authenticity

I do not understand artists that don't understand authenticity. Since I'm not as well educated on visual art in comparison to auditory art, I'm just gonna talk about music for now. In general, music written with a specific purpose: to convey personal thoughts or emotions (this excludes bands and musicians such as Lightning Bolt, Explosions in the Sky, Hella, or Battles who I can say with 90% certainty have different intentions, ie conceptualism, despite the obvious emotions conveyed throughout their own music). Let's look at music as a performing art. I don't understand the idea of someone intentionally thrashing around or headbanging if they're not actually into it. Do these musicians/bands watch their influences do similar things and decide to follow in their footsteps? It seems counterproductive for the entire creative process, utilizing another persons defining characteristics to their own 'advantage' by veiling their own lack of substance with performance, song structure, melody and anything else that they could scrape together to create what would be considered their own artwork.

I'm sure many of the bands that utilize such shallow techniques aren't aware of what they're doing, and it may even be pretty logical and natural to them (I'd assume so, considering that inordinate amount of people that do it) but its an uncomfortable thought