Hey James,
As always thanks for the feedback. I’ve been thinking about it all day and here are some of my thoughts.
a) You’re right about the Jagged Little Pill thing, but I think that nothing lasts that long anymore in popular consciousness, but that doesn’t mean they’re still not incredibly meaningful for us. We just get into and out of things much quicker. Think about popular Netflix shows that get put online and are all the rage for a few weeks and then everyone’s moved on from them. They’re still incredibly important and have everyone talking. And thank God album cycles aren’t dragged out for years at a time anymore! I’m actually going to write about this topic in a few weeks I think. It’s related to this article, but has different implications into the impact of hit songs past and present.
b) I think that the idea that the internet is now balkanized is old-fashioned. It’s no longer the case. People are as aware of popular hashtags and memes on a near universal level now. And sure things change fast, but at that moment a song that would have been a marginal hit in the past is THE song for at least a few days when they go viral.
c) As far as your where is our Rumours of 2016, that I’m not sure. My inkling is that now we absorb and move on much faster now so that even if there aren’t any Rumours at the moment, we have dozens of albums every year that we get obsessed with. Hypothetically speaking, if there were 30 HUGE albums in 1996, but 300 kind of big albums in 2016, does that mean 1996 is more important in terms of albums? We’re definitely in a quantity vs. quality thing with music in general, and I think that’s ok because there’s still tons of quality now.
d) You might be right about the aspect that we don’t share that listening to classics in bars thing, although I’m skeptical of that too. I guarantee people at clubs all throughout the country regularly are listening to six songs from Views at all times. But I think in our social media world (as cliched as that sounds), we don’t require that shared listening experience in public. Our shared experience is talking about things on the internet that we’re listening to in private and I don’t think that diminishes the experience.
What do you think?
