I love music. To me, music at its very best can be described as poetry amplified with a combination of awe-inspiring talent, intelligence with an edge, and sass with a purpose.

Yet lately, music has been coming up short with its onslaught of manufactured groups, copycat acts, lack of creativity in songwriting and style, and prioritizing of looks and image above talent.

Let’s be honest, Britney Spears is very pretty and a good dancer, but come on, the girl can’t sing. And, ’N Sync and Backstreet Boys are good singers, but if they did not have music videos, would you be able to tell their songs apart?

It has gotten so bad that even musical artists with astonishing talent are churning out formulaic songs and images that are designed to appeal to the broadest range of people to generate as much money as possible. Pop superstars like Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera, who are both renowned vocalists, get more attention for what they wear (or don’t wear) than for their actual talent.

I am not saying that there are not any talented and creative artists in the music industry anymore, but they are beginning to become the exception instead of the rule. Even when artists are truly skilled at what they do, those skills can be overshadowed by the images they portray to be crossover successes.

However, more worrisome then the lack of quality in music today is the messages a lot of artists are promoting. A significant number of rap songs blatantly promote stereotypes of African American males as dope-slanging, weed-smoking, gang-banging, club-hopping thugs and African American women as money-hungry, bed-hopping baby-mamas.

Pop music, also, has helped to perpetrate negative images of women as empty-headed sex objects by upping the level of sexiness in female pop stars and downplaying their intelligence. Pop music has done a wonderful job of belittling the sophistication of teenagers by mass-producing bubblegum songs without much substance besides stereotypical lyrics about dreamy-eyed and boy-crazy teenage girls and ultracool teenage boys.

Of course not all rap and pop artists peddle negative and stereotypical images in their music. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of music artists out there who do not. But they are usually outnumbered (and outsold) by those artists who do.

So whose fault is it that the music industry has become so trite and mediocre? The artists, the producers, the record companies? Maybe, but I blame the fans.

We are the ones buying the music and swelling the bank accounts and egos of trite and mediocre musicians. We are the ones who are sitting back and accepting, even approving, negative images in music videos and songs. School-aged girls were going to school in tied-up shirts with the chest poked out after Spears’ “Hit Me Baby One More Time” video was shown on MTV. Also, at last year’s Cash Money/Ruff Ryder’s concert, grown women were begging to get pulled on stage so they could lift up their shirts, flashing the audience and, most importantly, the rappers.

Many artists and critics have pondered whether music reflects life or if life reflects music. Many argue that music is the cause of the behavior mentioned above, while others contend that those types of behaviors have created a lot of music. I believe in both arguments: music can change the world, but also, the world can change music.

If African-Americans want to eradicate the myths of our men being thugs and our women being hoes, then we must eradicate those stereotypes from our music. Women are never going to gain the respectability of our society if we continue to sell our sexuality instead of our talents.

Ashley Bell, a journalism freshman, can be reached at bellashl@msu.edu.