When the music died. Dec 06 '11    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music Revelation [Digipak] by Journey From $12 Machine Gun Etiquette by The Damned From $40 The Bottom Line No, music isn't going to get any better soon. Here's why. Something to contemplate before I launch into this: http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/12-extremely-disappointing-facts-about-popular-mus And it's not likely that music will get better either. Sure there have always been manufacture pop acts, novelty stuff, groups with less talent selling more than groups with real talent. That's been true since popular music existed. But has it been at this level before? I think not. This leads to a question: How did we get here?There's no one particular event that led to this sorry state, no one particular artist or album you can lay the blame on. But if we're going to do that, let's pick one that's logically deserving: The New Kids On The Block. Since the 1980s it's become common to look down on that decade as one dominated by pop, bubblegum and synth dominated one-hit wonders. While that decade did produce its share of fluff, it did have a significant amount of good pop music. And good pop music never hurt anybody. The fact is that pop in that decade offered a sense of eclecticism that trumps most of what pop has to offer today. There was room in pop for the innovation of Michael Jackson, the boundary pushing of Prince, the edgy rock of The Police, classic hip-hop like Run-DMC and LL Cool J, eclectic elder statesmen like Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon, R&B artists like Anita Baker and Luther Vandross, even room for older rockers like Aerosmith to make a comeback. There was pop music that adults could listen to and enjoy, music that was way better than adult contemporary pablum like Celine Dion. In 1989 along came The New Kids On The Block. They may have been a group of 5 teenage boys with (somewhat limited) personalities. But the real success story was producer Maurice Starr. Starr, who previously created massively successful R&B group New Edition and lost control of them when they split from him to sign with MCA, set out to create a white pop group that could appeal to middle (read: white) America as opposed to simply the urban crowd. And he succeeded. Not only did the New Kids end up outselling (the more legitimately talented) New Edition, they went on to become the biggest sensation in pop. 1989 and 1990 belonged to the New Kids. By 1991, the party was over for the New Kids. Their place as the kings of bubblegum was taken by the likes of Color Me Badd and the R&B audience was swept away by New Jack artists. Yet that wasn't the last we would hear of these pre-manufactured bubblegum artists. It's important to note that the New Kids were not the first manufactured bubblegum group or the first group that was more about product than music. Anyone who actually thinks that has never heard of the Banana Splits, the Osmonds or a whole host of others. Yet in a way they were the group that made it safe for image over substance, that made that into a legitimate part of the music industry. Before the New Kids, most pre-fab groups would have a relatively short self-life. They'd be big for a few months or a year or two, then fade out until the inevitable reunion tour. But here it was different. Upon disbanding in 1994 at the thought of the Grunge explosion, the New Kids started the snowball effect that led to where we're at now. About a year after the New Kids went their separate ways, a British boy band called Take That who were once considered the British New Kids had a big pop hit in America with "Back For Good". Two years later, just as Alternative Rock was going back underground, pop music came to be dominated by the likes of the Spice Girls and Hanson. This begat the likes of the Backstreet Boys and Nsync, which begat Britney and Christina, which begat the likes of the Pussycat Dolls, Kes$ha and so on, which snowballed into where we are today with bogus Michael Jackson ripoffs like Justin Bieber battling it out with Lady Gaga and Katy Perry for space on Top 40 radio. So throughly did The New Kida make the world safe for themslves and their particular brand of manufacture bubblegum that they were able to reuinite in 2007-2008 and sell out stadiums. The reunion in 2007 of Led Zeppelin, while ill-advised, did not get the same attention. Which leads to what may be an unfair generalization. But is also a legitimate question: Who would yu rather have in charge: someone whose definition of a classic album is Thriller or someone whose definition of a classic album is Hangin Tough.*  Not helping matters any is the American Idolization that's continued unabated since 2002 or there about. While American Idol has produced some legitimately talented artists (Jennifer Hudson) the overall effect of it is contributing greatly to the artistic death of R&B and the dumbing down of pop. When you have talented artists like Anthony Hamilton, Kelly Price, India Arie and Angie Stone being overlooked because they can't figure out how to make what they do sell in the Midwest well that's a problem. When the realm of pop which used to have lots of in-between artists (those who would make albums that ranked in quality below say Amy Winehouse's "Back To Black" yet ahead of the latest pathetic Ke$ha album) is drastically reduced, well there's a problem. There are exceptions of course (Alicia Keys is one and you can't forget Mary J Blige). But we're coming to where they are few and far between. A respite comes when Green Day or The Arcade Fire comes out with a new album. And that's once every few years. Yet as much scorn as I may heap on the industry and companies and executives (don't even get me started on radio or MTV), a large part of the blame has to fall on us. Yes, us. Us for buying the manufactured bubblegum. Us for not supporting those deserving artists and getting the word out about them. Us for continuing to be New Kids fans even after we knew better. *Paraphrased from a Mark Harris article in GQ a few months ago. The article inspired this (somewhat tongue in cheek) essay.

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