Much of this is about the technological changes in the 20th century that allowed for new sounds, new fashions. You don't get the miniskirt without elastane being invented, so women can wear tights rather than stockings.
And many industries just run out of innovations. The design of the bicycle was about done in 1930.
The most exciting things right now, culturally are probably tiktok and YouTube. It's what is the teenage thing. It's democratised filmmaking and distribution and all sorts of things are being created.
Charlie Brooker once said the only art form still evolving is video games. And that was more than a decade ago now. Not a gamer so can't comment about those, but it struck me as essentially true, and getting ever truer. No one is a bigger fan of 90s Simpsons or HIGNFY than me, but how are they both still going in the 2020s?! Nothing is allowed to just die anymore.
Now it can't possibly be the case that music as a whole has reached its full stop. Yet it does seem like a long time since we had a truly original new sound. Tbf, I'll concede that this is a very Western-centric lament.
And besides, I'm not a music buff. All the tunes/bands I like have come to me second hand through films, TV shows etc. Yet in those mediums too, there has been minimal innovation of late. For example, a typical edition of MOTD in 2024 is almost identical to one from 2004. Yet go back another 20 years to one from 1984 and it's barely recognisable - and one from 1994 in between is very different to either - apart from the theme tune of course. Same goes for fashion and clothing.
So many factors responsible for it all. Gonna have to read those books you recommend. John Higgs' book on the KLF briefly touches on this theme as well (amongst many others - I'm particularly taken with his view that the early 90s was a strange untethered nowhereland, after the Cold War but before the information age). I might suggest that Dummond & Cauty and the acid/rave scene is the last proper counter-cultural movement.
Thanks. And thank you for the interesting blog. Plenty going on in Higgs' book (including a cameo appearance from my beloved Northampton, alongside some Liverpool music lore - I saw you were a Reds fan although no idea if you're from there). He recently published a 10th anniversary version with a sort of 'commentary track' but haven't yet got round to that.
In an interview in the 10s, when trying to deflect questions about if/when oasis reunion, Noel asked why people were so obsessed with them doing that and where were this generation’s Oasis- to your point
There's no way to prove this of course, but three of the biggest international trends in the West must be related: decadence/lack of innovation as outlined above, declining birth rates, and the decline of Christianity. All three trends have to do with living for the moment, or in the past, and not making new things as investments in and symbols of hope for the future.
Because I’m old - 73 - everything reminds me of everything else. The thing I loved so much about my parents was their joy and optimism during the first landing on the moon. It was just so exciting.
Nobody has to 'work for it' anymore. Not bands, who can produce stuff in their bedrooms at will as opposed to having to hone their craft through years of gigs before they got near a studio, nor listeners who can flick between songs at the press of a button instead of having to make a discerning choice of which album to buy having saved up their money. There is, therefore, little distillation, and hence fewer drivers to innovation and excellence.
Erudite and hugely well informed post on a relatively minor symptom of the trend you describe (I can’t help feeling the supposed mania around getting the tickets was a bit of a confection). I liked the first two albums, but looking at that photo I just want to tell them to cheer up. They’ve bagged all that loot, and can probably break up again on the eve of the tour with another “row” which would only reinforce the myth around them.
When it comes to attitudes to Rock music, people seem to divide into three camps:
· those who dismiss the whole lot of it as undifferentiated trash - as if Western music’s deep reservoir of creativity somehow ran dry in the middle of the 20th century.
· those who tend to mostly just like the latest stuff.... and Rock’s back catalogue quickly recedes from their conscious memory.
· and lastly, those like me who think that most of it has always been trash but the very best does deserve a place in a kind of Classical Rock Cannon.
Frustratingly those of us in this last camp never seem able to agree what should be included in this Rock Cannon and, for this reason, I’ve left it ‘till late in the essay to give any examples of my own choices.
For most people Rock music is a big thing in their lives in their teens and twenties; from then on interest wanes. Those for whom this phase ran its course at anytime in the 60’s to 90’s tend to think of themselves as having been around for the best of it. If the thee billion plus hits on Spotify’s most streamed songs is the measure, you could argue that it is now bigger than ever. But nobody seriously believes that any of them will go down in history as great ones. So what will? What songs will endure when all rock’s ephemera evaporates into the mist of time? Read on.....Spoiler: no Oasis in there!
Personally, I wasn’t able to get around it. I remember watching “Everything is a remix” by Kirby Ferguson and reading the blog post "Centuries of Childhood". They offered interesting counter-perspectives to post-modern critiques à la Fisher. I basically left the conversation with the idea that critiques of modern conditions may be too simplistic; they often miss out on ways things are better or the same. But, I'm still not sure. Recently I’ve started reading some Nick Land stuff and Bataille which touch on modernity and post-modernity from a slightly different perspective. (I learned that Land and Fisher were even part of the same research group CCRU)... so yeah I'm still trying to discover and understand as many perspectives as I can concerning our times. Hard to synthesize everything
Truly good point on new worlds. My explanation of declining birthrates: the place looks full and does not need to be peopled. 19th century British immigrants in America had double the British birthrates. Simply better economic conditions? Maybe. But I think they had a feeling that this great empty (well... "emptied"... ) stretch of land absolutely needs to be peopled.
I don't think Nietzsche's will-to-power is entirely wrong, just strangely formulated and usually misunderstood and misused. There is such a thing in living organisms that an energy that wants to expand outwards. The most obvious version of it is reproduction, but there are other kinds, the animal that fights for territory, the tree whose roots break the asphalt, and humans have learn to channel this into many activities.
This needs room. We are at a historic population maximum on every level, global, national, city. Everything feels full. We don't want to add to the crowding, hence the low desire to reproduce. We also feel our kids would not have a good life, because they would not have room for this expansion of energy.
But do we really want to start with living on Mars? I mean, even the most inhospitable part of Earth is more hospitable, the bottom of the oceans, Antarctica etc. And we don't even have to go there. Whole villages are going empty, because of urbanization. Why don't we start there? One can buy a rural house in Italy, France and I would assume, many parts of North America for nothing, because no one lives there and currently no one wants to. Why think about living on Mars before we think about living in a charming village?
I see this completely the other way around... the "subversive" 1960's hippies, 1970's punk, 1980's metal were fake rebels, because they did not do a single thing for other, just posing like a rebel themselves. It was all very selfish. Rave was not even rebellious on the posture level, they just liked drugs. But todays how to even call it, social justice, or LGBTQ, or feminist or whatever subcultures are genuinely about supporting other people.
Much of this is about the technological changes in the 20th century that allowed for new sounds, new fashions. You don't get the miniskirt without elastane being invented, so women can wear tights rather than stockings.
And many industries just run out of innovations. The design of the bicycle was about done in 1930.
The most exciting things right now, culturally are probably tiktok and YouTube. It's what is the teenage thing. It's democratised filmmaking and distribution and all sorts of things are being created.
Thank you for reading and for the thoughtful reply. You make some good points.
Charlie Brooker once said the only art form still evolving is video games. And that was more than a decade ago now. Not a gamer so can't comment about those, but it struck me as essentially true, and getting ever truer. No one is a bigger fan of 90s Simpsons or HIGNFY than me, but how are they both still going in the 2020s?! Nothing is allowed to just die anymore.
Now it can't possibly be the case that music as a whole has reached its full stop. Yet it does seem like a long time since we had a truly original new sound. Tbf, I'll concede that this is a very Western-centric lament.
And besides, I'm not a music buff. All the tunes/bands I like have come to me second hand through films, TV shows etc. Yet in those mediums too, there has been minimal innovation of late. For example, a typical edition of MOTD in 2024 is almost identical to one from 2004. Yet go back another 20 years to one from 1984 and it's barely recognisable - and one from 1994 in between is very different to either - apart from the theme tune of course. Same goes for fashion and clothing.
So many factors responsible for it all. Gonna have to read those books you recommend. John Higgs' book on the KLF briefly touches on this theme as well (amongst many others - I'm particularly taken with his view that the early 90s was a strange untethered nowhereland, after the Cold War but before the information age). I might suggest that Dummond & Cauty and the acid/rave scene is the last proper counter-cultural movement.
Thank you for reading and for the thoughtful reply. That Higgs book sounds interesting. I’ll add that to my list.
Thanks. And thank you for the interesting blog. Plenty going on in Higgs' book (including a cameo appearance from my beloved Northampton, alongside some Liverpool music lore - I saw you were a Reds fan although no idea if you're from there). He recently published a 10th anniversary version with a sort of 'commentary track' but haven't yet got round to that.
Im from Wigan but live in Liverpool.
In an interview in the 10s, when trying to deflect questions about if/when oasis reunion, Noel asked why people were so obsessed with them doing that and where were this generation’s Oasis- to your point
There's no way to prove this of course, but three of the biggest international trends in the West must be related: decadence/lack of innovation as outlined above, declining birth rates, and the decline of Christianity. All three trends have to do with living for the moment, or in the past, and not making new things as investments in and symbols of hope for the future.
Great article- thought provoking. Was shocked how many Gen Z ers that I know tried for oasis tickets. A lot of it down to FOMO I think
Thank you
Oasis: 2 great albums, then nothing
Sadly.
Bullshit
The George Formby analogy is a lol.
Tour de force. Pete .
Because I’m old - 73 - everything reminds me of everything else. The thing I loved so much about my parents was their joy and optimism during the first landing on the moon. It was just so exciting.
Thank you Tam. The older I get, the more things remind me of things that have gone before.
Nobody has to 'work for it' anymore. Not bands, who can produce stuff in their bedrooms at will as opposed to having to hone their craft through years of gigs before they got near a studio, nor listeners who can flick between songs at the press of a button instead of having to make a discerning choice of which album to buy having saved up their money. There is, therefore, little distillation, and hence fewer drivers to innovation and excellence.
Erudite and hugely well informed post on a relatively minor symptom of the trend you describe (I can’t help feeling the supposed mania around getting the tickets was a bit of a confection). I liked the first two albums, but looking at that photo I just want to tell them to cheer up. They’ve bagged all that loot, and can probably break up again on the eve of the tour with another “row” which would only reinforce the myth around them.
Thanks Ian. Thats very kind.
When it comes to attitudes to Rock music, people seem to divide into three camps:
· those who dismiss the whole lot of it as undifferentiated trash - as if Western music’s deep reservoir of creativity somehow ran dry in the middle of the 20th century.
· those who tend to mostly just like the latest stuff.... and Rock’s back catalogue quickly recedes from their conscious memory.
· and lastly, those like me who think that most of it has always been trash but the very best does deserve a place in a kind of Classical Rock Cannon.
Frustratingly those of us in this last camp never seem able to agree what should be included in this Rock Cannon and, for this reason, I’ve left it ‘till late in the essay to give any examples of my own choices.
For most people Rock music is a big thing in their lives in their teens and twenties; from then on interest wanes. Those for whom this phase ran its course at anytime in the 60’s to 90’s tend to think of themselves as having been around for the best of it. If the thee billion plus hits on Spotify’s most streamed songs is the measure, you could argue that it is now bigger than ever. But nobody seriously believes that any of them will go down in history as great ones. So what will? What songs will endure when all rock’s ephemera evaporates into the mist of time? Read on.....Spoiler: no Oasis in there!
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/imagine-theres-no-muzak
Thank you for reading and the food for thought in the reply. Thanks also for posting that link I’ll give that a read now.
Mark Fisher anyone?
Hauntology, innit. I need to get round to reading ‘Ghosts of My Life’ really.
Personally, I wasn’t able to get around it. I remember watching “Everything is a remix” by Kirby Ferguson and reading the blog post "Centuries of Childhood". They offered interesting counter-perspectives to post-modern critiques à la Fisher. I basically left the conversation with the idea that critiques of modern conditions may be too simplistic; they often miss out on ways things are better or the same. But, I'm still not sure. Recently I’ve started reading some Nick Land stuff and Bataille which touch on modernity and post-modernity from a slightly different perspective. (I learned that Land and Fisher were even part of the same research group CCRU)... so yeah I'm still trying to discover and understand as many perspectives as I can concerning our times. Hard to synthesize everything
Truly good point on new worlds. My explanation of declining birthrates: the place looks full and does not need to be peopled. 19th century British immigrants in America had double the British birthrates. Simply better economic conditions? Maybe. But I think they had a feeling that this great empty (well... "emptied"... ) stretch of land absolutely needs to be peopled.
I don't think Nietzsche's will-to-power is entirely wrong, just strangely formulated and usually misunderstood and misused. There is such a thing in living organisms that an energy that wants to expand outwards. The most obvious version of it is reproduction, but there are other kinds, the animal that fights for territory, the tree whose roots break the asphalt, and humans have learn to channel this into many activities.
This needs room. We are at a historic population maximum on every level, global, national, city. Everything feels full. We don't want to add to the crowding, hence the low desire to reproduce. We also feel our kids would not have a good life, because they would not have room for this expansion of energy.
But do we really want to start with living on Mars? I mean, even the most inhospitable part of Earth is more hospitable, the bottom of the oceans, Antarctica etc. And we don't even have to go there. Whole villages are going empty, because of urbanization. Why don't we start there? One can buy a rural house in Italy, France and I would assume, many parts of North America for nothing, because no one lives there and currently no one wants to. Why think about living on Mars before we think about living in a charming village?
Thank you. Agree.
I see this completely the other way around... the "subversive" 1960's hippies, 1970's punk, 1980's metal were fake rebels, because they did not do a single thing for other, just posing like a rebel themselves. It was all very selfish. Rave was not even rebellious on the posture level, they just liked drugs. But todays how to even call it, social justice, or LGBTQ, or feminist or whatever subcultures are genuinely about supporting other people.