I took almost two weeks to write this…
I had a brief idea… (basically just the title)…
Couldn’t write it immediately…
and then I lost the inspiration…
But… !! A few days ago, I was reading a column by author Rachel Brodsky which made me realize something:
What is considered to be “old music” is still popular and loved by the Americans. According to this author, there’s not much space for new music.
This surprised me. I would have thought that younger audiences are the main consumers of streaming services.
Every day of my life I realize that there are differences among the generations. This is apparent especially when we talk about musical tastes. I used to think that it was a matter of flexibility, to just being open to listening to different genres.
For example, I have a coworker who is 11 years older than me. She listens to the same radio station every day, a station that only plays current hits. While I admire her ability to learn all those awful lyrics from the contemporary songs, she is about two steps behind when it comes to using streaming apps.
On the other hand, I could easily be in the “old lady yelling a cloud” category when I don’t like the new trends. But I’m open to listening to new music. And, I like what new artists such as Dua Lipa, Doja Cat and Lizzo are doing.
When I was listening for the second time to About Damn Time, many things came to my mind.
I think the concept of “Adult Contemporary” has been one of the worst innovations in the music industry.
Why have we separated music into groups and ages? I think this decision has created a kind of generational abyss.
I recently revisited the Number Ones Hello Dolly column at the mothership. Reading it made me realize just how unique and wonderful was the artist Louis Armstrong. He was a legend. When in his 60’s, he had the chance to be at Number One – for the first time in his life. (No matter that it wasn’t for his best song or even his signature tune…)
This leads me to think about that horrible word. The word that especially haunts women in their 40’s: ageism:
Most of us have read about female artists that broke records for hitting number ones at certain advanced ages. This is something that is seen as a rarity.
The Kate Bush case is one of those rarities. Reaching Number One in her native country, also reaching the number four peak in the U.S. Even if some projections that I read on Twitter about the song starting to lose momentum are right, I think she’s already won anyway.
Personally, I would love to see someone like Janet Jackson or even Madonna have a late career success like Bush’s. But this seems improbable, especially in Madonna’s case, because some fandoms (Lady Gaga’s as an example) hate her too much… (And we have to admit: some of the things that she has done lately aren’t helping either.)
I hope from now on, things start to change. Fans, the music industry, radio programmers – all involved will be open to listening to songs from different years and decades. In this way, maybe the hidden gems will get their chance to be known.
Because if talent is ageless, why it has have to be put in boxes?
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Agreed, entirely. Interesting timing … in a few short days at the mothership we’ll be talking about the song that forced its way onto Top 40 radio despite its singer being far beyond the demographic. I didn’t think that could happen today, and then “Cold Heart” proved me wrong.
I think this “Running Up That Hill” phenomenon will happen again for other songs, at least for a few songs sometimes. Maybe Louis Armstrong will go #1 for “Heebie Jeebies,” which would be insanely cool.
But I don’t think the current media landscape encourages a deeper, broader engagement with the past. Technically, everyone has all this great old music at their fingertips…but how to know about it or care about it? TV or movie soundtracks seems like the most promising way to break through, or maybe through a TikTok clip or something. Those who break through are more likely to be a trickle rather than a flood.
For certain driven listeners, though, maybe that trickle will be enough to start a long and promising musical education, as they search and search and come across more great music they had never thought about before. Maybe that’s the best we can hope for.
One of the things that constantly baffles me about the US charts is how many different genre based charts there are. Mention of Adult Contemporary doesn’t really mean anything to me, I get that it signifies music for and / or by the more mature performer / audience but who and what decides who falls into that category? Is there a dividing line where one year an artist is on the mainstream charts and next year they’re into AC?
There are genre based charts here but in the main any reference to the singles charts means the top 40.
Completely agree that there shouldn’t be any need to categorise and put people into boxes. If they’re flood enough age doesn’t matter. The fact there are so many more outlets now for listening and reading about music means that so there’s so much more diversity but also that it may create the issue that people get stuck in their lane if they aren’t encouraged to explore elsewhere. There’s always been genre specific music magazines but the Internet takes that to the nth degree.
You hit the nail on the head, about there being so many choices and ways to access music, there’s no mass exposure of any specific artists like there seemed to be back when I was growing up. I follow the charts, but I could honestly only identify a grand total of three Drake songs by ear out of the scores that he’s charted with. A large part of that is the narrow range of current hit music I listen to, and the fact that the pop “Top 40” latches onto a small handful of songs for months on end. You have to make a concerted effort to seek out new music (including, to Edith’s point, new music by older artists), something the average Joe isn’t likely to do.
They’re exactly my thoughts about the Top 10 in the Billboard 100, sometimes there are songs that are stalled like forever and it becomes impossible for other songs to pass the 11th peak.
And it happens to me almost the same thing about Drake’s songs, they are not something that I actively look for.
And the Drake conundrum continues with the most recent album going #1 immediately….
I don’t care if I sound like I’m a grumpy old fart broken record, but how is he so successful and maintaining his popularity? I’ve never, ever come across any Drake stans or armies – do they even exist?
I’m totally sticking to my theory that Drake has built 8 server farms throughout Nunavut and the Yukon, and all the streaming numbers are generated from there. That many actual people aren’t actually listening to his songs that much, are they????
If I recall correctly, there was a minor controversy when American Top 40 started using the Adult Contemporary chart at some point. For me, that’s not the reason why I don’t recognize about five out of the last six number one hits, but maybe it is for other The Number One Hits devotees. I was neither into Shania Twain nor Bell Biz Devoe, but maybe it would have been a healthy thing if everybody knew about both artists, instead of either/or.
I’m rooting for “Hammer to Fall” to reenter the chart, a should have been top ten hit.
Around this time, I was in a indie-rock bubble. That’s why I wasn’t aware of neither the pop/rock nor adult contemporary charts.
Hear, hear Edith. Just as people should not be labeled and categorized, neither should music.
I’m not around any kids these days, so I have no idea how they are picking up on current releases, and I have often wondered, but frankly it’s not on society to spoon feed them – the technology is abundantly available to go exploring for music that’s new to them. They’ve gotta take the initiative and look for it themselves, just like we did growing up. Right? Those of us in our 40s allowed anything shown on MTV to be available for us to listen to, we constantly scoured the radio for anything that grabbed our ear, that hasn’t continued to the kiddos of today?
I’m still holding my breath for the Archers of Loaf renaissance. They were about to get a resurgence underway when COVID hit… now they need some sort of meme moment to get that long overdue recognition. Unfortunately their fans are all crusty old guys like me who wouldn’t know a meme from a TikTok…
Do you have the Icky Mettle reissue? It has liner notes by Robert Christgau. He theorizes that Archers of Loaf had the bad luck of being on the wrong label. I missed Eric Bachmann’s entire Crooked Fingers period, until recently. I can’t recall any music sites reviewing his post-Archers of Loaf output.
I don’t have that reissue, but I have had all the Eric Bachmann discography at some point, Archers, Crooked Fingers, Eric Bachmann solo and even the Barry Black albums. Christgau may have a point about wrong label, wrong promotion, I dunno. Makes sense to me.
I ran into Eric and talked with him after a CF show (maybe 2003?) and asked him what he did when he wasn’t on tour or recording. At that time, he said he had a street food cart selling Cuban sandwiches I believe in Denver. Point being, he tried for decades but never got to live off his music full time, despite being an excellent musician and astute lyricist. It’s a shame for him and for all of us too. Would that this world had room for Archers or Crooked Fingers in its mainstream…
Seriously, listen to “Here Come the Snakes” and tell me this isn’t underappreciated genius:
https://youtu.be/qLYi_nkbTis
Whoah. That’s Greg Dulli-quality. I don’t use Wikipedia enough. I didn’t know about Barry Black. After the out of the blue “Street Fighting Man” single, I thought a new album might be in the works.