If you listen closely enough, you can almost hear the collective tsk-ing of middle-aged men and women in Bruce Springsteen Tour of ’85 t-shirts all across the amber waves of grain. They’re all shaking their heads and scolding their children’s perturbing EDM and dubstep music with the classic line, “They just don’t make music like they used to.”
But have you ever wondered what their parents thought about their music? And what their grandparents thought about their parents’ music? It’s predictable, a domino effect, a never-ending stream of putting down the contemporary musician by comparing them to past artists.
For anyone who pays any slight attention to music and critics nowadays, it’s clear that now, more than ever, music has purchased a one way ticket to Shitland—or, so says the wise old sage in the Bruce shirt. Why is this? Does this cliché hold any glimmer of validity, or does it come from the feeling of nostalgia that’s hardwired in all of us? Why can’t our elders put their kids through listening to “Live and Let Die” in the car after school without actually hearing McCartney’s bit of wisdom?
“I think older generations long for music from the past and boast of its higher quality, because it’s what they’re familiar with,” said Kara Delemeester, a sophomore English education and creative writing major.
The truth of the matter is that quality is entirely subjective. When looking to Joni Mitchell or Patti Smith, it’s easy to say, “Wow, I wish artists of our time would write lyrics like that!” And yes, I admit to being guilty of throwing around these exact same accusations from time to time. But Mitchell and Smith were writing for their generations the same way artists like Beyonce, Lorde and Kanye are writing for ours.
Another popular accusation persists of our here-and-now artists: It’s nothing but an industry. And how could anyone deny it? But what most fail to consider is that, drumroll please, this isn’t a new thing. Frank Sinatra, the king of swing, the Man himself, only wrote two of his own songs, and other music idols like Elvis Presley and Diana Ross weren’t responsible for writing any of their own music either. So we should probably take a step back before we completely discredit the artistry of modern music while longing for the great songwriters of Christmas past.
“Well I think modern music most definitely has value. Every generation, or every decade for that matter, creates a different form of music that contributes to the overall history of the evolution of music,” said Erica Hobar, a junior psychology major.
American music has completely evolved from the porch-sitters of the Delta blues to the computer gurus of early techno music. And with every new wave of genre, there’s a part of us that longs for what’s already been accomplished for older music. I’m sure without a doubt that psychedelic rock brought about nostalgia for doo-wop, that soul and funk fans were scoffed at by country music listeners and that heavy metal veterans shook their longhaired heads at the kids of early hip-hop.
And so it’s this vicious cycle of discrediting new modern music because, god forbid, it sounds a bit different from what our parents knew while growing up. While it’s hard to suggest that all modern music is of substantial quality (you have to admit, some of it IS pretty bad), it’s still entirely unfair to juxtapose it to the classics.
What if one day, say 10 years from now, we’ll all be saying, “Whatever happened to EDM and lo-fi indie rock? They don’t make music like that anymore.” It’s a Golden Age syndrome that we’ll probably never be able to cure.