Commentary On Popular Music

#320: Two Main Problems With Popular Music

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A recent New Yorker article by Amanda Petrusich on music genres (Who decides what genre defines a song?) got me thinking about popular music again.

I'd previously described ten things that I think, over the years, turned popular music into a pale shadow of its former self.  

This post will add two things that I've decided should be included.  In fact, the more I think about it, the more central I think they are to popular music's decline.

1. The Emergence Of Radio And Then TV

It's hard to imagine how exciting Radio and TV were when they first appeared.  We're jaded with constant access to tunes.  The first radio listeners likely couldn't believe the wonder of discombobulated sound.  They would've gathered 'round and listened intently to the heavenly broadcasts.  Similarly, TV would've been unbelievable.  Watching would have involved all of one's attention, and be an escape from the mundane.

And what happens when one listens to music intently over many years?  One's musical IQ increases.  And conversely, as music becomes a background beat, and we move on to other things?  Our average 1Q decreases.

2. The Exposure To All Popular Genres

The centralization ofAM radio music in American life, and the popularity of all-genre, Top 100 radio stations, meant that listeners became familiar with different styles and beats.  In other words, we were all cosmopolitans before we retreated to our own backwater as popular music splintered.

Nowadays, because we often select our own music, it can easily become walled-off from the cross-currents that characterized the era of commonality in music.  We download a few favorite artists.  Our music platform figures out what genre we like, and offers us more of the same.  We select a particular kind of music: 'easy-listening', or 'warm' (that last one, from Petrusich's article).  The result: music becomes formulaic, and increasingly sterile.

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As I've described in detail at the above link to my top-ten article, the solution I've stumbled upon to the second of these problems is to listen to a DJ--a musical genius one might say--who plays nearly every genre imaginable. Do I listen with as great attention as generations before.  I doubt many do.