H/T to a good friend (and pretty great Food/Beverage blogger) for hipping me to this NYT Magazine piece about "where music is going" as viewed through the lens of some current tunes.
Whenever I see long-form music writing, I always think of this quote:
"Writing about Music is like dancing about Architecture"
For the busy people among you, and echoing the NYT piece, I'll give my impressions in list form, with a simple Agree/Disagree/Neutral scale about whether the song in-question "tells us where music is going".
- Introduction - Liked it, good essay by Nitsuh Abebe
- Sorry - Justin Bieber - Disagree
- Say No to This - Hamilton Cast - Disagree*
- I Watched the Film, The Song Remains the Same - Sun Kil Moon - Neutral
- Get Away - The Internet - Disagree*
- One Sunday Morning - Wilco - Neutral
- '06 - Vince Staples - Disagree*
- Hurtin' (On The Bottle) - Margo Price - Neutral
- John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16 - Keith Urban - Neutral
- Consideration - Rihanna - Agree^
- Blue boy - Mac DeMarco - Neutral
- Marvin Gaye - Charlie Puth - Disagree
- The Blacker the Berry - Kendrick Lamar - Agree
- Early - Run the Jewels - Disagree*
- The Colours of Life - CFCF - Neutral
- Hymn for the Weekend - Coldplay - Disagree [editors note: I almost abandoned my review effort when I saw that Coldplay was in the list!]
- Trap Queen - Fetty Wap - Neutral
- Hello - Lionel Ritchie - Disagree*
- Untitled - Pharrell - Agree^ [editors note: this article was written by the most awesome street artist JR... if you're not up on him, you should be.]
- Partitat for 8 Voices - Caroline Shaw - Neutral
- El Taxi - Pitbull - Neutral
- Really Love - D'Angelo - Agree
- Weh Dem Feel Like - Vybz Kartel - Disagree
- Stressed Out - 21 Pilots - Neutral
- Sunday Candy - Chance the Rapper - Disagree*
- Habibi - Azis - Agree^^^
About my ratings: If I was Neutral, I haven't heard the song.
Rating footnotes:
* - I actually like the song :-)
^^ - I haven't heard the specific Rihanna or Pharrel songs, but they've historically been really good predictors of where music might be going, so I've given them the benefit of the doubt.
^^^ - I don't agree that this particular song points the way to anything interesting, but... I do think that music in the US is headed towards a more cosmopolitan and internationally diverse set of influences (basically the way the UK has been forever) so I agree with this song as an example of that trend.
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huh, would you look at that... Pareto-optimal... aka the 80/20 rule... didn't plan that, I swear! |
So, about that premise...
Before you write me off as a crotchety old critic for the apparent harshness of my assessment. I have to confess that I disagree with the premise that we can reliably identify the sign-posts towards the musical future beforehand. It's usually only clear to us in the rearview mirror :-)
I definitely predict getting several blog posts out of deeper dives into some the the NYT selections though!
Yours in music,
- Cliff