Top 10 Biggest Pet Peeves In Music

Finding out that one of your favourite artists is a douchebag

Personality doesn't affect the quality of an artist's music. Of course, there are some exceptions, like Fred Durst, and I also find it hard to enjoy black metal due to many of the musicians in that genre being scumbags. But for the most part, a particular artist having a bad personality doesn't mean that their music is trash.

Now, a bad personality obviously doesn't make someone a bad musician, just like how a nice person doesn't make someone a great musician. So I should've at least put this lower on the list, but it still sucks meeting someone you've looked up to for a long time, and they give you the cold shoulder.

Too much repetition in songs

I don't get "repetitive" as a criticism. Repetition isn't a bad thing - it allows a piece to breathe. You can hypnotize a listener with it, letting the loop ebb and flow while you add new things on top, whether minor or major. Hell, Steve Reich and Basic Channel have made entire careers out of finding ways to entrance the listener.

This gets really annoying in songs like "Whip My Hair" or "Gucci Gang," where they're repeating the same thing a million times throughout the entire chorus. But hey, if it gets your song played on the radio every 10 minutes for 5 months straight, then I guess, do you.

Irritating vocals

I can't even tell you how many bands I've been turned off from because of this. There are so many I've heard with great instrumentation, but annoying vocals, and it's probably the number one thing that stops me from being a fan of the band.

Autotuned vocals are extremely irritating to me. Also, singers who sing off-key and singers with weak voices. But I would say this item is very subjective - for example, death metal vocals aren't irritating to me, but autotuned vocals are. Some people would say the opposite.

Yeah, it pretty much ruins the song. You can add grandiose, lush, or epic instruments and sounds to your music, but if the vocals suck, everything else goes down with it.

Excessive amount of Autotune

Personally, I think that autotune can actually be used quite tastefully. Seeing as how I view the voice as just another instrument, I'd really like to see some artists get creative and start using autotune not as a pitch-correcting device, but instead as a distortion effect over their voice, in the same way that most guitarists use distortion pedals to alter the sounds of their instrument.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a little bit of autotune, and some of my favorite singers probably use it, but please keep it in moderation. Heavily autotuned vocals are just a mess, and it kind of makes them sound like robots.

When people say a genre they don't like takes no talent

Genres such as metal or rap are nowhere near as easy as people think. Don't believe me? Try playing a guitar solo for 10-20 minutes, or rapping and actually being good at it, then come back and tell me they take no talent. And it's not just metal and rap. The same goes for every other genre as well.

The thing that makes this dumb is that no talent implies anyone can do it. If that were the case, then why wouldn't they, if they can make massive amounts of money from it?

Some specific songs don't have any talent in them, but every genre has some good artists and songs.

A lot of screaming or growling in songs

As someone who loves rock and metal in general, as well as several subgenres, I find songs with lots of breakdowns, djenty elements, and constant screaming - especially layered screaming - boring.
So, I choose subgenres that tend to avoid those elements.

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't mind some screaming in songs. Almost all of my favorite bands have screamed in at least one song, but sometimes the vocalist does it a lot, and it's really hard for me to enjoy metal because of it.

Meanwhile, I'm over here listening to Converge, which is basically headache-inducing noise at points, yet I love it.

Bad covers of good songs

Kanye West's cover of Bohemian Rhapsody.

I don't want a cover that I don't want to share with people because it's embarrassing.

Stereotypes

No, not all metal is screaming about burning churches. Not all rock is some dude whining about how he hates his life. Not all pop is repetitive and heavily autotuned. Not all rap is about drugs, sex, and money. And not all country is drinking whiskey and having sex with a minor on a tractor. So cut the stereotypes already.

Not all metal is about Satan or burning things, not all pop is girly, not all rock is about an emo guy with a small penis, and not all rap is about sex, drugs, and money. Not all.

Boy bands and girl groups

All of the boy bands and girl groups I've heard sound exactly the same as each other, only sing about love, don't play any instruments, have annoying voices, and have absolutely no variety whatsoever.

Bad or mindless lyrics

?

Short songs

?

Technique freaks

Trying too hard to sound modern and trendy

Forced rhyming

Some rap songs are guilty of this.

Singers who try to sing out of their range

If the singer goes out of their range, it messes up the whole beat.

Trap beats

I actually like trap beats, but it has a bad reputation because a lot of trap rap artists are awful.

Artists not writing their own lyrics

Music videos being the reason a song is popular

Voices that are so high-pitched it makes your ears pierce

Yeah, men with high-pitched, girly voices who also scream! Screaming isn't singing!

"Sexy" songs

Change by Deftones and This Broken Soul by Korn are perfect examples of this. It's really unfortunate because they're also perfect examples of vocals that ruin otherwise pretty decent songs.

No, I don't want to hear graphic descriptions of what happens with what's in their pants and what they do with it.

People who judge the quality of artists and songs by how successful they are

People who think there's only one good music genre

Excessive swearing

Swearing too much will mess up the beat and change the tone. It will also make it less impactful.

Humming in songs

This is probably a very unpopular opinion, and there are a few exceptions to this, which is why it's not very high on the list, but most of the time, I find it kind of annoying when there's humming in a song.

Songs that try way too hard to be meaningful

Kid's songs

To be fair, they are made for babies, so I won't be too hard on them, but all of the lyrics are laughably stupid, and the singer usually sounds so annoying that it almost feels like they're trying to sound annoying.

People classifying solo artists as "bands"

This is something that annoys me more than it should.