When music sounds meaningless regardless of genre, when the ancient artists begin to produce previously unreleased or unsuccessful old music, you should be worried. This all came to me when on the radio I heard one of the former Beetles, Sir Paul announce the release of an album composed of music he’s folks enjoyed listening to… then I asked myself, why would that find a market in this time and age, when there is so much variety to pick from? My theory is that he is hoping his name will get the songs on to the play lists, and then the shuffle button will get it heard. Now, as we all know, there is no such thing as a bad song in the same way as there is no such thing as an ugly girl. You just need to listen to it on repeat for about a week and it will become your favourite track; your theme song.
Okay, a better analysis is that music becomes more appealing to you when you find that it is in sync with your emotions. Also it becomes more appealing if the music evokes feelings and emotions that you yourself feel you are intrinsically incapable of expressing. The question I want to consider is; why can’t the contemporary artists satisfy this need? I don’t believe that it is because they are not in tune with the listener’s needs, feelings, or emotions; but because the listeners are themselves uncertain of their own mindset.
The greats of long ago (like Bob Marley, Beetles, the POP and Rock stars) were working with defined categories of a buffet of people, (the race cards doesn’t not play anything into it). These include oppressed, frustrated, confused, ambitious, wilful, and reckless people, successful people; hopeful people even, and even more, but the one common denominator among them all was their certainty on prospective outlook or the lessened uncertainty in comparison to now.
This all rests on the economic outlook and its grimness. Whether or not you have a lot of cash, there is a hint of uncertainty about your economic outlook, and this at a time when all the preachers (please, again I’m not talking about religion from any angle at all), preacher like the hip-hop artist like Lil’wayne and 50 cents preaching/selling inspiration and motivation and believe-in-yourself oratory, or even “get-money!, get-money!” choruses of some of them; the RnB and POP artists preaching love, whether its love at first sight or the pain of a heartbreak or whatever it was that that 22 year old 2011 POP sensation ADEL was try to say with “…I wish nothing but the best for uuuu….uuu…”.
These messages mean nothing to people who are filled with uncertainty, you have motivation, and yet many motivation vehicles seem to be making more money for them than for those that are being helped. The love messages are being over shadowed by the failed relationships; failed relationships by “you’ll get over it” or “there is no such thing as love” messages, or even the more controversial “it’s HIM not HER that you love” messages. Even the controversial messages aren’t so controversial anymore.
We now find ourselves oversaturated with uncertainty, but none of these artists, in my opinion, know how to package this into a song. They themselves may be experiencing uncertainty on what music to produce. That is why Eminem sounds the way he does now, why songs like Katty Perry’s, “keep-on daanciiingtilll the world ends”, sound so appealing. Although I must add that that appeal is only short lived because we are all uncertain about this apocalypse thing, we are not too sure any more whether it has been averted, whether it its eminent, or whether it is all just hype.