Dissing the Dissonance that is YouTube Music

“Literally, my life, is. Beaches every night. Messy buns and Christmas lights.”

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“Literally, my life, is. Beaches every night. Messy buns and Christmas lights.”

Sanjana Gudivada, Staff Writer

Youtubers want to be included in the hype of creating their own music and posting it on their channels. Most of the time what they don’t realize is that they’re just not gifted or trained enough to produce their own music. Making music or doing covers of songs on Youtube is a common thing- nothing new- but have the most popular Youtubers taken their fame too far?

Many Youtubers start out with vlogs or funny videos and then after gaining enough fame, they decide to showcase their “musical talents”. For instance, Eva Gutowski’s channel started out as a focus on beauty and fashion. Then suddenly, as if an aspiring artist appeared inside her, Eva released a music video called “Literally My Life” where her basic, normal life was displayed- she really hit the nail on the head there. The song sounds like it came from an old Disney channel show from the very beginning. One part of the song goes, “My nails will be too long. To get done anything. I’ll sip artistic lattes. And rock expensive bling”. The lyrics switch from talking about her nails to talking about “sipping artistic lattes” which doesn’t really convey any kind of message which could cause people to sit back and recoil in discomfort. The lyrics are very plain, benign, and have no meaning to them except for talking about how Eva’s life is goals and filled with going to beaches everyday. Not to mention, the instrumental was unbearable and childish, much like the lyrics.

But Eva Gutowski isn’t the only musically (un)talented creator on the video platform.  Niki and Gabi are twin sisters who make makeup, fashion and beauty oriented videos on Youtube. In 2013, they auditioned for X-Factor with their older sister Alex DeMartino. However, they didn’t pass the audition, receiving heavy criticism from judges Demi Lovato and Simon Cowell. After this, they started releasing their own music. In 2017, they released their single “First” which is a supposed diss track aimed at Gabi’s ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend.  The lyrics give out a vibe that seems like Gabi is attacking her ex’s new girl while she says “You’re great, but I am too. This isn’t shade, I’m with someone new. You didn’t win, we went separate ways. But one time, I was his everything”. She says she doesn’t care whether her ex has a new girlfriend or not but the lyrics contradict that, which end up giving the song no meaning but just a bunch of conflicting statements. Break-ups happen, but dwelling on them by releasing a track like this isn’t a very mature or moral thing to do. It’s not interesting to watch or listen to when the same theme is shown in music over and over again.

RiceGum is another well-known Youtuber who makes rap music on Youtube. He’s released several songs all of which have nothing different about each other. For example, his songs “Frick Da Police” and “God Church” both have almost the same beat and talk about how he escaped poverty and is living in a mansion now. He also disses and brings up random celebrities in his raps for no apparent reason and it seems very unnecessary to look for attention that way. For example, he says, “I’m not like Kylie Jenner, everything I got is real now. When I’m out, you be staring like a sightseer. I will not call her baby, I’m not like Bieber”. Bringing up Kylie and Bieber seems like unnecessary attention that the rapper is looking for and especially dissing them while praising himself looks even worse. Moreover, his lyrics don’t fit the beat of the song and often times he makes up random words to make them rhyme with his previous lyric.

Youtube has mostly cringe-worthy, childish and unrelatable music which has nothing unique about it. These music videos keep getting worse as time passes by. The music is over-sugared, over-hyped and over-marketed to the point where it’s actually considered acceptable.