On New Year’s Eve my friends and I didn’t watch the show before the ball dropped. We knew what those shows are like – a bunch of celebrities we don’t know or care about, some musical acts for us to turn our noses up at, and complaining about what pop culture is today.
Instead, we opted to watch blocks of 1980s music videos. They were comfortable, if cringey. A nice walk down memory lane. We knew who everyone was, and we could skip them if we didn’t like them.
We all talked about how good music used to be and how it isn’t as good anymore.
Pop culture is the only culture we all share. These songs become a part of our identity. And when music changes, we feel like we’ve lost something.
And what’s worse – is that politicians and people on TV turn this into an “Us vs Them” situation. They weaponize pop culture to turn generations against each other.
Next time you’re on Facebook, pay attention to how many sites there are designed to make you feel good about your pop culture while saying others’ are bad.
“They don’t make good music any more. Kids today don’t know the classics. They ruined this TV show. The remake sucks.”
Comments like this are said so often that no one even stops to really think about it. But you should always question general statements like this.
When you say “There’s no good music today” or something similar, you might think it makes you sound decisive. But really it shows you don’t know what’s going on. Pick your favorite type of music. Can you even name five artists in that genre who had their debut after 2010? After 2000? Take a minute and really think. Unless you listen exclusively to chamber music, every genre has had new and exciting artists coming out every year. Sure, some of it is garbage. But there are some real gems, too, that you’re missing out on.
Part of it is that you’re not the target audience anymore. Record companies have always aimed at the late teen to early 20s demographic, and that probably doesn’t describe the person who’s reading this editorial in a newspaper. It sure doesn’t describe the person who wrote it.
You might not even know how to listen to the music being released today. My 15-year-old daughter put some albums on her Christmas list that were only available via download. No physical copy of the album exists.
My point in all this is to ask you to avoid speaking in generalizations like “today’s music/movies/shows/whatever are bad.” By doing that, you’re giving in to the politicians’ desire to categorize, separate, and pit us against each other. They want you to think of everything in terms of “Us and Them (Pink Floyd, 1972).”
Watching those blocks of music videos reminded me that that for every excellent band from my childhood like Queen, there was also a Kajagoogoo. So, my point is there was crap back when we were young, too.
By the way, the song that goes “They Don’t Write ‘Em Like That Anymore” is actually called “The Breakup Song,” and it was released by the Greg Kihn band in 1981. So someone was talking about music changing and it was put out four decades ago. I guess no matter how much music changes, “It’s Still Rock ‘n Roll To Me (Billy Joel, 1980).”
Chris Lundy
News Editor
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