Thirty Days of Music Day 02 - Your Least Favourite Song

I made a small change to the rules for this category, and decided to choose only from songs that are in my music library.  I admit, there was a large selection of songs in my library that really disgusted me for various reasons - from the period in my life they represent, to the values they hold, to the pure ugliness of their sound.  I spent a long time debating all of these songs, toying with the idea of putting up some Slipknot, some Nightwish and 50 Cent, but in the end I couldn't help but choose Operation Ground and Pound as my least favourite song.

This isn't because I have an unquenchable hatred for Dragonforce or because I hate the actual song - in fact, I quite like the song as a stand-alone track - but because I hate what the song represents.  I have great respect for the sheer skill it requires to play such ridiculously fast guitar and drum parts, and I know that I will never be able to attain that level of proficiency, but I feel that it is putting forward an ideal that suggests music can only be good if it is extremely difficult to play.  Dragonforce seem to only write songs that require mind-numbing finger speed, and don't even try to play anything else.  While this is a commendable ambition, I find it bordering on elitist and it suggests to budding young musicians that the skill of being in a band lies solely in technical skill.

This, of course, is not true. 

If we look at bands such as The XX and Foals it is clear that good songwriting and originality are the keys to success - these bands play songs that aren't particularly challenging, but that have pushed the boundaries of modern music and that are musically coordinated and coherent.  Bands like these are both critically acclaimed and widely popular and show that raw finger speed isn't everything.

Furthermore, Dragonforce epitomise the idea that if you like or play a specific type of music then you must look a certain way.  In the same way that emo bands encouraged this a few years back, and indie is to a certain extent now, it almost forces listeners into social stereotypes regardless of whether these suit the person's character.  This is not the way that music should affect its listeners - it should be a release from any kind of social constraints, a chance to escape (to a certain extent) the conformity of day-to-day life.

I'd like to reiterate the point that I'm not trying to personally attack Dragonforce, and I don't want to suggest that they have limited songwriting ability and that they aren't original.  I just feel that they have been producing the same kind of music for far too long and they are too stereotypically representative of the stereotypical metal/ power metal band and listeners.