I can say that as a songwriter/producer and musician of the last 25 years, U are correct.
but as U also said, it's not the kids fault. they have inherited a dead culture. stripped away by the homogenous forces of technology and Neoliberalism/progressivism. there is simply nothing left to rebel against. Jane's Addiction came out with their seminal album 'Nothing's Shocking' in 1988 and it was prescient in every aspect(when all boundaries have been destroyed, what then?). the rebellious youth culture that began with Elvis and the birth of Rock N Roll has desintigrated into a lukewarm nihilism. the internet and the ubiquitous nature of smart phones/social media has rapidly turned art into content. for about 50 years, Rock/Pop/Hip Hop served as a giant cultural force that united each new generation in an almost religious manifestation.
there will always be talented, creative types born to every era, but without the cultural paradigm for expression, there is no format available to today's youth. I see parallels to Russian literature during the Soviet Empire. a culture that produced Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin etc found itself bereft during the repressive mandates of Communism. even the great works from that era were written in secret, only to be discovered by the west decades later (Bulgarov, Pasternak,Solzhenitsyn).
the successful artist you mentioned above came to prominence close to 20 years ago! we are no longer able to regenerate new ideas and sounds at the margins, because the margins have now been pushed to the center. If all of the teachers of today are embracing Gender Ideology, how do kids rebel? going trad? going anti-vaxxer? MAGA? haha.
the only way out is through tho. in the long run, Art will survive and have meaning again, but in the short term...it might be awhile...
I think the left is at the height of it's cultural hegemony, and there will have to be a counter cultural movement. I really hope it's not MAGA inspired/but instead of antivax, maybe it's time for a few songs against corporate medical greed? I liked what you said about having a cultural paradigm for expression. Going back to the 90s, a lot of the songs were dark, but our mental health was fairly good compared to todays youth. I think maybe people need to be able to express the full range of emotions through the arts to thrive.
yeah, I was kidding about the MAGA stuff. that's really just reactionary politics at the end of the day. yer right tho, the left is the cultural Leviathan right now, so if we make it to the other side, perhaps the kids will be able to create something new again. I think the current paradigm will have to collapse first, which won't be painless.
at this point, it's pointless to try and predict what will happen...
I think you have hit the nail on the head. The culture has become fissiparous. This means that there s no longer a small number of cultural instituions that united us. We will never see again an occasion where 33% of Americans watch a music act on television as they did in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.
In days of old we all watched free to air TV, listened to radio, read newspapers and magazines. Our cultural experience was created by these things. Pop music still had not become the muzak heard in all public settings.
The internet changed all that. People can now curate their own entertainment. This means that music has lost its power as a cultural force. Just about anyone now can produce a pop song and release it on a streaming service. The technology available to all of us today has broken the barrier to entry. But as W.S. Gibert wrote: "if everybody's somebody, then no-one's anybody."
"The technology available to all of us today has broken the barrier to entry. But as W.S. Gibert wrote: "if everybody's somebody, then no-one's anybody."
yup...how prophetic was Andy Warhol? "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 mins..."
somehow he could see where the culture was headed in 1968! what better description of reality tv stars and Viral technology. the irony is that the internet was supposed to unite not only the country, but the whole world.
now it seems we have been fractured into a million pieces...
I confess that I sometimes find myself returning to music from the 70's whenever I'm feeling down. I got my first transistor radio (hand-held, battery operated, with a tiny white plastic ear plug) for Christmas in 1970. I can still remember how thrilled I was, as a nine year-old kid, listening to the Beatles sing "Let It Be." My parents allowed me to listen to my little radio at night after I'd gone to bed (they'd turn it off and take out the ear-plug from my ear before they went to bed). I can still remember the thrill of listening to "Let It Be" in my darkened bedroom before falling asleep. It made my heart feel as if it were soaring. Thank you for prompting that happy memory. : )
"It's not the kids fault." The adults have destroyed all the mooring lines in life, but I have belief and hope that we are in for a rejuvenation. There's a groundswell of people looking for a better future for the next generations. Your essay on your son and husband leads the way. I know nothing about music culture but I do know what I like to listen to and that ranges from 1940's big band to southern rock and country. I find much of modern popular music boring or irritating but that's just my taste and not (always) a reflection on the music, although I find the packaging of the artists, especially female artists, very shallow and depressing.
Before I even had my first sip of strong Ethiopian this morning you confirmed my affection for your essence when you cited Tom Waits and his Heart of Saturday Night album. I thought, “ damn, no wonder I became a subscriber!” Obviously Jenny there are numerous other reasons that have nothing to do with music, but this further validated my impulse to place my imprimatur on your thoughtful works.
Waits is my guy, though HoSN isn't my favorite. I saw the Nighthawks, Small Change and Blue Valentine tours. The best was Small Change at Hill Auditorium in A2, when Leon Redbone opened for him.
https://thecritic.co.uk/top-of-the-pops/ "For most people rock music is a big thing in their lives in their teens and twenties; from then on interest wanes. Those for whom this phase ran its course at anytime in the 60’s to 90’s tend to think of themselves as having been around for the best of it. If the thee billion plus hits on Spotify’s most streamed songs is the measure, you could argue that it is now bigger than ever. But nobody seriously believes that any of them will go down in history as great ones. So what will? What songs will endure when all rock’s ephemera evaporates into the mist of time? The big problem with rock/pop as art comes with trying to actually pan the gold dust out from the 60 million babbling brook. That tiny proportion of truly great music has fallen victim to a kind of category error, having no unique generic label to differentiate it from the rest. In theory, Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time would be the answer. It is, after all, a composite distillation of the individual “top 50” voted by a kind of rock cognoscenti of industry insiders; artists, music critics etc. But when you remember that this is the aggregated judgement of an industry driven by a default imperative to breathlessly and endlessly enthuse about every new release — the vast majority of which are worthless trash — it doesn’t inspire much confidence."
Disagree about Beyonce. She has so many producers and co writers that her music is more like an assembly line factory pumping out 'music'. Also, every pop singer now shrieks and wails. I can't even listen to it. Some of Taylor's songs I go, this is good kinda, but I wish someone else sang them
Funny, because when I was in the middle of it, I didn't care for the music of the 70s, as it seemed that the early 70s was just the last breaths of the 60s R&R legends (save the Stones), and was giving way to punk, which I wasn't into at the time, or disco. I actually thought the 80s and 90s were flush with interesting new trends, and Kurt Cobain, by himself made for a great decade in the 90s. I totally lost interest in contemporary music in the 2000s.
I did see Tom Waits three times in the 70s, but my preference was Closing Time, followed by Small Change.
Then you missed the best part of the 70’s - Progressive Rock. Led Zeppelin, Yes, Genesis, Emerson,Lake&Palmer, King Crimson, Rush, Styx(kinda), Kansas. While rock radio was suffering through with a plethora of nondescript bands whose names I can’t even remember I was rocking out and looking for the next new ProgRock band. Ofc punk was a direct reaction to that. Disco had a brief fling. But then metal became a thing along with the 80’s glam “hair bands”
I live in a divided state now, where I appreciate the groundbreaking music of the 60s and 70s but also am aware that many of its messages could be damaging and that some of it may have been controlled by larger forces, a la Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon. I will take Nico over Taylor Swift any day, while admitting the latter is a better role model.
Incidentally I find that McGowan has really taken off with the millennials, not only in the reference to his work in the film Under the Silver Lake, but in the mention of him in podcasts like PsyOp Cinema and Subliminal Jihad.
I grew up in the '60s and '70s, but I can't say I ever paid much attention to what the other kids were listening to. From infancy I heard my dad's swing and modern jazz 78s and LPs, along with his classical records, and that's what I imprinted on. Later on, I discovered rock and other modern popular music for myself, but I'm always about twenty to thirty years behind--right now I'm into Hole and Republica. As for the past couple of decades of mainstream pop music, it's so alien to me I feel like a dog must feel about music--just a lot of noise. Rap, in particular, with all its nasty variants, particularly sucks. Taylor Swift and Beyonce, to me, are just autotuned Barbie dolls. Thank goodness there was a lot of good recording going on in the 20th century, because musically I live in the past, and I'm quite happy there.
There is no absence of great new music from indie/emergent artists (rock/pop and otherwise): Boygenius, Blondshell, Say Sue Me, Alvvays, Pale Blue Eyes, Fella Cederbaum (!), Mitch Rowland, Flyingfish, The Beths, The Robot Ate Me, Sorcha Richardson, Tokyo Groove Jyoshi, Tommy Guerrero, Natalie Madigan, Valerie June, Robbing Millions, Soccer Mommy, Oscar Lang, Bent Knee, Cut Worms, Juliana Chahayed, Aldous Harding, Alyssa Gengos, Mitski, Temples, Flyying Colours, Vanishing Twin, Ghost Funk Orchestra, Les Incendiaires, Origami Angel, June McDoom, Pearl & The Oysters, Genevieve Artadi, Ceramic Dog, Adam Melchor, Hazel English, Dope Lemon, Mira Cook, Sunflower Bean — that's just a random sample from five minutes of checking my music library.
I am not an expert on contemporary popular music by any stretch of the imagination, but you mentioned kids without hope thinking that the world is about to end. Big changes are coming in the world, and we can see signs of the world racing toward the return of Jesus Christ in the air to rescue his true followers from the tribulation to come. But committed Christians are not without hope as these events unfold. However, many kids today have grown up clueless about biblical prophecy or about any biblical world view and hence they are without hope. That is why biblical information is crucial. I have found christinprophecy.org and olivetreeviews.org helpful.
I can say that as a songwriter/producer and musician of the last 25 years, U are correct.
but as U also said, it's not the kids fault. they have inherited a dead culture. stripped away by the homogenous forces of technology and Neoliberalism/progressivism. there is simply nothing left to rebel against. Jane's Addiction came out with their seminal album 'Nothing's Shocking' in 1988 and it was prescient in every aspect(when all boundaries have been destroyed, what then?). the rebellious youth culture that began with Elvis and the birth of Rock N Roll has desintigrated into a lukewarm nihilism. the internet and the ubiquitous nature of smart phones/social media has rapidly turned art into content. for about 50 years, Rock/Pop/Hip Hop served as a giant cultural force that united each new generation in an almost religious manifestation.
there will always be talented, creative types born to every era, but without the cultural paradigm for expression, there is no format available to today's youth. I see parallels to Russian literature during the Soviet Empire. a culture that produced Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Pushkin etc found itself bereft during the repressive mandates of Communism. even the great works from that era were written in secret, only to be discovered by the west decades later (Bulgarov, Pasternak,Solzhenitsyn).
the successful artist you mentioned above came to prominence close to 20 years ago! we are no longer able to regenerate new ideas and sounds at the margins, because the margins have now been pushed to the center. If all of the teachers of today are embracing Gender Ideology, how do kids rebel? going trad? going anti-vaxxer? MAGA? haha.
the only way out is through tho. in the long run, Art will survive and have meaning again, but in the short term...it might be awhile...
I think the left is at the height of it's cultural hegemony, and there will have to be a counter cultural movement. I really hope it's not MAGA inspired/but instead of antivax, maybe it's time for a few songs against corporate medical greed? I liked what you said about having a cultural paradigm for expression. Going back to the 90s, a lot of the songs were dark, but our mental health was fairly good compared to todays youth. I think maybe people need to be able to express the full range of emotions through the arts to thrive.
yeah, I was kidding about the MAGA stuff. that's really just reactionary politics at the end of the day. yer right tho, the left is the cultural Leviathan right now, so if we make it to the other side, perhaps the kids will be able to create something new again. I think the current paradigm will have to collapse first, which won't be painless.
at this point, it's pointless to try and predict what will happen...
I don't think there is any cultural hegemony. The culture is too fractured for that.
I think you have hit the nail on the head. The culture has become fissiparous. This means that there s no longer a small number of cultural instituions that united us. We will never see again an occasion where 33% of Americans watch a music act on television as they did in 1964 when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.
In days of old we all watched free to air TV, listened to radio, read newspapers and magazines. Our cultural experience was created by these things. Pop music still had not become the muzak heard in all public settings.
The internet changed all that. People can now curate their own entertainment. This means that music has lost its power as a cultural force. Just about anyone now can produce a pop song and release it on a streaming service. The technology available to all of us today has broken the barrier to entry. But as W.S. Gibert wrote: "if everybody's somebody, then no-one's anybody."
"The technology available to all of us today has broken the barrier to entry. But as W.S. Gibert wrote: "if everybody's somebody, then no-one's anybody."
yup...how prophetic was Andy Warhol? "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 mins..."
somehow he could see where the culture was headed in 1968! what better description of reality tv stars and Viral technology. the irony is that the internet was supposed to unite not only the country, but the whole world.
now it seems we have been fractured into a million pieces...
??
I confess that I sometimes find myself returning to music from the 70's whenever I'm feeling down. I got my first transistor radio (hand-held, battery operated, with a tiny white plastic ear plug) for Christmas in 1970. I can still remember how thrilled I was, as a nine year-old kid, listening to the Beatles sing "Let It Be." My parents allowed me to listen to my little radio at night after I'd gone to bed (they'd turn it off and take out the ear-plug from my ear before they went to bed). I can still remember the thrill of listening to "Let It Be" in my darkened bedroom before falling asleep. It made my heart feel as if it were soaring. Thank you for prompting that happy memory. : )
"It's not the kids fault." The adults have destroyed all the mooring lines in life, but I have belief and hope that we are in for a rejuvenation. There's a groundswell of people looking for a better future for the next generations. Your essay on your son and husband leads the way. I know nothing about music culture but I do know what I like to listen to and that ranges from 1940's big band to southern rock and country. I find much of modern popular music boring or irritating but that's just my taste and not (always) a reflection on the music, although I find the packaging of the artists, especially female artists, very shallow and depressing.
Before I even had my first sip of strong Ethiopian this morning you confirmed my affection for your essence when you cited Tom Waits and his Heart of Saturday Night album. I thought, “ damn, no wonder I became a subscriber!” Obviously Jenny there are numerous other reasons that have nothing to do with music, but this further validated my impulse to place my imprimatur on your thoughtful works.
Waits is my guy, though HoSN isn't my favorite. I saw the Nighthawks, Small Change and Blue Valentine tours. The best was Small Change at Hill Auditorium in A2, when Leon Redbone opened for him.
and yes, Jenny is amazing.
https://thecritic.co.uk/top-of-the-pops/ "For most people rock music is a big thing in their lives in their teens and twenties; from then on interest wanes. Those for whom this phase ran its course at anytime in the 60’s to 90’s tend to think of themselves as having been around for the best of it. If the thee billion plus hits on Spotify’s most streamed songs is the measure, you could argue that it is now bigger than ever. But nobody seriously believes that any of them will go down in history as great ones. So what will? What songs will endure when all rock’s ephemera evaporates into the mist of time? The big problem with rock/pop as art comes with trying to actually pan the gold dust out from the 60 million babbling brook. That tiny proportion of truly great music has fallen victim to a kind of category error, having no unique generic label to differentiate it from the rest. In theory, Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time would be the answer. It is, after all, a composite distillation of the individual “top 50” voted by a kind of rock cognoscenti of industry insiders; artists, music critics etc. But when you remember that this is the aggregated judgement of an industry driven by a default imperative to breathlessly and endlessly enthuse about every new release — the vast majority of which are worthless trash — it doesn’t inspire much confidence."
Disagree about Beyonce. She has so many producers and co writers that her music is more like an assembly line factory pumping out 'music'. Also, every pop singer now shrieks and wails. I can't even listen to it. Some of Taylor's songs I go, this is good kinda, but I wish someone else sang them
Funny, because when I was in the middle of it, I didn't care for the music of the 70s, as it seemed that the early 70s was just the last breaths of the 60s R&R legends (save the Stones), and was giving way to punk, which I wasn't into at the time, or disco. I actually thought the 80s and 90s were flush with interesting new trends, and Kurt Cobain, by himself made for a great decade in the 90s. I totally lost interest in contemporary music in the 2000s.
I did see Tom Waits three times in the 70s, but my preference was Closing Time, followed by Small Change.
Then you missed the best part of the 70’s - Progressive Rock. Led Zeppelin, Yes, Genesis, Emerson,Lake&Palmer, King Crimson, Rush, Styx(kinda), Kansas. While rock radio was suffering through with a plethora of nondescript bands whose names I can’t even remember I was rocking out and looking for the next new ProgRock band. Ofc punk was a direct reaction to that. Disco had a brief fling. But then metal became a thing along with the 80’s glam “hair bands”
As we used to say in the '70s, "disco sucks".
I live in a divided state now, where I appreciate the groundbreaking music of the 60s and 70s but also am aware that many of its messages could be damaging and that some of it may have been controlled by larger forces, a la Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon. I will take Nico over Taylor Swift any day, while admitting the latter is a better role model.
Incidentally I find that McGowan has really taken off with the millennials, not only in the reference to his work in the film Under the Silver Lake, but in the mention of him in podcasts like PsyOp Cinema and Subliminal Jihad.
The Subliminal Jihad guys are fans of Taylor Swift (https://soundcloud.com/subliminaljihad/sj-155-esotaylorcism-pt-1) while questioning bands like the Grateful Dead (https://soundcloud.com/subliminaljihad/33-warlocks-of-palo-alto-summoning-the-grateful-dead-part-i?in=user-670372448/sets/podcast) or figures like Phil Ochs (https://soundcloud.com/subliminaljihad/unlocked-113a-phil-ochs-part-1).
Another interesting take on Taylor Swift here: https://player.fm/series/psyop-cinema/taylor-swifts-mind-control-concerts-on-william-ramsey-investigates
I grew up in the '60s and '70s, but I can't say I ever paid much attention to what the other kids were listening to. From infancy I heard my dad's swing and modern jazz 78s and LPs, along with his classical records, and that's what I imprinted on. Later on, I discovered rock and other modern popular music for myself, but I'm always about twenty to thirty years behind--right now I'm into Hole and Republica. As for the past couple of decades of mainstream pop music, it's so alien to me I feel like a dog must feel about music--just a lot of noise. Rap, in particular, with all its nasty variants, particularly sucks. Taylor Swift and Beyonce, to me, are just autotuned Barbie dolls. Thank goodness there was a lot of good recording going on in the 20th century, because musically I live in the past, and I'm quite happy there.
There is no absence of great new music from indie/emergent artists (rock/pop and otherwise): Boygenius, Blondshell, Say Sue Me, Alvvays, Pale Blue Eyes, Fella Cederbaum (!), Mitch Rowland, Flyingfish, The Beths, The Robot Ate Me, Sorcha Richardson, Tokyo Groove Jyoshi, Tommy Guerrero, Natalie Madigan, Valerie June, Robbing Millions, Soccer Mommy, Oscar Lang, Bent Knee, Cut Worms, Juliana Chahayed, Aldous Harding, Alyssa Gengos, Mitski, Temples, Flyying Colours, Vanishing Twin, Ghost Funk Orchestra, Les Incendiaires, Origami Angel, June McDoom, Pearl & The Oysters, Genevieve Artadi, Ceramic Dog, Adam Melchor, Hazel English, Dope Lemon, Mira Cook, Sunflower Bean — that's just a random sample from five minutes of checking my music library.
I am not an expert on contemporary popular music by any stretch of the imagination, but you mentioned kids without hope thinking that the world is about to end. Big changes are coming in the world, and we can see signs of the world racing toward the return of Jesus Christ in the air to rescue his true followers from the tribulation to come. But committed Christians are not without hope as these events unfold. However, many kids today have grown up clueless about biblical prophecy or about any biblical world view and hence they are without hope. That is why biblical information is crucial. I have found christinprophecy.org and olivetreeviews.org helpful.
Music fell apart when they started electrifying instruments.
In the 1940s?