They Don't Make 'Em Like That Any More
It's a refrain that has been passed from generation to generation since, well, I don't know:
They just don't make music like they used to.
In response, youths have rightfully rolled their eyes at this closed outlook and proceeded to listen to, or perhaps make the antithesis of what their parents used to listen to. Elders' exasperation has been the fuel that fired the furnaces of youthful creativity.
A couple of recent observations set me wondering if this cycle has been disrupted. Does it count as an observation if you listen to an article on the radio that asks if that asks that exact question? I suppose so, it's just that it's not my observation. There was a week at some point in the past couple of years (people just don't do the research to back up their half-baked ideas like they used to) where the list of acts in the the UK music chart's top 10 was uncannily similar to the top 10 exactly ten years earlier, specifically Adele, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay.
The battle for 2023's Christmas number one was fought between The Pogues & Kirsty McColl's "Fairytale of New York" from 1987 and Wham's "Last Christmas" which was originally released in 1984. Of course, everything works differently around Christmas so one shouldn't draw too many conclusions from that.
This summer's musical highlights in Norfolk and Suffolk are Tom Jones (aged 83) and Sting (aged 72) playing at Thetford Lodge and Duran Duran (average age 63) headlining Latitude. No disrespect to any of those acts, they've earned their place in the sun and I'm sure they'll go down a storm but, the frisson of the new and unexpected seems distant.
Factor in the increasing popularity of tribute bands and it starts to feel like there is an ever diminishing space for up-and-coming acts to make their name. Again, it would be foolish to project what is happening in sleepy East Anglia to the rest of the country but I've never let that hold me back.
As much as music has evolved in my lifetime, the way we consume music has, arguably, developed faster. The availability, ease of use and relative cost of streaming services such as Spotify means that sales of music on physical media are becoming rarer.
I remember seeing a comedian discussing Google Earth:
We can virtually explore anywhere on the planet. But the first place we visit is the place we see every day: our house.
It's probably inevitable that, when given the choice of more or less any music in history, our instinct is to seek home comforts. It's a while since I started using Spotify but I'm fairly sure that I didn't begin by exploring avant garde, under the radar music. Instead I probably searched for my old favourites that I already owned on CD and/or vinyl anyway. Even when I have been more adventurous, the algorithms seem to have a built-in regression-to-mean type of function that ensure that, sooner or later, I will end up listening to something by The Stone Roses.
The inherent biases of our brains and the algorithms ensure that an ever larger share of the pie goes to established acts. The swell of public opinion that carried those acts to glory lifts them ever higher while newer acts struggle against the backwash.
One of the pleasures of my youth was browsing record stores for something I might like. Have we lost some important cues for choosing what we listen to by making it so accessible? The chatter in record shops, the artwork on the sleeves and on the walls and the music that the proprieter was playing all had an influence at some level.
Then again, what do I know? Is there anything more boring than an old person saying how things were better in their day? I suppose I'm effectively saying "young people just don't buy music the way they used to" when it boils down to it.
For all the things that we have lost as record stores have dwindled, there are ways that the internet could be used to encourage new music. Freshonthenet is an amazing resource that gives under the radar music of all genres a platform where it can be heard. The community spirit of fellow musicians on social media is fantastic. We need to nurture those and be equally creative in finding new ways to shine light on the new music of today that is, at least, equally good as what has gone before.
One (admittedly not very effective) solution is to paste a link and an endorsement of an undersung artist when one writes an entry for an irregularly updated and badly formatted music blog. I really like the breezy and self-deprecating "About You" by Sparky Bosque for instance.
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