A friend of mine tagged me in an artticle titled “Why It’s EDM’s Fault that Outkast Flopped” – to summarize the article, (found here) Outkast recently suffered a really lackluster reunion on stage at an Electronic Dance Music event – and the author points to the idea that OF COURSE “lyrically-driven hip hop” can’t compete with modern spectacle because kids today are pretty much just looking for bright lights and bass. I’m simplifying, but the RESPONSE to the article from other tagged friends mostly smacked of “kids today!” and “modern music sucks” and my favourite “we do not live in a world of passionate people”. What bullshit! What idolization of the music WE grew up on.
My response was too long for Facebook, but I posted it anywho, but has larger implications – especially for my profession.
Hrm – a lot of this is about context though. I think that griping about lowest common denominators and the dumbing down of pop music is sort of missing what’s happening here – we’re talking about a massive “hippest of the hip” celebration of youth anddance music… right? Why is ANYONE surprised that Outkast didn’t push their buttons? Not to put too fine a point on it, but that’s music from when most of the kids at such a festival were babies – if not in utero.
Yeah – I was one of the “cool” kids in high school who was listening to Led Zeppelin and the Doors – but most of the people around me weren’t – and they definitely wouldn’t have “gotten it” (and definitely had their opinion about who was the “cool kid”). What the author refers to as “generational disconnect” isn’t really much more than that people get older, and new stuff moves in. I think that that trend is moving faster and faster and whatever’s in the limelight now moves out of it swifter… but just like 10 years ago, 20 years ago and 30 years ago – there’s stuff on the radio that’s good stuff, and stuff that’s not.
The idea that “the kids of today not understanding something if it’s not accompanied by a massive light show” is what the author seems to be saying – but I think what’s more accurate is that “when people go to something expecting ‘a’, they’re usually not good at being excited about ‘b'”. I agree with the headline of the article if not the complete body – either the festival or the management got swept away by nostalgia, and didn’t think through what they were booking and who their demographic was… it’s like when my friends try to show their kids Star Wars… without context, of COURSE it doesn’t work.
Do I like where pop music is? Depends on what pop music you’re listening too. There’s stuff I like, stuff I hate, stuff I have contempt for, stuff I’m blown away by. One of the most wonderful things about our modern access to audience is that there ARE fans for just about anything and everything out there. We’ve just got to be intelligent about accessing it. Sideboob’s just ONE way of doing it. Spectacle’s another. Do what you WANT to do, and then be smart about finding the people who Love it as much as you do.
