Recently, the cultural excitement surrounding a new music project or artist seems to be gradually waning. While projects released by artists like Playboi Carti, Clipse, Bad Bunny, Lady Gaga, Fakemink or Geese were received well, it feels like the cultural reactions to these albums were all contained within bubbles. For those who listened to Let God Sort ‘Em Out or Getting Killed, there might have been excitement resulting from the listening experience, but not everyone heard these projects and the reactions to these albums were limited to their niches.
As I think about the way that music exists to us today in a broader sense, I’m left with a feeling that we have retreated inward, that we are unable or maybe simply unwilling to allow music to exist across cultural boundaries. Nostalgia is the driving force of modern taste, as people cling to a communal feeling by returning to a time when art was created to be shared. However, this approach has had its share of negative consequences. As a result, artists have no motivation to cross cultural boundaries and push the conversation surrounding music in a positive and innovative direction.
Personally, I’ve found comfort in the explosion of indie music that happened in the early 2010’s, and I’m not alone. Songs like Kids by MGMT, Tongue Tied by Grouplove and Shake It by Metro Station have all become songs that I have returned to to feel something that I think has begun to fade. As the 2010’s progressed, music trends moved toward the Soundcloud Rap era, with the explosion of artists like Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti and, while not from Soundcloud, Travis Scott, dominating the music scene. When talking to my peers, in fact, Hellgate seniors have a hard time thinking of an album that has united people in our age bracket since Scott’s Astroworld.
Certain artists might still be able to connect the masses. In a discussion I recently had, Frank Ocean is a name with enough anticipation behind a release to cause indiscriminate excitement upon an album drop, but this is due in large part to the same nostalgia for a collective listening experience previously discussed. While Frank Ocean is undeniably one of the most talented artists working currently, I suspect that if he released music more regularly, even his level of talent wouldn’t be enough to break the bubble of his dedicated fanbase. Before A$AP Rocky dropped an album this year, a near similar level of hype was built around him releasing. However, the product of this wait didn’t make the impact some expected. Unfortunately, a similar thing could happen with Ocean even with the collective anticipation behind a new project being so high. The truth is that without a change in the ways that we listen to music, a wedge will continue to be placed between people and their music.
I have thought a lot about the causes of this cultural shift. To me, the rise of streaming services is predominantly to blame. The fact that everyone is able to access a library of hundreds of millions of songs is both a blessing and a curse. Personally, I am incredibly grateful for the colossal archive of music that streaming platforms are able to hold, preventing millions of amazing songs from vanishing entirely from the world. However, people are now incentivized to pigeon-hole themselves into categories of music they are familiar with. A culture of music posturing has dominated the streaming space as well, with many people, including myself, falling into the bad habit of basing their approval of a song off of the approval they will get for listening to it. Songs with minimal streams, or from bands that are seen as cool to listen to become what makes a song appealing, as online culture attacks the mainstream “bop” from another angle, influencing people to develop social media presences catered to certain aesthetics.
In the past, songs that played on the radio were cool, rallying cries for generations to bond over. Now, a song entering the mainstream can feel more like a death sentence. A song becoming popular on TikTok often leads listeners to be upset as they begin to feel lame for listening to it. In the past, I have taken songs out of my rotation when I heard them on TikTok. I realize now that this kind of behavior is a new, bizarre phenomenon that exists antithetically to the idea of pop culture that all kinds of art are based on. The genesis of countless music genres in the 20th century was only made possible by the fact that those types of music became incredibly popular. Nowadays, a concept like Beatlemania seems impossible. I think about the way that scouse rapper EsDeeKid was ditched once he entered the mainstream last year, or the way that many fans of indie music have turned on Cameron Winter after the monumental success of Getting Killed and can’t help but imagine that if the masses of teenagers that obsessed over The Beatles existed today, the band would be made a meme in the same way these artists have been. I, too, grew annoyed hearing uninformed takes about some of my favorite underground artists when they became popular last year, and I even fell victim to the hyperbolic statements made about a record like Getting Killed in my own review of the record, but it is a harmful thing to be so hostile toward genuine excitement about an artist. While I sometimes selfishly want to keep an artist for myself, I would be so much happier if the music that I loved was being sung from the rafters, being crafted into a cultural touchstone that everyone can celebrate.
The beauty of the radio exists in this idea. While limiting the choice that a person might have over the music they want to listen to, the platform of the radio forced people to share music and develop a community around art. In a similar vein, subscriptions to Netflix and an endless list of other movie and TV streaming platforms have begun to kill the blockbuster and eliminate the draw of the theater experience. When typing “why are movies,” or “why is music” into the Google search bar, one of the consistently highest autofill options finishes the phrase with “so bad now?’ The hopefully obvious truth is that great albums and films have never stopped being made, but that there is rarely a spotlight placed on great art now that it is up to us to be our own tastemakers. Since it is more accessible, the sentiment of degrading quality that film has developed exists to a lesser extent in music. However, I predict that more and more people will simply think that good music is no longer being created.
Art exists to be enjoyed by the masses, not to be gatekept. In fact, the act of discouraging your favorite artists from becoming mainstream harms them financially, especially in the context of tiny margins of profit musicians earn. This obsession with a personal and curated musical style rather than a collaborative and supportive effort toward the celebration of great music is leading people to write off the largest art form in the world more and more every day. Put simply, it is a selfish thing to rank the uniqueness of your personal portfolio of music over the advancement of the art form as a whole.
While I don’t want to return to the days of the radio, where many of the older and lesser known artists that I adore today would never have been presented to me, the culture surrounding music consumption needs to change. When we close ourselves off to the emergence of music as an anthemic and defining force in our lives, we erase vital elements of culture and abandon the cultivation of a discussion around art. My happiest memories seem to be tied to music. As a child, Gotye’s Somebody That I Used to Know framed the time I spent with my mom in a beautifully simple light. In middle school, I became enthralled by Travis Scott’s Sicko Mode, a song I even now almost replaced with a cut from Astroworld that was “more niche.” Even for the decades before I was born, 90’s rock, 80’s pop or 70’s folk music defined the feelings I associate with these eras. However, when I look at my time in high school, I’m afraid that my memories will replay with deafening silence.
