Recession pop is making a comeback
what’s remarkable about this particular pendulum swing is that after centuries of wrestling with hierarchies of taste, the cultural stigma that has always come with indulging in bad taste has disappeared.
time • Welcome to the Era of Unapologetic Bad Taste
There’s been a kind of flattening of the zeitgeist, leading to a monoculture that is understood across generations.
The Face • Our obsession with nostalgia is driving a trend revival spiral
But critics and music historians hate sentimental love songs, so these artists and songs struggle to get a place in the history books. Transgressive rockers, in contrast, enjoy lasting fame . . . right now, electronic dance music probably outsells hip-hop. In my opinion, this is identical to the punk-versus-disco trade-off of the 1970s. My predicti
... See moreChuck Klosterman • But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past
is making money by gobbling up the rights to old hits and pumping them back into our present. The result is a markedly blander music scene, as financiers cannibalize the past at the expense of the future and make it even harder for us to build those new artists whose contributions will enrich our entire culture.