From soothing musical therapy to upbeat techno raves, music has a wide range of powers on human emotion. Being projected from many sources worldwide, this variety of harmonious vocal and instrumental sounds has evolved and become a significant part of people’s daily lives. Whether one plays his or her own music, listens to a personal playlist, or is a regular concert goer, there is one music source that has forced many to switch to aux cords and Bluetooth because of its irritating repetition and conventional tunes.

Nowadays, it seems that the radio has become a loop of the same 5 songs. Okay sure, radio stations might play the “hottest hits” but those songs quickly become obsolete if they aren’t already terrible to begin with. Sure the more air play the song gets, the more money the artist makes but who wants to associate an artist with one song?

Most of the songs on the radio are by the most mainstream musicians too, completely robbing underground artists, who are just as (or more) deserving of air play. Okay Justin we get that your mother doesn’t like the girl even though she loves everyone and hello to you too Adele but those songs are no longer intriguing because of their redundancy. The few lyrically adept songs that do make it to the air waves almost instantly lose their value, and the words become meaningless. The radio also does a great job of bowdlerizing the music. (Now I’m not promoting the use of explicit songs on the radio but sometimes profanity is needed to really feel and understand the message of the song.) This is why many people (like me) use an aux cord or Bluetooth to enjoy the music that they want to hear.

“I only listen to [the] radio when I’m in the car and only if my [phone] data is [bad],” stated North Penn High School senior Alice Park.

Aside from the good songs turned sour due to being overplayed, some songs played on the radio are just blatantly terrible from the start. “Pool party music” or songs that sound like they should be played at a black light rave have been dominating the air waves lately and not in a good way. Either the song is played a million times a day or another radio station has the same song playing at the same exact time.

Some are even complaining about how identical the tunes sound and about their lack of diversity.

“The music is good and it contains all the latest jams, but they overplay that [expletive] and it makes me want to burn it,” expressed senior Yoomeen Suh. “American music is basic. I don’t hear no K-pop or Indian pop.”

So how does a song qualify to be played on the radio and why aren’t lesser known artists who are just as talented getting their time?

Then again maybe it’s a good thing that low key artists aren’t played as much. It wouldn’t be fair to them if their actual GOOD music became hackneyed within a few days.