Can We Work It Out or Was I Just Born This Way?

            Music is a pervasive influence in all of our lives.  We listen to it when we drive to work, we personalize it when we run on the treadmill, we celebrate with it when important things happen, and we remember it when we either try to remember or forget the past.  To meet a person who does not hear music in their daily life would probably be more difficult than meeting someone who has been struck by lightning.  Music reflects our moods and emotions, our sorrows and joys, and is one of the best ways to see how people define themselves. 

            In today’s popular music, there seems to be a great commonality.  It seems that individual artists have become the main driving force and musical groups seemed to have declined in popularity.  There are still groups of course but many of them seem to be holdovers from earlier decades.  Individual artists seem to the mainstay of today’s music.  If one peruses the Billboard charts or the Grammy nominations, one will likely see mostly songs and albums by individual artists such as Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Adele, and Bruno Mars.  In many of the hit songs by individual artists we notice that many of them feature other individual artists such as Katy Perry featuring Kanye West or Enrique Iglesias featuring Pitbull. 

            This trend of individual artists seems to have changed from the past when individual artists started out in groups.  Artists such as Eric Clapton and Michael Jackson became very famous as solo artists but they started their careers in collaborative groups.  After a number of years artists such as these moved on from their groups perhaps because they had outgrown them or perhaps because their particular talents were better suited to individual work.  However, in today’s music (of course there are exceptions) it seems as though many of the solo artists have come out of nowhere and suddenly they burst onto the scene almost like someone who makes a grand entrance at a party. 

            Why has this become the trend?  A little over a decade ago, the 1990s brought us an age of musical groups in various genres.  Why such a great change in so little time?  There could be many speculations at why this has occurred.  First of all is the American Idol effect.  American Idol has by far been the most popular show of the last decade in American television.  It has spawned many spinoffs and copies such as The Voice, America’s Got Talent, and the X-Factor.  These shows sometimes have the artists in collaborative situations but for the most part the show celebrates individualism.  Each of the shows features mainly individual performers singing for a panel of judges.  The judges then give their opinions which sometimes vary widely depending on the judge’s persona.  After the votes are then tabulated, singers are sent home until one becomes the winner.  The genius of American Idol is that it seems to give people a sense that anyone can be a star, and we give everyone a chance, even those who are dreadful.

            Hip hop music has also seemed to have changed the musical landscape.  Hip hop (especially gangsta rap) celebrates the individual.  From how much money they make, to the jewelry they wear, to the amount of bitches they be pimpin, to the amount of motha fuckas they shot, hip hop music seems largely to be an expression of individual accomplishments.  Since the 1990s hip hop has very successfully branched out and become incredibly popular.  With this, hip hop music began to blend into many different kinds of music and white artists whose music would seem to be very different from hip hop began to collaborate with hip hop artists.  Whoever thought that a young white girl from California would be collaborating on a pop song with a gangsta rapper whose claims to fame were being a member of the Crips, smoking weed, and a trial for murder.  Perhaps hip hop has added more individuality to popular music. 

            Another factor in making the individual star more popular is of course computers.  Like music computers are part of all aspects of our lives.  With the advent of the personal computer and the internet, the way people listen to music was forever changed.  People all over the world can now listen to music absolutely for free at any time.  When this happened it changed the business model of the music industry.  Instead of relying principally on sales for revenue, they would now have to rely on artists generating revenue through other outlets such as concerts.  Individual artists require less attention than groups and their leading personalities usually manage to draw very large crowds even when tickets are excessively priced. 

            Perhaps the individual artist is better than the group.  Musical groups tend to be ripe with turmoil.  This infighting in the group can sometimes lead to great music, but almost always it eventually leads to the end of the group.  Perhaps now we have a better handle of ourselves as individuals.  We don’t need to define ourselves as part of a group, and individual artists seem to suit our tastes better.  Or maybe perhaps our music has become too individual becoming shallow and materialistic and focusing on fantastic things that many of us can only dream about having.  Many of us seemed to have lost a sense of community and we don’t aspire anymore to be in a rock band, we all just aspire to be singers while playing rock band. 

            The choices we make about our music are like most of the ones that we make in society.  They are in fact our individual choices, but they do not exist in a vacuum.  We make them based on what is presented to us, and what the general zeitgeist is.