John Harris is whinging about the state of popular culture again. Let’s see what he has to say about pop music.
The idea that the people’s music was ever defined by built-in obsolescence now looks absurdly quaint. Last year’s highest-earning US tour was by the Police, while over here, the world was seemingly tilted off its axis by the reunion of the three surviving members of Led Zeppelin. The new year brought news that an end-of-the-pier extravaganza known as Here & Now is on to its seventh tour, filling the UK’s indoor arenas with crowds eager to see 80s throwbacks such as Bananarama and Rick Astley. Should you want to relive the 90s, take your pick from back-together bands such as the Verve and My Bloody Valentine, or look at the lists of this year’s most eagerly awaited albums - among them offerings from Oasis, REM, Madonna and Lenny Kravitz.
The point he’s making is that the recycling of popular culture has now reached such a state that reunions and re-releases now make up an increasingly large proportion of industry output, with original content becoming increasingly scarce. I think he’s correct. Let’s take a look at the best selling albums of last year.
1. Amy Winehouse, Back to Black
2. Leona Lewis, Spirit
3. Mika, Life in Cartoon Motion
4. Take That, Beautiful World
5. Westlife, Back Home
6. Eagles, Long Road Out of Eden
7. Kaiser Chiefs, Yours Truly Angry Mob
8. Arctic Monkeys, Favourite Worst Nightmares
9. Timbaland, Shock Value
10. Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad
Topping the list we have three albums of commercial pop. Leona Lewis is the most obviously manufactured of the lot, seemingly constructed in a factory somewhere in Essex and given the gift of life by the godlike touch of Simon Cowell. Amy Winehouse’s album sales were driven by a cynical record company re-release to capitalise on her front page spiral into depression, drugs and self-harm. I’ve heard people speculate that she’s not really in trouble and all her antics are contrived by her record company to increase sales. I think this is bullshit, but the fact that the allegation is being made is an interesting reflection on the suspicion in which the industry is now held by the general public. I don’t think anyone could manufacture Mika, as it’s hard to manufacture something that shit. ‘Big girl, you are beautiful’ he sings, like a drunken middle manager leering at his secretary during the office Christmas party.
After that, we have two re-formed nineties boy bands, and one re-formed seventies dad-rock band. Then, two commercial indie bands, one general pop album by a producer with the help of guest vocalists (a la Mark Ronson’s Version) and one commercial R&B act.
So what does this tell us about the record-buying public? Well, albums 1 to 5 will have been purchased by pre-teen/early teen girls, or their parents. 4 & 5 will also appeal to those who were pre-teen girls ten years ago and want to re-live their obsession. Number 6 is clear middle-aged man fodder (the album itself is atrocious, by the way.) 7 & 8 will also be aimed at middle-aged men, but also boys in their early teens and a smattering of other demographics. Number 9 I’m not so sure about, as I don’t remember ever seeing anyone purchase it at all. Number 10 will again be the preserve of pre-teen or early teenage girls.
The point is that the records which sell the most are those purchased by kids or their parents, despite the fact that the people who listen to the most music and regularly go to gigs are late teenagers, students, young workers and young professionals- say, 16-25 year olds. Because the aim of the industry is to make money, they promote music which appeals to the demographics which do have money (middle-aged parents) or have pester power over those who hold the purse strings (pre-teen kids.) This is the music which makes up the end of year charts, which consequentially under-represent the people who are most obsessed about music.
So where are the 16-25 year olds getting their music from? The answer is, the internet, and usually illegally. This demographic is the most computer literate as well as the poorest, so when faced with the choice of going without music in order to pay off the student loans or jumping on a bitorrent site, the answer is obvious. This is what the industry are talking about when they say that illegal downloading is killing music. More accurately, illegal downloading is killing the music industry. There are still plenty of great albums being released (I recently highlighted a whole bunch of them) but these are rarely albums which sell well and therefore rarely albums which are promoted heavily by the industry. To a certain extent this has always been the case, but the effect is becoming more pronounced as downloading becomes more popular.
Thus the impression that the industry is in stagnation is created by the industry itself. To get a better picture of what is happening in popular music we need to look outside the industry and find ways of measuring popularity other than sales. Last.fm is a website which tracks the music people listen to on their computers. Because we can assume that the majority of people who use the site use their computers or MP3 players as their primary listening devices, we can also assume that such people are computer literate, in the core 16-25 demographic and therefore probably pirate a lot of music.
Let’s take a look at the most listened to tracks last week on last.fm for an idea of what is popular but missing from the industry charts. The conclusion is obvious- the new Radiohead album is fucking massive. But although it was released last October, it’s nowhere to be seen on the end of year lists produced by the industry, because it was released by the band themselves through their website and not through the music industry. If last.fm gave us suffecient data we could work out a list of popular albums from last year which far better reflected the public’s taste in music. We can’t do that because last.fm wont give us data by the year and it only records individual tracks rather than albums. But we can use it to to get a rough idea of the albums which people are listening to at the moment, and it paints a much more positive picture than the album charts released by the record industry. Out of the albums released in 2006 or 2007, Radiohead are joined by Muse, Foo Fighters, Amy Winehouse, the Killers and Kanye West in the popularity stakes. This list of artists indicates much less musical stagnation than the industry’s top ten album chart.
Until the discrepancy between the music sold and the music listened to is addressed, popular music will continue to over-represent the taste of kids and middle-aged parents, and continue to appear stagnant. The good news is that good pop music is not really dying, it’s just not getting the recognition it deserves. The bad news is that there is no prospect of the music industry becoming more reflective of the taste of 16-25 years olds without some major upheaval. As pre-teens and early teenagers they spent their money on whatever rubbish the industry shoved in their faces; now they’re pissed off about that fact. They recoil from the stagnant odour of recycled and manufactured music promoted by the industry, so the industry concentrates on the other more monied demographics, and mainstream music becomes even more stale.
Something of a vicious circle, then. I kinda get the feeling that we’re stuck in the mid-seventies at the moment, waiting for something new and refreshing to come along. What it will be, I do not know.
