Fading Pop
20th March 2025
ZMan examines the culture.
If you look at the pop music charts for the last decade or so, one of the things you will not notice is the modern nature of the big bands. The reason you will not notice how bands have changed is that there are few bands on the charts. In fact, bands have just about disappeared from popular music. The few bands you see on the music services are those from a bygone era. The biggest selling bands are often those that no longer exist or still kick around playing for old people.
Instead, what you see are solo acts or the occasional dance group assembled like a Broadway play to perform to manufactured content. Even the “boy band” has faded from the scene for the same reason bands have disappeared. That reason is it is much easier for the music industry to create and produce a solo act than to find a band and then develop it into a top attraction. The same is true of “boy bands” which require some degree of organization and management.
Of course, as the doors to bands have closed in corporate music, the selection pressure for musical acts has changed. If a young person has any musical talent, she is better served investing her time in imitating the corporate acts, using software tools readily available to everyone now. She then posts her material to YouTube, hoping to get a following and then maybe catch the eye of corporate. Learning to play instruments and perform in front of a crowd is pointless.
We have the technology.
I quit listening to popular music in 1985, and have never regretted it.