I know from personal experience that the last few years have been all about change. Whether it be COVID or maturing out of childhood, nothing has seemed to stay consistent for longer than a few months. Throughout this time, my one anchor has been music, older music in particular. I find myself listening to music that came out years ago, some even before my lifetime, more often than I had even a year prior. The more I listen, the more I notice the warmth it has that newer music just can’t seem to capture.
One of my favorite songs is “Magic” by Pilot and the first time I heard it was my first week of fifth grade. My teacher at the time told us that she would play it every morning, and when the song ended, we had to be in our seats, ready to go. Listening to it back almost six years later makes my heart ache a little bit, not just because of the obvious nostalgia factor, but because of how the song makes me feel in general. The simple instrumentals and kind-of-corny lyrics feel like a breath of fresh air in comparison to the over-produced sound of music today.
It feels like everyone in the industry right now is focused on following the straight-edged formula of blowing up–market on social media, blow up, drop a single, repeat. This tactic can be a double-edged sword because while it has become easier for artists to make a name for themselves, they are completely at the mercy of the algorithm. This means two things in particular: one being that only a certain type of music gets pushed into the mainstream, and the other being that only snippets of a song end up sounding good because those are the parts that were made to be marketed. Music-making becomes more about marketing a product than producing art leaving us, the consumers, in an oversaturated market of sub-par music that has its soul stripped away from it.
Because of these factors, it’s no surprise that older music has risen in popularity. People online have made videos with songs like “Sunday” by the Cranberries or “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” by Jeff Buckley in the background, both of which came out over thirty years ago. Music from this time is less produced, allowing the humanity of it to show a lot more than music today. As well as this, the landscape of the music industry was much different during this time. Artists had the space to make the art they wanted to without worrying about marketing every single day, making a lot of this music extremely creatively dynamic and layered, not just in comparison to today but in general.
This isn’t to say that new music is doomed and old music is godlike; good and bad music has existed all throughout time. The industry and the way music is being produced has changed a lot within the last decades and that is ok–as life speeds ahead, music from the past will always stand still, and being able to hold onto and enjoy it is so valuable, especially in times that can be so uncertain.
