Some folks were recently talking about how the ’80s, 90s and 00s all seem to be no longer than “20 years ago”, and how recent everything felt. There was some excellent discussion with one person attributing it to how better media preservation and availability, and how we were still actively hearing and seeing references to our childhoods (I say “our” using the royal we, though I wasn’t exactly around in the 1980s, but came to love ’90s alternative music growing up– all of which feed into this argument). From 80s music still gracing the airwaves on radio stations and pop- and rockstars turning to a healthier life—and realising you can have a career past the age of 45, a really good one at that, to older films of the 80s and 90s being available to watch online or stream, it can be easy to feel like our youth never left us, and so how could it have been 30 years when the music you heard as a kid is still around, and not lost to obscurity, as it would have been for people of the 80s and 90s, who grew up in the 1960s?
For what it’s worth, I recently learned that the BBC only began taping and archiving live television broadcasts from the late 60s and 70s. There’s a fascinating list of episodes from programmes, entire volumes of which are lost to history because it was the norm back in the day to wipe a tape clean and reuse it for a new taping: it was cheaper, it didn’t need extra physical space to store, and many programmes weren’t thought of as important enough to preserve for the future: this included classic Doctor Who series from the 60s, many early episodes of the BBC’s flagship chart music programme, Top Of The Pops, which began in 1964 but was broadcast live and wasn’t recorded until the late 60s—including the Beatles’ only live appearance on the show! Incidentally, the BBC does not have a copy of its live broadcast of the moon landing anymore either. (Fun fact: I’ve been researching Top Of The Pops all week to dig out classic performances from their Christmas Day specials: my radio show happens to have the Christmas Day (well, night) and New Year’s Day (ditto) slots this year! I was planning to do a rundown of some classic year-end studio performances, but I hit a wall when I remembered how most TOTP performances were mimed—sometimes to hilarious outcomes with deliberate goofs from musicians unwilling to mime—but ultimately, an endeavour that my radio listeners will be blissfully oblivious to! Oh dear.)
The availability of everything from everywhere that we have now, and improved digital restoration abilities can make media from 60 years ago feel like it was published last year. It’s something I largely agree with: when I see high-resolution pictures of musicians from the 80s, 90s, or especially the 00s, the decade on the brink of all the big technological advancements to follow, they do often look very modern. Fashion hasn’t changed altogether, and 90s “grunge revival” was at its peak when I was coming around to alternative music in 2014. “Y2K nostalgia” is in full-swing this decade (a separate post which I swear I’ll make), which I won’t mind as long as they bring back colourful clothing. Black makes up my first 15 favourite shades of clothing colours, but it’s nice to brighten it up occasionally!
The only things in a picture that really (and abruptly!) date them for me is seeing a piece of technology in the picture. There’s a picture of Damon Albarn, the frontman of Blur in the late 90s with a wireless telephone. There’s a picture of Muse’s frontman Matt Bellamy from 2005 with the old iPod earphones. Colour pictures from radio stations with broadcasting equipment also do this for me. I’ll admit that while we still certainly have, and regularly use CD players on air, and vinyl to a lesser extent, the digital library is the most-used at our station. That is, when it’s not upended by someone playing a song off YouTube! (I listed off those example images from memory. I’ll add them in if I win the nightmarish battle with Google Image search terms!)
Still, I think there’s more to this ubiquity of pop culture from the past than simply availability. Regarding pop culture, and music and radio stations in particular, I think there is also something to be said about the current ownership of pop culture simply focusing on safe and proven, profitable hits rather than taking a chance on anything new.
I can speak to music more than to any other area so I won’t try to generalise it to other forms of media, but radio stations used to be focused on playing up-and-coming talent. Record labels used to have A&R teams who would scout at 50-200 capacity gigs and discover artists who seemed to have potential, and take a chance on them. This isn’t to say that the record industry of the ’80s and 90s was in any way benevolent. It was an exploit fest in itself, but that’s a different discussion.
Festival bills used to change quite a lot from year to year until about 2010. It’s an example I use very often, but the Stone Roses were one of the most widely credited bands for laying down the foundations of the Britpop scene of UK alternative music in the 90s. In 1995, they had to pull out of a Glastonbury headline slot at the last minute, a highly anticipated gig. The replacement the festival found for them was an indie band that had hung around for some 10 years without much success, but had recently had one single that was rising up the charts…
Glastonbury has no reason to take a chance on Pulp in 1995, but they did. That gig virtually relaunched Pulp’s career. They are still one of the most widely recognised alternative bands of the UK 90s.
Nobody is taking those kind of chances anymore. Not to slander anyone, but it’s a safe bet that Liam Gallagher will headline a festival like Reading rather than artists who have been proving themselves as live mammoths ever being given the top slot (yes I am talking about Wolf Alice).
Some festivals are so afraid of taking a risk, they’d rather change their festival’s identity and shoe in proven pop stars than take a chance on up and coming artists in their genre. Sometimes it works gloriously, e.g., I genuinely loved Stormzy at Reading Festival. I really want to see Little Simz headline Reading next time! But ah, the difference between Reading and Glastonbury was that Reading was a rock festival, wasn’t it? It would be like getting Download fest to start playing other genres. They are a metal festival! Download is meant to be a place where new metal artists get a stage, a platform to reach out to new potential metal fans!
In the name of a “safe” hit, we’re losing the avenues that artists in more niche genres used to have available to take a shot at becoming big, becoming a part of our pop culture, which woefully, remains in the 80s and 90s.
Labels won’t look at anyone who doesn’t already have a million followers on TikTok. Historically, the way a new band could get the sort of exposure that might cross their paths with a million fans would’ve been evening music television programmes, like the aforementioned Top Of The Pops, who, while they largely played music that was already in the charts, were known to shine a spotlight on non-charting acts with promise as well. Other television programmes like the Old Grey Whistle Test in the 80s did a similar thing. Top Of The Pops was reaching 15 million people during its popular days, and about 1-3 million towards the end of its run. Now, you’re relying on an algorithm analysing segments of your video to decide who, and how many, should see it.
There was a big implosion at this LA rock station called KROQ a few years ago. Back in the 90s, they discovered and broke a lot of the artists that went on to be key players in the alt rock scene of the time. Many of them were independent bands when KROQ was spinning them. Next decade came corporate ownership. The station was more of less stuck in the 90s. In 2016-17, you’d still hear them playing Under The Bridge by Red Hot Chili Peppers 5,000 times a day. It was Smells Like Teen Spirit-fest. Of course they were losing listenership and bleeding money! Even their own DJs weren’t able to mix things up and play newer artists. In Los Angeles! Do you know how many artists are local to Los Angeles? How many good new artists they’d have been able to find to play, in any genre they wished, if only they wanted to?
But no, again, instead of taking a chance on new music, expanding our pop culture, they bottled. The ownership fired all their regular DJs and called a rebrand: they would begin playing Top 40s pop hits now in a desperate bid to pull in younger listenership. I could name other cases of indie station death-by-corporate-sponsor (XFM).
There needn’t have been a complete disconnect. There are young people amongst these new and unheard artists. There are young people amongst the listenership of old bands. There are people in their 40s at lots of cool new bands’ gigs I go to. So many of the champions of new music happen to be people who witnessed music rise to cultural heights in the 80s-00s, and want the same for the next generation (fans, presenters, musicians, so many more! BBC 6 Music’s Tom Robinson, who does the BBC Music Introducing shows and is himself a national treasure and icon who wrote the UK queer anthem, Glad To Be Gay. Tim Burgess of the 80s Madchester band The Charlatans, lover of new music, Bandcamp enthusiast, and the guy who launched Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties, initially a way for people to get together and listen to their favourite albums in lockdown, now, a way for new artists and fans to sit around the fire while musicians tell fascinating stories about their new work, and admiring music lovers get impressed by albums they may not have otherwise found: just some examples of lovely people!)
But with no one in those important places pushing to modernise popular culture, it becomes a dangerous feedback loop: if you pay no attention (or money) to what’s happening with artists right now, don’t contribute any coverage to a growing scene, it has no avenues to grow. It is stifled. There’s no money in it. Excellent bands split up, pull out of tours, cancel shows: it doesn’t make financial sense to carry on. The mad amount of touring you need to undertake to make ends meet on tour pushes you to your physical and mental limits (sources and examples because I am not in the least exaggerating: Santigold, Animal Collective, Little Simz, who won the Mercury Prize for the best album of 2022 in the UK. If someone making the best album in the country can’t tour North America, does any of this make sense? There are more: Arlo Parks, Stormzy; plus so many artists who’ve had to cancel smaller legs of tours for various similar reasons: Wet Leg, Yard Act, even Placebo).
Animal Collective cancel tour because of “the economic reality”
Present-day independent music scenes struggle, all the while a radio station owner get to turn to the past and say, “I don’t see any good new music. Guess there’s been nothing good new since the 90s.” That coupled with nostalgia, the world crumbling around us and a longing to return to the past—a perceived ‘simpler time’, can be a death blow to modern music!
The short version: at least where music is concerned, new pop culture very much exists! It’s not being promoted in more popular media outlets because they are prioritising old profits over investing in music’s future.
But I’ll tell you what, grab a mate and go to a gig. Go see a new band who are up and coming. It’s the best feeling in the world: you’re not pining for a period that’s over, or living through a younger self that might not exist anymore. You’re in the present, you’re alive, there’s good music. You are making new memories, you are happy, alive and in the now!
(And if you want to chat more about something like this oh god hit me up)
MattWilliamsonLive 