Sitting at my favorite local pizza joint last night, I realized two troubling things: (1) apparently I say “pizza joint” now and (2) the restaurant was playing nothing but Steely Dan. Back-t0-back, song after song, all Steely all Dan all of the time.
After asking my husband, 10-month-old, and several passersby to verify that I wasn’t dead and this wasn’t Satan’s waiting room, I wondered what the management could be thinking. You don’t constantly loop Steely Dan unless all of Steely Dan has just died or if you are Steely Dan’s mom. Then I had a realization: this dude decided years ago that Steely Dan was his jam. And as the world of music changed, he didn’t have to.
They’re so dreamy they make me all Squeal-y Dan.
News broke last week that music scales have finally started climbing again–and that analysts credit The Beatles-iTunes marriage, launched just 6 months ago. The Nielsen Company reports that digital “album” (pretentious and unnecessary quotation mark alert) and track sales are up, offsetting the ever-accelerating decline in the sale of CDs and bringing overall sales up to 1.6%. *1 sagging celebratory balloon falls from the rafters*
This got me thinking: if this is news, has technology stalled our musical tastes? Not that I’m knocking The Beatles. I’m a huge fan. In high school I was voted “Most Likely To Bore You With Beatles Trivia While You’re Just Waiting In Line To Buy Stale Bugles.”
In other music news, sales of Bugles remain strong.
And I know that you can’t judge that public musical tastes are stunted simply because fans are psyched to finally replace Beatles tracks recorded from their parents’ warped, skipping albums. I get it. For 20 years I didn’t know that Eleanor Rigby died at the end.
So maybe sales aren’t a perfect measure of prevailing taste. Lots of cool, newer-to-the-forefront artists get a lot of buzz: Adele, The Avett Brothers…um, other people (I’m tragically un-hip). And it’s long been the case that scores of amazing musicians have legions of fans, sans gold records or stacks of cash.
But sales do tell a story. Consider that of the top 20 Recording Industry Association of America all-time best-selling artists, only 2–Garth Brooks (#3) and Mariah Carey (#17)–debuted in the last 25 years. The latest debuts before them were bows from Madonna, Whitney Houston, and George Strait in the early 80s.
But where are the newer innovators? Jay-Z, Tupac, Nirvana and The Beastie Boys are all on the tail-end of the Top 100 list but, again, it’s been a decade or so since the youngest of them shook things up. Were these top-sellers and pioneers such as The Beatles honestly the last people to change popular music?
Your Mom: Saying things like “he really shook things up” and embarrassing you since 1801.
So, if my super-scientific method of “I decided this” holds true, it’s been while since a truly new sound or soundmaker has taken hold of the broader audience. So, I ask: When was the last time you had to listen to music that you didn’t know or didn’t immediately like? Was it a mixed tape from a college friend? Or a ripped CD? Or the opening act at a concert?
Like cable news, music channels have become echo chambers. We no longer have to listen to anything we don’t like nor do we have to even sample deep tracks to get to the radio release we’re seeking. We can ever DVR right past new artists on late night talk shows or Grammy telecasts.
Ostensibly, the upside to a user-driven marketplace is that it empowers consumers to drive production of quality products. On the other hand, the user-driven market brought us Justin Bieber.
He Ushered it in, I suggest we ask him to Usher it out.
Internet killed the radio star. No more are we challenged to try new songs by the whim of morning radio and Horndog and the Hopeless. We build our own Pandora which, for all its Designer Impostor ethos (“If you like Adele, you’ll love Schmadele!”), still keeps us in our musical comfort zone. It in its defense, though, it also provides important opportunities for self-reflection. If your Pandora is playing Train, you enjoy being punched in the ear. If your Pandora plays Nickelback, Jesus found out that you drop-kicked that kitten. If your Pandora is playing Styx, I am living inside of your Pandora.
Anyway: I hate to sound so very elderly. While I do want those kids to cut out that damn racket, I see the value in this model. Consumers can reject crappy album filler by damning it with the faintest praise of all: silence. But is all this choice stalling the evolution of pop music? When was the last time popular music got good and shaken up by someone truly new? Sure, I like Lady Gaga but while she’s plenty creative she’s sort of reinventing the wheel, right?
I can’t pretend to have great or adventurous tastes in music. Sure, I can say self-important hipster/Yupster things such as, “Have you heard the new Mayer Hawthorne?” or “Amanda Palmer is my favorite cabaret punk artist.” I am also capable of inserting the words “Velvet Underground” into any sentence to let people know that I am old school, ironic, self-aware, deep, and fun. For example:
- “Please pass the Velvet Underground.”
- “My God! This woman is in labor. Quick! Get some boiling water and secure her Velvet Underground.”
- “Excuse me, sir, but I believe I’m in seat 5A. Oh and by the way: Velvet Underground.”
Paul used to go barefoot as an act of rebellion. Nowadays, he’s just really naive about signing prenups.
In trying to be less corporate, we’ve become the corporation. The inmates are running the asylum (an asylum that, left unchecked, will play “Hungry Like the Wolf” on a 24-hour loop). So, if we’re running the place, where is the next space to force you to listen to new music? Solve that and you will be bigger than The Beatles.
About Molly
