Frankly, I think we need more magic in music these days. IMO, popular music is becoming increasingly vapid and formulaic these days, what with all these American Idol people singing in perfect pitch and turning in these dull, lifeless performances.
I hate this “Feed Me, Feed Me!” attitude. Pop music is blisteringly healthy at the moment, there’s a dizzying amount of fantastic new music, always more than can be taken in. Only you have to actively look for it.
This is the way it works: most of what is perceived to be the great music of a particular year isn’t heard by the majority of its potential audience until well after its initial release. Most people see the year pass as mediocre, only discovering the hidden gems and talented artists/bands the following year, or possibly even later. This distances them from properly associating the material with the year in which it was released. As time goes by, however, the decade becomes associated with these works and artists, and the forgettable ones become… well, forgotten.
So lets think back to all the rubbish we listened to in the eighties and nineties, and then remember what it was like to first listen to The Pixies, or 808 State, or the Wu-Tang Clan, or Melt Banana, or Lightning Bolt. Music is healthier now than ever – the UK top ten currently has Kylie, Ice Cube, Destiny’s Child, Green Day, Girls Aloud and Morrisey, the top twenty has Natasha Bedingfield, Nelly, Snoop Dogg, Pharell, Eminem and Jay-Z. All of who have produced fantastic music, even if their current chart offering isn’t up to par (IMHO). That’s over half of our current top twenty, and the fact that it’s Christmas can’t fully account for such an overwhelming glut of quality. Now, Cube, Destiny’s Child, Green Day, Morrisey, Snoop, Pharell, Eminem and Jay-Z have all been hugely influential throughout their careers. They may not be to your taste, but the manner in which they’ve changed the musical climate is pretty indisputable.
Without exception I’ve found people who bemoan the current state of pop music to have generally lazy attitudes to music and a pretty impoverished record collection when it comes to recent music. We live in a world where hip hop has taken over, where bizarre leftfield R’n’B is play on mainstream radio and in clubs, people are responsible for their own business decisions and content and sound. If you aren’t into it that’s fine, but don’t moan that there’s no good music around.
I’ve worked with music in a spiritual setting for the vast majority of my life, and after a while it became utterly transparent to me: I knew that if I played a specific rhythm, then a specific fill, I would get a very specific and visible result from the nine-hundred or so people in attendance. And then, I’ve seen exactly the same effect at a concert in which there was supposedly no intended magic worked into the performance. The result: either there is no real magic, or all music is magical. I reckon probably both answers are true. But there’s certainly no real added effect imbued by creating the music with magical intent.
At the end of the day, I’ve never heard a record that’s supposedly been intentionally worked with magic that’s moved me nearly as much as Millionaire by Kelis. Or December 4th by Jay-Z. Or Chewing Gum by Annie. And the latest Kylie single fucking rules. |
