Expiration Date

Being in a band that consists of five young musicians, I find that we always like to stress the young portion of the statement. All of us are either sixteen or seventeen-year-olds and as a use of motivation, you can always hear one of us shout out “Guys, we’ve got to get famous before we get old!” Sometimes, I wish we didn’t have to say it.

Today, music has become a competition of age. You can go on YouTube and find two-year-olds killing it on the drums and five-year-olds busting it out on guitars. Even Justin Bieber is proof of this age trend. In fact, if we look at the upcoming artists in the music industry, most of them are young.What about the larger population of musicians who aren’t? From what I know, a musician is a musician.

Age has covered the whole concept of quality from music almost completely. It seems to me that the biggest criterion to be a famous musician is to be young (and good-looking) enough for the teenage girls or boys to have a prepubescent crush on.  To add, turn on the radio and it’s all recycled. When I find someone humming the current “hit song “of the month, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from last month’s other hit song. 

Now now, I’m not saying that every young musician ends up with recycled songs, etc, etc. There are a lot of younger musicians that I have a great deal of respect for, and there are a lot of older musicians I have a great deal of respect for too.  It’s the superficiality of everything that’s the problem. Looks, age; they aren’t supposed to matter. When did music become such a visual activity? The last time I checked, I listened with my ears, not my eyes.

I guess what I’m saying is that the industry should be a level playing field. Age is only a mindset that I believe should be broken. There are no expiration dates on musicians. So to all my fellow musicians:whether you’re five or fifty, it doesn’t matter. Just keep on playing, man. 

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