I’ve been wondering about this. My girlfriend keeps telling me that the hottest thing right now is R&B and Rap, and that Rock music is dead. She has pointed out that most of the radio stations here in NYC play Hip Hop and R&B, even Z100. I make that point that rock must still be popular because there’s tons of rock bands and new ones sprouting up every day. Looking at musicians wanted ads, I see more ads for rock music than any other genre. Teeming Millions, what say you?
If you look through Billboard.com’s charts from 10 years ago, usually a good 6 or 7 of the top 10 from any given week were R&B or rap, which is about how it is nowadays. So, if anything, it has been America’s new “pop” for at least that long.
As for the want ads, I would guess that’s just because rap/R&B is not as heavily musician-centered as it is on the performer and producer. Also, some types of rock music can be pretty easy to make. Just ask any of the innumerable pop-punk groups or nu metal acts out there.
I would agree that rap and R&B is the latest form of pop, in that it’s the most marketable and popular. Rock isn’t dead, in my opinion, but the popular forms (again, pop-punk and nu metal) are definitely running thin. That just means that rock as a popular, chart busting medium may not be what it once was, but it’s still alive and there are groups still creating innovative and somewhat challenging music with the ol guitar, bass, and drums.
Both you and your girlfriend are right. Hip-hop and R&B are important forms of pop music at the moment. This does not mean that rock cannot contribute to the pop spectrum; surely the Avril Lavignes, the Michelle Branchs and the Pinks of the musical world prove this.
Whereas in the 60s and 70s pop music tended to have a singular focus, since the mid 80s, pop has utilised many styles. Just because hip-hop and R&B are popular doesn’t mean that rock isn’t any longer.
As for the “musicians wanted” ads, at its most basic form, hip-hop revolves around two components: the dj and the mc. Since there are less elements involved, there is less organisation required to have them meet up, hence less ads. The two also tend to be seperate elements; a particular MC will not always rap with a particular DJ in the way a rock guitarist will tend to play with the same bassist, drummer and singer. Again, the structure is more fluid, resulting in less use for ads.
Sadly, at a technical proficiency level - none of the genres specified in the OP are overwhelmingly challenging. Any fool can buy ACID PRO and start stringing loops together and call themselves a musical talent. And few rock musicians are all THAT much chop. A typical talented jazz muso will outdo a rock muso without much effort.
But it’s the age in which we live nowadays… if there’s a way of commoditising an aspect of popular culture with a view to making a buck, just start counting… it’s just around the corner without a doubt. And teenagers of course are the ripest demographic of all - oodles of pocket money and the weak point of being really easy to manipulate at a marketing level without even being aware it’s happening.
I was in Paris last year at show by a very cool dude by the name of Etienne de Crecy - most of you Americans would never have heard of him because (a) he’s French and you Americans have an unusually virulent French culture filter and (b) because he’s a foreigner, and you Americans currently have an astonishingly insular music environment at the moment. Don’t believe me? Just check your charts. Any demographic, any genre. Hardly any music at all makes it from outside the US these days. It’s a miracle actually that even Coldplay got any airtime.
Why is this the case? It’s a result of the astonishingly pervasive payola arrangements that US FM Radio Networks have with the major US Record Labels. And it happens across every genre, from Urban Hip Hop to Country to Hard Rock. It’s just plain sad - no other way to call it.
Why did I mention Etienne de Crecy? Because he just oozes cool. He represents everything that Hip Hop and R & B SHOULD BE. He’s melodic, and his work is dripping with gorgeous urbane, ultra smooth grooves.
And you Americans will never hear of him, or artists like him. The funniest thing of course is that you’ll continue to live on in the myth that the best music in the world, by default, always comes out of America - and that myth is such crap.
My point here is this - any potential market can be doped, or manipulated for want of a better description. The US Commercial Radio scene nowadays is so overwhelmingly doped (as in no DJ anywhere seems to be able to choose their own playlist anymore) that well… realistically it can’t honestly be held up as an accurate model of popular trends anymore. It’s a cyclical marketing machine now - little more.
Deep down, people still love gorgeous luscious tunes - that’s why Norah Jones has been so eagerly accepted this past year.
Boo Boo Foo, I doubt that many Australians would know Etienne de Crecy - surely ignorance of the man isn’t confined to Americans. I’m not sure that he even has found fame in France, though I am willing to be corrected.
I find it odd that you are so willing to dismiss hip hop and rock, yet hold up as musical zeniths artists like Etienne De Crecy and Coldplay.
While the former makes rather nice, laid back house, he is by no means outstanding as far as electronic music goes, and Coldplay could be considered a good band, if you’d only heard one of their albums (considering they both sound the same) and you’d never heard any rock music from the past ten years.
There is hip-hop out there that fulfills your criteria of “melodic… dripping with gorgeous urbane, ultra smooth grooves.” There is still exciting, creative rock music out there.
And technical proficiency means shit. Any idiot can become, with a little practice, sufficiently skilled to impress anyone looking at technique. But those guys are working as studio musicians or in braindead tribute bands.
It’s people like the Ramones that have the true talent, that of turning skill (or lack thereof) into songs that inspire and leave a lasting impression. There are countless people out there that can become “technically proficient”. To write a great song, whether that song is jazz or rock or hip-hop or deep house is a true talent.
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And yet somehow, we Americans are the egocentric ones. How is your being Anti-American any worse than your (false) belief that all Americans are Anti-French?
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BMG and Sony, two of the biggest “U.S. Record Labels” are German and Japanese companies, respectively.
And the reason there’s so many American acts on American radio? That’s simple. It’s because there’s so many American bands out there. Why would a record executive travel halfway around the world to find a band when there are probably hundreds of similarly talented bands in the U.S.?
Add on top of that much of the popular music outside the U.S. (dance, house, trance) is a niche market in the U.S. and you have your answer.
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So they don’t have independant radio stations in your part of the world? Wait, they do? So why doesn’t America?
Wait… they do! Who knew you could hear things that the “U.S. Record Labels” don’t want you to hear. Someone call the thought police! You can hear international music too. The horror!
Justin_Bailey, while there is precious little diversity in most radio markets around the world, American radio particularly lacks diversity, in part due to Government media policy (you heard of Clear Channel?). Boo Boo Foo has a point here.
Yet, strangely, they can’t find the ones there, either.
Well in my neck of the woods (Rochester, NY) there’s three college stations and a world class independant station (90.5 WBER).
If you want diversity you have to look for it, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.
Heh Heh Heh - I won’t disagree with you there.
My main thrust was to demonstrate how intractably manipulated the US Commercial Radio and Music Industry has become. I simply used Etienne and Coldplay as examples of non Americans going against the trend, as it were.
It’s estimated that 3 million US dollars changes hands each year now via “the Independant Music Distributors” - aka payola agents who introduce new tunes on air in US Commercial Radio.
The naifs amongst us can argue that the preponderance of American artists on American radio is due to the sheer number and quality of American acts, but it doesn’t explain a tune like Maggie May for example. It was b-side on a relatively weak single in 1972 - but in an era when DJ’s were free to choose their own playlists, the B-side called Maggie May started getting played nation wide across US radio stations - whereupon it ended up the classic that we rightfully perceive it to be these days.
My issue is this - a classic (nebulous term that it is) has as much to do with reminding us of a point in time, as it does with being a great song in it’s own right.
There are arguably just as many “classics” being made these days, but the nature of the institutionalised paylists which are in place nowadays means that we won’t ever see a Maggie May coming out of the USA again. Maybe other countries, but not from WITHIN the USA. There might be pockets where a ground movement classic might manifest itself against the trend, but never again on a nationwide basis.
There are simply too many big market forces drowning out the subtle classics in favour of “safe bets” and “safe playlists”.
A case in point: Clear Channel Communications banned “Learn To Fly” by the Foo Fighters after September Eleven. I mean… c’mon… “Learn to Fly”? It’s a positive life affirmation song!
In the U.S, 60% of radio stations are owned by the one company. That’s not diversity, no matter how peachy things are in Rochester, NY.
Interesting, Boo Boo Foo. I disagreed with big parts of your first post, and though your second was saying much the same thing, I pretty much completely agreed with it. I can’t explain it either…
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I think by “talanted” you mean “profitable.” Hell, if singers were supposed to be talanted now, Eminem would never be accepted.
John Mullets, I’m confused. Isn’t saying Eminem’s not a talented singer akin to criticising Jimi Hendrix for his lack of ability with the clarinet?
Umm… I hear what you’re saying. In my first post, I went off on a tangent regarding technical proficiency but I lost the essence of what I was trying to say - namely, that a lot of pretty average musicians make quite a healthy living out of the music scene these days - and more than a bit of it revolves around successful marketing. (R Kelly anyone?)
But, it’s such a sweeping subject it’s pretty easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees at times. In the OP, the assertion was made that (arguably) Hip Hop and R&B etc are the current kings, and that rock is fading from the map etc. And the OP suggested that the number of ads in the classifieds for rock band members indicated otherwise. I was attempting to illustrate that neither genre has a sole mortgage on talent, nor has either genre totally sown up the landscape to the exclusion of everything else. But I didn’t make that very clear unfortunately.
My other point, which for mine is far more important, is the one which I clarified with greater detail in my second post. The analogy for me nowadays is that derivatives of TV programs like Big Brother and Survivor and American Idol etc are such huge ratings killers. They are designed specifically with one goal in mind - to keep legions of viewers glued to a particular TV channel for long enough that they’ll stick around for the next burst of TV ads. The content now means nothing - it purely acts as mindless fodder designed to scare away as FEW viewers as possible.
The same thing has now unfolded with US Commercial Radio. Demographic taste test after taste test works out precisely what sort of “safe bet” tunes can be played on a given station - and the whole goal here is to find a tune which lasts between 3:00 and 3:30 and one which WON’T scare off the listener before the next burst of Radio Ads comes along.
The Major Labels, recognising this trend, now produce more “safe bet” “follow the last trend” music than ever before, because that’s the ONLY kinda music which will get on US Commercial Radio anymore - and so the cycle continues in an ever worse spiral of quality. And the reason? US Commercial Radio remains the single biggest influence on world wide record sales - bar none. What becomes a hit in the USA invariably gains huge market insertion elsewhere.
Ultimately, the only TRUE solution is to do away with payola. It’s generally agreed that US Commercial Radio was pretty free of payola of any sort from 1960 thru to 1983 or thereabouts but then, the under table stuff started creeping in around the Michael Jackson Thriller period. At first it was low key, but as the number of FM stations in the USA has fallen into the hands of fewer and fewer operators, the institutionalised payola has now become the order of the day.
Indeed, The Ramones are a classic example of the non payola period allowing the cream to rise to the top. And yet, I understand that very, VERY few Ramones tracks make US Commercial Radio these days.
Actually, from what I remember, not too many of the Ramones tracks made U.S. Commercial Radio even during their prime in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Nor did Elvis Costello, the Sex Pistols, Black Flag, Kate Bush, and the Talking Heads (until they released “Burning Down the House”). They were all considered “too different” by the powers-that-be that controlled commercial radio at the time to be accepted by a mass audience. The only places where you really heard those artists (and others like them) were on college radio or low-power indie rock stations. Sadly, I think the situation has gotten a lot worse since then.
As for the OP, I think your girlfriend is at least partially right. Hip-Hop (and I’m using this as an all-encompassing term to include R&B and Rap) has probably been the dominant mode of popular music over the last five or six years. As for Rock, I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s dead but it has gotten a lot more difficult trying to find anything innovative or interesting (the same applies to Hip-Hop as well). The decline in music sales and the rise of illicit downloading services I believe reflects the dissatisfaction of many listeners with what’s popular now. (Even though the record companies and U.S. Commercial Radio seem to be listening.)
Excuse me, that last sentence should read:
Even though the record companies and U.S. Commercial Radio don’t seem to be listening.