pop music itself dumbed down, encouraging nonsensical party-style dance lyrics.

I think it's really time for a music revolution now. I mean, how many more autotune dance pop songs do we really need? Even veterans in music like Usher and Snoop Dogg have released pure autotune dance songs. And really, what can end this trend.

NOTE: If you do enjoy these songs, feel free to listen to it. I am not going to criticize your taste in music. I'm just criticizing the fad (in fact, there's actually just a few autotune songs in my loved tracks...okay, it's Kanye West, but it's still autotune stuff :) )

While we laugh out at this one, we must wait to see if this becomes a full blown sensation, or just a sign to never make purposely bad music, if that's the case.

Well, I gotta eat