"Lockdown II: Electric Boogaloo" has meant that for the first time in a long time, I am driving to work. As I have a Mazda 2 DJ, this is quite a pleasant experience because unlike the masses in their Turramurra Tractors, I can punt through traffic with joyous abandon.
This time around instead of listening to podcasts, I turned on the radio. Neither AM or FM Radio work particularly well on the train because trains work a lot like a Farady Cage and the biggest noise that you get is RF interferense from the train itself. After being bored by ABC Radio National, ABC News Radio and ABC 702 Sydney which were all doomcasting, 2GB which had Ben Fordham blaming the Sydney Covid outbreak on the Labor Party in a weird case of ragecasting, and rather than listen to Triple M or Triple J for a morning dose of rock, or weird, I bothered to listen to 2Day FM and Nova 969.
Now admittedly because I am sufficiently old enough that probably have less days in front of me than behind me, that means that in theory I should have a natural bias to say that all of the music back in my day was better, despite and in spite of that being demonstrably untrue. In general, time has a habit of eliminating unmemorable dross by making it unmemorable. The general bias is then backed up by both the Confirmation Bias and the Hindsight Bias, working in tandem, because the music in the present has not yet benefitted from the filter of unmemorability removing the unmemorable.
Knowing this from the outset, my expectations were pretty low; which is actually a good thing because it meant that I did not have to feel bad if I didn't engage with the music. Once you assume the mindset that you don't have to be entertained by the music and it is just a thing for analysis, then listening to/ignoring it, is a far easier act.
The songs that are being put out for consumption in 2021 after an era of lockdowns and isolation appear to be mostly anthemic variations on the familiar chord progressions:
I - V - vi - IV
I – vi – IV – V
I - ii - VI - V
vi - IV - I - V
The people who write songs, are very good at selling things that are already familiar and that means selling music which followed well-worn familiar chord progressions. I reckon that most of the Top 40 are variations on these for formulae. Also, it is very obvious that the hallmarks of 2010s music and onwards are still the same: autotune, the use of the supertone.
However what I have found really strange is that the bands and artists who are being interviewed by 2Day FM, rather than using the time and space that the pandemic has afforded them to perfect and improve their music, have talked about their experiences during the pandemic as though it was really profound. I understand that people haven't been able to perform live but not being able to go out has been a common experience of lots of people, not just bands and artists.
If I was a professional musician and I couldn't tour or play live, then I would go back into my back room and either hone my musicianship or use the hurt to produce better writing. What I find absolutely incredulous is that the artists being interviewed by 2Day FM and Nova 969, don't seem to have used the time to have learnt how to play better, write better, or learn basic music theory. It is not uncommon to see five or six credits for the Writing and Producing of a modern pop song and so I wonder how much input that the artist actually has in a song. Of course I am assuming that the artists could play music in the first place; which might very well be a mistake. It is also a mistake to assume that in the age of autotune and pitch correction, that all that many artists can actually sing either.
The solution to all of this is community radio, where the level to entry is lower and the diversity is massive. In Sydney we have these stations just to begin with:
88.1 - 2RDJ
88.9 - Radio Skid Row
89.7 - Eastside Radio
94.5 - FBi Radio
So far I have heard rock and EDM (which is to be expected), country, the blues, and even new jazz. New Jazz? That's a thing? Suddenly I'm listening to 4ths, Suspended 7ths, key changes and modulations, and chord progressions which are amazing.
This leads me to believe that what happened to the music industry is that as production quality skyrocketed, the sound design became amazing and every single vocal can be polished to the point of technical perfection, is that the wrapper got shinier and shinier but they've forgotten to put anything in the wrapper. Pop music which appears on 2DayFm and Nova 969 today is just empty.
Perhaps community radio which isn't driven as insanely hard by the profit motive, is where all of the crunchiness is. It doesn't change the fact that most of what I was listening to is still unmemorable dross but time will as always apply the filter of unmemorability by removing the unmemorable. What I've found on community radio is a kind of rebellion against the commercial stations by playing bands and artists who don't have the best equipment, who might not be able to sing or play as well but who have spent their time going back and noodling around and playing music. What a novel idea.
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