As someone who plays multiple instruments and has been writing, composing, playing and singing music for 13 years, I really don't understand some of the arguments being made here.
*paraphrasing*
If the performer didn't compose it, it is essentially invalid.
This literally astounds me. Do you know anything about the history of music? It could be jazz, a little further back with blues, further back with folk, further back with classical, etc. Music can be an intimate personal expression, but by and large it is an open-participatory cultural expression and has been for the history of mankind.
If a person doesn't compose, they're still interpreting the composition. It's unavoidable. Even with that in mind, this argument is displaying an incredible ignorance of composition. As personal as it may feel at times, you are always taking from the past. Now and then wonderful things might happen, like when the jazz greats would brainstorm about music theory together in a room with a blackboard, but for the most part you are doing exactly what the performers do, pulling from your understanding of music according to your experiences and applying it in a specific form.
This argument is also completely ignoring the creative ability for someone to write a song that is not fitting for them to perform themselves. I have written songs for girls to sing. I took inspiration from the feelings of my female friends and turned them into song. In both lyrics and intended mood and style expression, they don't make any sense coming from me, but have found their place with females. Are songs like this to be thrown away? Why can't a composer write a song for someone different from themselves to perform?
Studio composers pander to mainstream audiences and that is undesirable.
Again, this is missing the cultural nature of music. Why must all music be an intimate personal expression of the composer, or attempt to push the boundaries of music? Must we paint every wall with a mural? Creativity happens in varying degrees and for any number of reasons. By and large, human creativity is expressed for the general enrichment, enjoyment and comfort of human living.
If a song can take something not exceptionally insightful yet very, very commonly experienced and then provide sympathy, celebration, judgment or whatever else, what makes this bad? Why can these things not have a presence in our lives vocally as much as interior decoration does visually? For many people music is a casual thing. They want to change their mood or enhance the mood they are already in, and music helps them. If someone creates music for this very purpose, why is that bad?
The performers are just tools for the company.
This is actually true in several aspects, but it does not invalidate their side of the agreement. A person doesn't commit years of training and hundreds of long days and late nights for something they are not passionate about. These people love music and dance and put their whole heart into it. Would you say all of Broadway is cheap and artistically invalid? I really just don't even know what to do with something so ignorant. Wow.
Western pop is better, you don't see someone like Lady Gaga in Korea.
Again, the ignorance astounds me. Lady Gaga is a team of people. Watch any interview asking about the creative process and she will mention what she and the team of people around her wanted "to do with Gaga" next. That is not her personality, it is a crafted persona she plays. It is the product of a team of people looking into various trends and borrowing from several to make something that will get attention. There are thousands of ways she could have been original that wouldn't have drawn a second glance from anyone, but what she does is meticulously designed for the opposite.
Also, her music isn't very original. If you are completely into American pop music (especially the hiphop-dominated club scene) I can see how you might think that, but she is incredibly derivative of the European club scene that moved over through the gay clubs she frequented in her early career. You say you don't see many Koreans stepping outside of their circles, but try going to Gaga's circles before you say anything about how adventurous she is.
The standards you are setting are too high for anyone to attain. No one has done it. No one whom you think has done it has done it. Music just works differently, especially when you actually want a lot of people to find it enjoyable, and I really don't understand why you can't figure out how to enjoy it as many, many people do.
