i was reading a piece i randomly stumbled upon that was talking about how our current pop stars seem to have an anonymous, soundless quality and there's a zeitgeistless element to a lot of the music. which i think is an interesting observation, though i do think it was missing a key element: that that anonymous quality in itself is a sort of zeitgeist. cultural industries don't exist outside history - everything has a time and a place. the current cultural moment post-pandemic, post-Trump feels ambiguous and a lot of people feel lost and confused and angry. a lot of modern music seems like it's deliberately there to not aggravate any of those sensibilities in a particular direction. i think that's why so many people have struggled on identifying a particular "sound" of this era so far, and a lot of older music seems more predominant than newer music.
i think the interesting thing about the music space right now is it seems worn down and directionless in many ways. working musicians are in a particularly fragile position financially and the prospects of that improving seem dire (musicians have way less power as a whole than the film/tv unions have). and because of that, there isn't really the material means for an underground scene to take the place of the current "featureless" popular music in the popular consciousness the way 'alt rock' and hip-hop did with pop music in the 90's. current entrenched structures have so much more power and resources and it's hard to imagine those falling without a much larger social upheaval (which is what is sparking stuff like the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike, but i'm not sure will necessarily make its way to other forms of media). working musicians by themselves don't have nearly enough leverage to stand up to Spotify, Ticketmaster, the major labels, or anyone else. so it's a very difficult situation.
the space i sort of vaguely refer to as "underground electronic music" which includes vaporwave is probably the space in music i have any real decent knowledge about, and there's still a massive amount i don't know at all. but attending Electronicon 3 last year i look at how much vaporwave's ecosystems have grown independent of mainstream success in the last several years. this has hinted to me at the possibility of something bigger - like that 90's style blow-up. i really thought in 2019 with 100 Gecs and everything else happening, that that was the start of the new wave. but that didn't really happen. part of this was the pandemic, but i don't think that was all of it. even before it, stuff like "hyperpop" or soundcloud rap were having a sort of nebulous absorption into the mainstream and then mostly dissipating. it just didn't seem to stick around, for whatever reason.
i think the key reason we're not having another really big 90's alt-rock/hip-hop blow-up moment for internet music is that labels aren't taking the chances on promoting new artists in the way they did in the 90's. part of this is the influence of the tech industry's laissez-faire hands-off, let the algorithm decide sort of approach. but the big part of it is: why would they take big chances on new artists? they're making so much money passively as it is from the biggest artists and legacy artists. they don't need to extend themselves much, so they're not going to.
but because of that, there's an increasingly large rift between people at the top's approach + engagement with culture and everyone else below. they're growing further and further out of touch with reality, and it seems like there are not a lot of signs of that changing. so what does happen then? i think that rift, if allowed to keep growing indefinitely, has a potential to create a much more massive upheaval against the powers that be. that's not necessarily for the better, either. so it's hard to speculate exactly how this will all shake out.
right now we've been entering into a world where the whole personality "content creator" media ecosystem is becoming super predominant. and also different forms of media become more like a mixed-together, fluid part of "online culture" in general. these things are more accessible to a lot of people, and feel like they're meeting people where they're at a lot more than many other forms of culture. this has already been happening for awhile, but also not in a way that fundamentally changed a lot of existing power structures so far. a lot of "content creator" people don't necessarily fit well into existing industries so they end up either flaming out or being "success win" business entrepreneurs anyway. but that could also end up not mattering very much soon, especially for younger people who identify far more with that kind of culture anyway.
when passive and not directed in any particular way, this can mean even more intense cults of personality develop depending on who has power and resources in a particular micro-space. i think this is the thing a lot of people are really afraid of, especially when it comes to online far-right radicalization. but it feels even more than a bit concerning when you see how dominant a personality like Mr. Beast is on these sort of prank acts of faux-philanthropy. it's another kind of prosperity gospel bullshit that feels easy and dangerous to buy into when people's lives are becoming more and more precarious and so many greater social dangers loom large that you're distracted from.
but even as this culture seems super dominant now, i think we could also be seeing the beginning of a larger pushback reaction against it and a greater desire for less isolation within particular fandoms or scenes. this is not just because i believe in the inherent dignity of people or whatever, but really primarily because it's one of the only survival mechanism for a lot of people who have not benefited within the current creator-based "content" economy (i.e most people) to not go insane within the current ecosystems. so we could see a larger kind of autonomous online culture with larger lore that grows larger and larger in public consciousness. and i mean not just meme lore, but something that actually contains values and perspectives and meaning to people. especially as work and insight that is excellent gets excluded from the dominant culture, and there is no other place for them. this has the possibility of creating a really massive underground cultural juggernaut in general.
it may seem strange to say right now when things in the world seem very scattered, disconnected and hyper-individualistic - but i do think there's a good potential for a new counter-culture to emerge, in a similar way to the 60's counter-culture. and that could have an effect on not just music at large but pretty much all forms of culture.
ofc this is just all speculation. do i know when, if it does happen? no, not really. a lot of gains that were made in the 60's have been backsliding anyway, so it's hard to feel super encouraged by that in some ways anyway. it's also possible that current institutions of power will see the error of their ways and grant some concessions that mediate this energy. the film/tv industry strikes certainly seem to be heading that way. the problem is i just don't think most people are in that good of a position! and i don't know how else people are going to respond to not really being able to get much out of that bc of complete lack of leverage and power. and larger problems in the world are getting worse and worse, and i don't really think can be mitigated by smaller actions.
anyway i know this is getting pretty broad for just talking about pop music, but i think it's an issue that's hard to ignore when talking about the state of any current culture. and it could really end up defining where pop music goes.
btw the piece i referenced is here. maybe a little mean about Jack Antonoff, who i think of as mostly harmless, but whatever https://www.thedriftmag.com/dream-of-antonoffication/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
