It seems like the current generation music is just untasteful and shameful. There is a visible lack of talent, creativity and skill. Music today seems to be more about the dazzling visuals, hipster fashion and sleazy dance moves. Meaningful lyrics are, let’s face it, pretty much non-existent.
As someone who grew up in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s listening to a wide variety of categories such as ballet, concerto, symphony, blues, rock, indie and folk, I was spoilt for choice. There was just an incredible array of talent and a society that recognized and appreciated such talent. At the time, you didn’t need to follow just one type of genre. Each genre was producing brilliant and refreshingly new labels.
Music has changed over the decades, as it would be expected to. It has been periodically shaped by politics, wars, human rights and of course, substance abuse. The Vietnam War inspired Lennon to compose his greatest single Imagine. There is the cold war- inspired Bob Dylan classic A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall. Events forced the creativity out of great musicians and resulted in masterpieces.
We don’t see any of that happening today. But why? The world has enough, if not more than before, issues. We are faced with climate change, terrorism, ever-increasing threats to free speech, nationalism and, if that wasn’t enough, Donald Trump. Protests are increasing and a lot of secular western nations are facing new threats to liberalism. The world isn’t shorn of problems, so that cannot be an excuse.
Perhaps creativity is just not there? Musicians all the way from the 16th century used to seek for inspiration and motivation to awaken their inner creative self. We only need to look at examples such as Beethoven, who was famously deaf and willing to fight against the odds to prove a point, or Stevie Wonder, who was blind and yet used the handicap to spur him on. There seems to be none of the inner struggle and search for inspiration today.
Composition with instruments is probably at an all-time low. Guitar and keyboard sales have been reducing worldwide, to mention an example. And why won’t they! The dream of kids three or four decades back to wield an instrument, be it guitar, keyboard, harmonica or a flute, doesn’t exist anymore. You don’t need to struggle to learn an instrument if you have modern concepts such as auto-tune to electronically synthesize music.
The concept of albums, carefully composed and painfully structured to create a plethora of varying songs, is gone. With the “one-hit” craze, all you need is to work towards that one song that will propel you to fame and money. Chances are that you just follow the existing trend and appease the masses.
In short, we think these are the reasons why music as we knew it has been lost to the times. We are optimists, and hope that one day we will get back to the soul-seeking, motivation-driven and creativity-laden music that we grew up with.