OutKick Readers Chime In With Their Biggest Music-Related Gripes

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another edition of the column that has gotten more ridiculous complaints than a Sydney Sweeney American Eagle ad campaign, The Gripe Report!

Last week, I talked about a few of my biggest gripes when it comes to music.

Have a gripe? Send it in!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com

Whether that was rock songs about rocking or the repetitive nature of radio stations, there's plenty to whine about when it comes to music.

So, I got an influx of messages from readers with some gripes of their own, so I figured this week we would go through a few of those!

Writing lyrics can be tough… unless you just come up with a few words that you use over and over, in which case, it's actually pretty easy. (Getty Images)

Repetitive Choruses

Drew in Katy, Texas, is going to bat lead-off for us this week, and he's talking about something I think we will all be able to rattle off a laundry list of offenders to this one: 

I listen to a very wide variety of music.  The one thing that I can’t stand is a song with extremely repetitive lyrics. 

Example – "Roxanne" by the Police. That song is torture to me.  I’m going to hit some button to listen to something else when a song like that comes on.  

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This is such a common gripe that I saw multiple times (it was repeating itself, how ironic is that?), so we'll let Gary add in his 

Gary 

My biggest music gripe is a repetitive chorus to the point where you have to stop listening. "I wanna rock and roll all night and party every day." Okay, fine, don't say the same damn thing 25 times. Roy Orbison was the master of writing and performing songs that had no chorus. Nothing got repeated. Most, if not all, songs have a chorus, putting Roy Orbison in a class all by himself. Sadly, he left us way too soon. 

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I will say, I did have to laugh to myself when Gary mentioned Roy Orbison because the first song that popped into my head was "Oh, Pretty Woman," which repeats itself a lot, but his point still stands, because it’s not exactly a chorus. Like he mentioned, there really isn’t one. 

Still, I can't really get over how many of my favorite artists are guilty of this sin. I get that part of it is the nature of a song's structure, but there's definitely an element of artists and record labels striving for repetition, so it gets stuck in your head.

For instance, Drew mentioned "Roxanne" by the Police, and even if you find it annoying, I guarantee you at least considered singing "Roxaaaaaaaaaaaaane, Roxaaaaaaaaaane" to yourself.

I not only considered it, I did it. 

That's one of the perks of working from home.

Radio Stations That Play The Same Songs Over And Over

Speaking of repetition, I mentioned how radio stations have a habit of playing the same songs and/or artists over and over and over, and Jaime chimed in with some thoughts on this topic:

Radio stations here pretty much suck, and the one classic rock station that's left plays pretty much the same songs in the same order nearly every day. There's a standing joke among friends and me that we can tell you exactly what song will be playing at any given time of day. There's a really good rock station in Baton Rouge that I'll stream if needed.

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I will never understand how the radio industry hasn't done anything to combat this. Nobody likes it when the music is programmed like this, and yet they still do it. If one station decided, "we're going to throw at least an ounce of care into programming some interesting music, I promise you the ratings would go up, especially if it was a rock or classic rock station.

Sure, I get that this is the same phenomenon as going to a concert. A lot of people want to hear the songs they know. That's why the beer line gets long any time a singer says, "Alright, now we're going to play a couple of numbers off of our new album."

But what we have with radio isn't like a band sticking to the hit, it's like if a band stuck to one hit and played it over and over and over…

Like if you went to see Foo Fighters and they played "Everlong," the song ends, then Dave Grohl starts strumming the opening to "Everlong" again, then the process repeats for two and a half hours.

You'd be begging them to play literally anything else. You'd want a deep cut or something fresher, or even another hit. Heck, "Camptown Races" would be a welcome break.

That's modern rock radio: "Everlong" on never-ending repeat. 

It feels like someone programmed a drum machine to do the reggaeton beat decades ago and now everyone is afraid to tweak it. (Getty Images)

Reggaeton Beats

Justin is chiming in to back me up on my gripe about reggaeton — a word I'm sure some of you had to look up or were thinking Bob Marley and hacky sacks — which had to do with every song using the same exact beat:

First time ever writing in.  I have been reading Outkick for a few months.  Sorry, I'm a little late to the party.  Better late than never, I suppose.  But after reading your most recent Gripe Report, I had to write to you.

I have never agreed with anyone, about anything, more than I agree with you about reggaeton music.  Every song is literally the same.  I have been saying it for years.  There is one song that everyone uses with their own lyrics.  I would bet my life that if you played 10 reggaeton songs to an avid fan, but removed the lyrics and just played the musical part, and asked them to identify each song, they wouldn't be able to get a single one right, because they are all the same. 

Thank you.  Finally, someone has the cajones to say it.

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Appreciate it, Justin. Back in high school, I was voted "Boy Most Likely To Have The Cajones To Point Out That Every Reggaeton Song Is Kind Of The Same."

It was a very on-the-nose yearbook superlative, but, dammit, if it wasn't right on the nose.

I'm not even saying that it's bad music. I don't care for it, but that doesn't make it bad.

It just drives me nuts that, as far as I can tell, not one person has been bold enough to change the settings on the communal reggaeton drum machine.  

Living in Florida, you hear quite a bit of it blasting out of Honda Civic hatchbacks, and I start to go a little Jack Torrance at how I'm completely unable to discern one song from another.

TV Sports Themes

This one comes from Brad, who sent this in as I was preparing this edition of The Gripe Report, making it one of the most well-timed gripes in Gripe Report history because it marries a music complaint with the upcoming NFL and college football seasons:

Hello again – the return of football and the accompanying media coverage also mean the return of TV sports themes.

Themes is probably the wrong word. Themes are played just once (over opening credits) or twice (over end credits). The NFL Today. Wide World of Sports.

The networks will tell you they aren’t just themes now, they are AUDIO BRANDING (*retch*). Audio branding is also big in advertising, which is why those 2-second jingles are played at the start of commercials. The jingles have to sound happy and playful. Just two or three piano notes. But this means Honda’s audio brand sounds like everyone else’s, thus ruining the effect…

NFL and college football broadcasters have, unfortunately, combined the two concepts and now play their themes incessantly. CBS will be airing a golf tournament, but will play their NFL music during a game promo. ESPN will air the Little League World Series, then blast their college football theme at the slightest mention of the upcoming season. 

The worst part is: the music sucks. Network NFL themes are flea-market pastiches of dramatic NFL Films music and John Williams soundtracks. They attempt to sound soaring and epic, but they are trite and worn out by repetition. Pregame. Before kickoff. At every ad break. Halftime. Postgame, etc, etc. I can hear the director in the truck now ‘roll theme music!’ Makes you want to put on a security vest and let the air out of the production trailer tires.

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There are some themes that I really do like, but even the ones that I like do get hammered into my brain non-stop.

We do need to move away from the "epic" themes and move toward the catchier ones, which I think people actually enjoy. That's why everyone gets all excited about "Round Ball Rock."

By the way, my favorite commercial right now is the one that uses that song to promote the return of the NBA to NBC, and it's just because I love the part at the end where John Tesh is standing on a little stage at center court hammering on his synths like they owe him money, and there's an LED panel on the stage that just says "JOHN TESH" all over it, just in case you forgot who wrote that song.

I get where Brad is coming from, but here are some sports themes I never get sick of…

• The aforementioned "Round Ball Rock"
• The Formula 1 Theme
• The NBC Olympic Theme
• FOX Sports Theme (and not just because I'm a company guy)
• NHL on ESPN
• NHL on NBC

I would put those on my Spotify playlist.

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Well, thank you all for chiming in with your music gripes for this edition of The Gripe Report. We'll move on to something else next week, and if you've got more gripes, be sure to send them in: matthew.reigle@outkick.com