So in 10 years, this is how i'll look back at this decade of music. MJ released Invincible, Mariah Carey came back from the brink to give us EOM, Britney shot to superstardom then fell dramatically, Crunk and Southern Hip Hop becomes popular, 50 Cent and Eminem reach their peak in fame, Emo music suddenly becomes trendy to every kid under 16 in Australia. Theres plenty more and to everyone their memory of the music of this decade will differ to mine of coarse (since i'm not a rock fan). But to say theres crap music these days just shows ignorance to the wider picture.
this sort of debate should really be about commercial vs undergound/independent - sure there's amazing music around today, but most of it not available to the wider, and especially young, audiences.
many young, potentially great artists, musicians and producers are being shunned by bigwigs for a very important reason and that is their demand for full freedom to
creative control. i think the record industry's dominance over the creative process has grown to an incredibly silly extent. sure it's important to keep a fine line between business and art but not like this.
if the business was like that when a critically-doubted 20 year-old boyband member proposed such a contemporary album like Off The Wall, debuting on a label like Epic, i bet you it would never have been accepted without them inserting their giant ****s in the soup and making it sound like the Bee Gees crossed with the Village People.
from a pop/urban perspective, you can go listen to many artists and experts voicing their opinions on this matter like music-geek ?uestlove of the roots who is really outspoken about this.
and this is something Joni Mitchell said in a Rolling Stone interview in 2002:
"So how do you feel when some people say the whole business is going down the crapper?
I hope it all goes down the crapper. It's top-heavy, it's wasteful. It's an insane business. Now, this is all calculated music. It's calculated for sales, it's sonically calculated, it's rudely calculated. I'm ashamed to be a part of the music business. You know, I just think it's a cesspool."
a cesspool is exactly what it is right now, especially in times where we haven't seen pop dominance by massively talented, authentic and generally all-round accepted artists like we had with Stevie, Mike, Prince etc.
that will be something we all have been waiting for.. We need some good ol' cookin'..
