Heave Media

Who Is Buying What?

Drew looks at popular music throughout the last few decades, and wonders about the success it garners.

I've had a thought I've been formulating for a while. Well, it's a question really, about perception, history and reality. I wonder what your feedback would be like. At the current position I find myself in life, I wonder how my generation will go down in history, and like so many history books previous, I can only assume that it will be the overall mass opinion that gets logged into the annals of time, if not outright the historian's opinion or version of how history went. For example, we read according to Billboard's top songs from 1957, that Elvis, Pat Boone, The Everly Brothers, Ricky Nelson, etc. were the most popular bands of that decade. Because either they were played on the radio the most, or they sold the most albums, or maybe because they were just the best, they could have even voted on this kind of stuff. But either way, those bands and individuals went down in history and remain cemented into history as talented and popular musicians. But when I asked my father who his favorite band was, and he mentioned a band I'd never heard of, and had quite a bit of trouble finding any documentation of their existence. I haven't come across very many people who even know who Sauter-Finegan is.

I have more thoughts on actual documentation of history than I do music. But let's keep it simple and stay on the subject of music. How many kids compared to the mass majority are called or considered "indie" kids. It seems like everyone is either in denial of things, they and everyone else do, or history is just a weird representation of what most people who had anything in common did together because everyone was so completely different.

I’m completely uninterested in reading any "conclusive" argumentation about the reality of what has happened in history at all. I’m positive there's always some other way of telling it and someone else's opinion and perspective to how things really were. So let’s assume that Elvis, Ricky Nelson, The Everly Brothers and Pat Boone were the best that 1957 could give us. What is their equivalent today?

If you go online to Billboard's top albums of 2007. The votes are in people. It's right here:

1. Britney Spears, Blackout (Jive/Zomba)

10. Josh Groban, Awake (143/Reprise/Warner Bros.)

This tells me there is an entire world of people that I’ve never met, nor come across, nor would understand, that is so vast and so large that I am completely unaware of, despite the fact that their popular opinion overwhelms anything I listen to - as well as anything anyone I know listens to. Who listens to this music? If this is the popular music that represents my generation, I feel like I am sorely misrepresented.

The question behind all of this, that I want to ask, is if we lived in a different era but were the same individual we are today (which is impossible, I realize, but play along with me) would we still like popular music at all? I'm completely uninterested in all of the music that is popular today. I don't care about Young Jeezy or Rick Ross or the Now That's What I Call Music compilations (they have twenty seven of them now, and probably will have more by noon tomorrow). Yet these comprise the songs that everyone seems to be listening to, but who is everyone? And who are they to write my history book? I want to know about the history they aren’t telling us about.

Posted by Drew Danburry on May 02, 2008 @ 12:00 am