With a new decade beginning, it's natural to speculate about the future of music. What exciting developments are around the corner? More worryingly, are there exciting developments around the corner?
On Dissensus, the latter question inevitably transforms into another one: will there be a new music-based youth subculture? The assumption, of course, is that these questions are essentially the same. Fresh, exciting music is the domain of The Kids. If we want new and mindblowing sounds, we look to them and no one else.
In this series of posts, I won't explicitly argue against the above claim. (It's very compatible with the history of pop music, after all.) But I will try to offer an alternative perspective that I find vastly preferable to that one.
I'll do this by outlining what I see as the archetypal stages of an artist's development. This progression isn't necessarily appealing to everyone--let alone viable for everyone in a practical / material sense. But I think it's the path that results in the greatest possible body of work from the artist, and for that reason I see it as aspirational.
Why is this envisioned path incompatible with the youth subculture-centered view above? Because it suggests that exciting new music doesn't in fact belong to the kids. At least, not entirely. It suggests that the moment in which an artist is enmeshed in a larger cultural movement isn't the only stage at which their work can surprise and matter. In fact, it's what you do after that initial moment has faded that can have the most value.
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