Edited For Content: What makes music good?

Everyone loves to share their opinion on good music. Let's play a game to determine exactly what you define as good. Answer these questions on who is a better and more credible music artist.

OK, let's start — Elvis Presley or Nickelback? Frank Sinatra or Bubba Sparxxx? Did you pick Elvis and Sinatra? No! You picked those two hacks, those two guys who didn't even write their own songs? They don't even play instruments!

Nickelback wrote and actually played all its own music, you MTV drone. Sparxxx was present in the room when they came up with "Booty booty booty rocket everywhere!" Sinatra was probably drunk at a bar when "New York, New York" was written.

I guess as an entertainment critic I get fed up listening to the debates over what constitutes real music or being a real artist.

I guess even if you "really write" your own music and you "really play" your own instrument that doesn't necessarily make you "really good."

Somewhere along the way "pop" has become a dirty word.

Artists today are afraid to admit they listen to or even like pop music, which is odd, because it's usually what they're playing.

When you have Christina Aguilera posing with a guitar on the cover of Rolling Stone or have Britney Spears wearing a Ramones shirt does it matter anymore? Why are they trying so hard to be something they're not?

At least Avril Lavigne was honest when she admitted a couple of years ago she didn't know who David Bowie was. That's rock n' roll, being counter-cultural, — it has nothing to do with wearing a stupid vintage Led Zeppelin T-shirt when you don't even like them.

I had an interesting conversation with Panic! At the Disco drummer Spencer Smith last year about how startling it was that his band admitted they started as a Blink 182 cover band and were heavily influenced by Third Eye Blind's debut album.

I remember him and I agreeing that every band out there today claims to have been influenced by the Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Who needs to say that? Everyone is influenced by them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Blink 182 and Third Eye Blind, and despite liking them, Panic! writes some of the more original songs out there today.

I mean, do you really care if Shakira wrote those Spanglish lyrics? Does it matter if she or anyone else is really "feeling the emotion" in the words?

I bet when you sing along to your favorite song in the car or shower or wherever, you're delivering it with emotion and it's almost like you wrote it. That's what makes a good music.

Originally published in the Sept. 14 Marquette Tribune