losthighway wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2023 11:09 am
It's fascinating. Many things you share seem like they'd be huge on the radio but I'm fairly sure they aren't. It would seem we live in an era with meticulously crafted pop/R&B that hovers somewhere underground even if that's not its goal. Is that true?
Indeed!
I can't say for sure how the situation now compares to that of earlier times, which things are able to be raised into prominence, what kind of breadth is allowed... There is a clear difference for myself in how I am able to encounter this kind of music as opposed to 10-15 years ago, where it was basically synonymous with radio and MTV, and consequently that special kind of curated presentation - and also being absolutely everywhere, incessantly repetitive... Currently I am not in a situation where I am assaulted by music in this way, and I haven't been for a long time. So everything that I do come across is of my own choosing. My relation to it is very different, and this likely influences my appreciation.
And yet I know that there is radio still, there are charts, there is a mainstream of some sort... It's just more difficult to determine what is to be counted there, or how popularity is to be understood. It's pretty straightforward when there is that song on the radio/TV that everybody knows, and when that is the sole means of contact; I would suspect it's otherwise when, as now, youtube and spotify are the more common means of engaging with music - at the same time as radio still has a stable presence in for example being played in public places. It's hard to know what the ultimate effect is.
But when I occasionally look at the spotify top 10, for example, the result tends much closer to what one would cynically expect - predictable, gimmicky, streamlined, timid, depressingly bland.
So it's clear that there are tiers of popularity and exposure. Out of the things I like, going by youtube views, the most popular ones are H.E.R. and SZA, with a couple of songs each of 100-150M views, for the latter one of almost 200M. More common is one song of around 50M (they had a viral hit), and the rest rather lower than that. In comparison, among the top names - Beyoncé, Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift (all extremely mediocre to me) - there are several songs of 1-4 BILLION views.
I also don't know about those songs that might emerge from some unknown name but become huge hits over a couple of months, and what the general character of those are.
All in all, despite these uncertainties, it's undeniable that there is a movement of shifting the center to the performers, as in them becoming a more active part of the process. Lots more involvement from performers in songwriting and/or production. More focus on their own musicianship. DIY promo and self-release is quite common, at least in the early stages of someone's career. Parallel to this, considerable variety and inventiveness, even sometimes in instrumentation - live bands have become a more common sight.
It's possible ofc that I am here underestimating some pop singers of earlier generations - there is bound to be pioneers for some of this.
