Something is wrong with pop. I realise that as a mid 50s white man I am not best placed to judge this, but even I can’t avoid spotting that pop music is not in great place.
Every year I keep a playlist of my favourite songs, either in iTunes or Spotify. I like to be able to go back and remember what I was listening to at a particular stage of my life. For the last few years the lists have been getting shorter and shorter, the same artists year after year. Here is this years, for those who want to hum along while reading:
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t great performers or songs – Taylor Swift’s global tour is proof of that, but that this hasn’t been a great year for actual releases. There were fantastic records by Kamasi Washington, Ezra Collective, Corinne Bailey Ray, Bob Vylan, Caribou, Bab’Bluz, Flying Lotus and Floating Points.
But they are are all records that could have been made 5 years ago, maybe 10.
I realise that every man over 50 since time immemorial has felt that all music sounds the same, but this time it is different. Three studies released this year show how music has changed over the last few decades:
An article this year in the journal Nature shows irrefutable evidence that streaming is making pop music less melodically distinct, more rhythmically homogenous, more generic.
Music is also getting louder, the so called “loudness war” where music is being mastered louder, to stand out from the rest of streaming, but at the expense of dynamic range; removing any distinction between loud and quiet.
Anyone who listens to old recordings of Jazz and Classical music in particular will be struck by how quiet the quiet passages are compared to the noisier ones. This isn’t just a problem for modern recordings; when older recordings are remastered they have their volume boosted to sound more “modern”.
Finally Music Radar report for the year shows the explosion in content led by streaming. More music was released in a single day in 2024 than in the whole of 1989. Unless human creativity has changed fundamentally this increase in quantity is at the expense of quality. Huge amounts of noise is being produced on an industrial scale to feed streaming services, and the rise of AI produced content will only accelerate this process.
Lets just remind ourselves what 1989 looked like:
OK. Maybe not Phil Collins.
The Music Radar report also estimates there are over 75 million music creators in the world, with the number expected to more than double by 2030. The huge volume is partly because streaming gives an artist the opportunity to find an audience, even though most of them never will. But the exponential increase in volume is also because streaming algorithms won’t recommend an artist unless they have a minimum quantity of songs to stream. The Artic Monkeys made it big with only one track “I Think You Look Pretty Good On The Dancefloor”, The Kaiser Chiefs only had “I Predict A Riot” when they broke through. Today they would need an album’s worth of filler before streamers would promote them.
That doesn’t mean that the past was a golden age. More a series of punctuated equilibriums: long periods where pop music followed familiar and predictable patterns, disrupted by moments when the rules were torn up and everything changed.
One of the most dramatic moments when melodic and rhythmic structures become more unpredictable was the mid 60s. It is easy to credit that to the sonic innovations of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, but the same transformation happened across multiple genres. James Brown moved the emphasis to the up beat, and invented funk. Coxsone Dodd and Prince Buster add an upbeat guitar chop and invented ska and reggae. Dylan went electric and so did Miles Davis. Pretty much every genre of popular music went through huge changes.
But these weren’t the only moments when the rules were torn up. Cosmiche/krautrock and P-Funk in the 70s. Punk, Hip Hop, House.
The Beach boys married pop harmonies with the complexities of Van Dyke Parks contemporary composition. The Beatles blended pop, R’n’B with classical music, and music hall. Each added their own druggy sparkle to the mix. But none of these elements were specifically new, they had been around for a long time, waiting to be reassembled.
Funk grew out of R’N’B, so did Ska. They were working with a set of sounds that had been around since Louis Jordan twenty years previously. Miles had been making records himself just as long when he turned electric.
The first punk records came out before Sgt Pepper and the genre had a decade to develop it’s ideas. The Last Poets were rapping 10 years before White Lines hit the charts. Cosmiche/krautrock grew from the post war work Stockhausen did at Darmstadt. Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan were working their magic at the Continental Baths and the Gallery in the early 70s.
The problem in the streaming world is that nothing gets time any more. Any sonic or rhythmic innovation is adopted, widely distributed, and commercialised before it has any time to develop. All recapitulation and no development. The last time I can remember the familiar patterns being fundamentally broken was the breakthrough of artists like Burial and Flying Lotus 15+ years ago.
Since then…. Not much at all.
It may be that this is a period of equilibrium and a great disruption is around the corner, but I doubt it. AI is the perfect tool for Streaming Services to produce huge amounts of content incorporating the latest trends without having to pay humans at all to produce. We are told constantly that new technologies like AI, and the companies who develop them, are “disruptors” shaking up industries. But in this case the development of new technology is reducing the amount of disruption in favour of bland corporate conformity.
This may sound dystopian, but pop music has 2 kinds of consumers. Those who love the music and for whom it is a huge part of their life, and those who just like to have something on while they are in the kitchen or driving to work.
The latter group are by far and away the majority and for them the decline of innovation doesn’t really matter. They don’t really care if the music on their Spotify playlist is old or new, or even whether an algorithm chose it for them. It just has to fulfil some basic criteria of rhythm and melody and off you go. Streaming services are ideal for these customers who will be fed a blend of AI generated content sprinkled with the latest big hits, and some classic oldies. Most of them won’t even notice the difference.
The former group are the ones who explore and champion new artists, collect music, and make up the passionate fandoms. The size of Taylor Swifts fandom shows that the lack of innovation in the industry doesn’t stop passionate fandoms forming.
Within those fandoms the music’s creator is as important as the music itself, as if artists and writers were themselves part of the consumed entertainment. Since Covid people have become more and more interested in experiences, in actually being there. The Taylor Swift mega tour is probably the high water mark of the new experience economy. The Oasis reunion won’t be too far behind even if it has more in common with the kind of 60s,70s or 80s nostalgia package tours that play provincial theatres. Big artists old and new will find new ways to sell experiences to their fandom. Merchandise will also become an important part of consumed entertainment, as an identifier of fandom. Some people will even buy the t-shirt without buying the music.
And if fans aren’t getting their fix of new music there is a growing industry of writers and documentary makers to feed the fandom. It’s been a better year for books and TV about music than actual music.
Secret Public by Jon Savage is an epic history of the impact of the LGBT community on pop. A particular highlight is the story of how the gay scene shaped the early mod scene, which in turn gave rise to Bowie and Bolan who took those gay roots and turned them into glam. Equally amazing is the rise of house from the early DJs in San Francisco bath houses and New York lofts.
Richard Norris’s slimmer autobiography Strange Things are Happening follows his journey from curated psychedelic reissues (which is where I first came across him) to Acid House and Top of the Pops. Comes with a playlist of his greatest works
Re-sisters by musician and pornographer Cosi Fanni Tutti is partly a biography of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire, part history of Margery Kempe, the 15th century mystic visionary, and part autobiography. Totally engrossing.
Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism and the Soundtrack of a Generation traces the rise of Two-Tone the hybrid of punk and ska that was one of the most creative forces of the late 70s and early 80s. I had to use the calculator on my phone to check that it was really 45 years since the first singles came out on two-tone. I was one of many starting secondary school that year who decorated our school bags with the two-tone logo.
This isn’t confined to non-fiction; Ben Myers’ new book Rare Singles is based on the Northern Soul scene. This is one of Ben’s lightest books, similar in tone to the Offing. A one hit wonder from the 60s is paid to appear at a Northern Soul night on the North East coast for one final payday.
Red Menace by Joe Thomas is the second part of a trilogy that began with White Riot. Like David Peace and James Ellroy Thomas mixes real life and fiction to great effect. Paul Weller returns as a character , but this time events have moved on from Rock against Racism to Red Wedge and Live Aid. Some people will find the blurring of reality and fiction difficult, but it works brilliantly to tell the stories of how the Metropolitan Police used Spy Cops to infiltrate progressive social movements.
On TV the Stax Soulville documentary was essential watching as the label staggers from triumph to disaster and back to triumph again producing amazing music along the way. Every episode was a joy
The BBC annoyed a few people with This Town a drama based on the rise of Two Tone, which created a fictional band, rather than stick to the strict facts. I loved it, even though there is an essential problem with fictional bands – they are all rubbish compared to the real thing.
The hostility towards This Town illustrates the downside of fandom. Some fandoms are driven by nostalgia and have a tendency to pedantry and assumed privilege. This is a particular problem with the fandoms around particular historical eras like Two Tone, Punk or Northern Soul for example. At times they can be more conservative than the squares they are apparently still rebelling against.
I say they. Really I mean me.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-64571-x
PS
If all that music is a bit too modern for you here is a playlist of 60s and 70s stuff I put together over the summer, of older records I had purchased over the first half of the year.
Alternatively you could watch this Tiny Desk performance by Doechii which is so good, I couldn’t pick a favourite of it: