As you get older it is natural to feel nostalgic at times. For me, music will often provide a prompt for it, so the news that rock music is beginning to disappear from the listings on our iconic summer festivals makes me a little despondent, while also reinforcing the sensation of ageing.
Once upon a time an award ceremony such as The Brits would have been compelling viewing; would have been packed with enthralling acts and a must-see event. Nowadays, if I’ve heard of any of the artists I’d be hard pushed to know what genre they purveyed, still less come up with a song title.
I accept that rapping is a skilled, cutting-edge, universally popular style of music. I am just unable to find anything to enjoy about listening to it. There also seems to be a veritable explosion of confident, young girls plying their songs, using the internet to publicise themselves, singing in [to me] identical, jerky, husky tones. Until the appalling massacre at the Manchester Arena in May 2017 I’d never heard of the singer Ariana Grande and I’ll admit to being amazed she had such a huge following. This is what happens as you age; you get out of the loop.
Some time during the last twenty years large swathes of popular music got hijacked by music moguls and star-makers. This imbues any creativity with a cynical, contrived quality, which is not to say that some talented individuals have not gained success from this route but that flooding the market with cloned and honed hopefuls does nothing for the music market.
History shows that often, when musical trends become tired and tedious a new, innovative, anarchic style will emerge to attract both fans and appalled detractors. This happened during the seventies when glam rock had run its course and become a parody of itself. In a movement that both shocked and appalled the mainstream and entranced those wanting change Punk arrived, spitting and snarling its grubby, vomit-laden way into pop culture. Now those born-to-shock Sex Pistols numbers like God Save the Queen, Anarchy in the UK and Pretty Vacant have become classics.
Of course devotees of rap music would say the same of their favourite style. And it would be fair [though sad] to say that in the next ten or twenty years, those ageing rock musicians who’ve dominated the stages for the last twenty or so years will [like me] be shuffling off to the immortality of Classic Gold. So maybe it is time to give over the stage to rap artists, grime artists and whatever is due to come next. Just please, please don’t let it be some karaoke-style competition winner from a tedious, Saturday night reality game show. And I’ll respect any genuine attempt at a new musical genre-but don’t expect me to like it, or to have heard of it!