Pete Doherty, frontman of ’00s English indie rock band The Libertines knows a thing or two about being a talked-about rockstar in a band making a buzz.
But putting aside his heady early days as a Libertine and accepting his place as a spearhead of the “indie sleaze” scene, he was recently talking about some new bands that he’s been listening to that he thinks sound really impressive, what stuck out to me was he said if those bands had been around 20 years ago, they’d have been huge, because he’s not wrong and I’m sure I’ve heard other people say that too.
People complain about there not being “any great new bands now”, and I’m not sure that’s in any part because bands have been lacking. I’m not sure what it is, but for better or worse, there are bands and groups now, but fewer rockstars, to use a clichéd word.
I wishfully thought that was because there’s more self-awareness in musicians right now, hopefully hopefully, a decline in the sort of idolisation that created delusions of grandeur and groupie culture or whatever; a bit more respect for fans? It might play a part, but then I also remember that with social media now, we seem to have made parasocial projection worse so that might not be it…
I think it might be the lack of a cultural narrative. Rock and alt bands are more likely to “keep it real” and be less on social media. You’d be far less likely to see a “funny, candid” 8-second TikTok from a rock band go viral.
Most of the rock bands you love who got big in the ’00s and ’10s, the beginning of the age where what you post is as important to your career as your creative output, I just think their fans are the hardest workers in the world. The flower-crown-thumbnail “Arctic Monkeys being a mood for 3 minutes 43 seconds” compilations on YouTube did more for Arctic Monkeys to me in 2016 than any press release. Their fans work hard, but today’s problem is that you need those fans first; you need to introduce yourself to people, and the way a lot of musicians who (in the words of music’s nemesis and Spotify CEO Daniel Ek) “engage more with their market audience” do that is through hoping their songs or other videos go viral.
I don’t think that certain guitar-based genres that were very popular until the mid-00s are unpopular or “dying” because people aren’t interested in them anymore. Kids are interested in rock music. Look at Måneskin! I just think it’s far less likely for a guitar band to be constantly making and uploading those sort of videos, for whatever reason: “we keep it real, we aren’t going to partake in this artifice of social media popularity; come see us in the flesh” etc., or maybe just a lack of inclination to do it. If I’m already on a computer doing stuff, I’m far more likely to just hit New Tab > tumblr.com than if I were sitting with my guitar in my lap and no phone in sight. Maybe some bands still believe in the air of mystery that not broadcasting every segment of your life weekly provides… or provided, back before pumping out constant (needless) content began feeling like something people needed to do just to fight for your attention in an ocean of content. Something, anything, a small cry of “hey, remember us!”, but on an app that doesn’t let you remember anything beyond two scrolls of a page.
What I was saying about a “cultural narrative”: the death and decline of music journalism. Music magazines used to hold a lot of power: they were people’s first introductions to who so many bands were, as people, as artists with motives and driving philosophies. People used to read these magazines, ready to take a chance on artists because someone whose taste in music they trust thinks they’re good, so it must be worth giving it a shot. Magazines were also crucial to the kind of magic and mystery (or myths and lies, your call) built up around being a musician in the industry that gave so many music fans a sense of… subculture identity I think?
I mean, I’m glad that people aren’t as deluded about what goes on in the music industry now. I think back to how artists speaking out against injustice in the industry were derided and never believed because we were all set up to believe that musicians had the rock ‘n roll lifestyle! Luxury! Wealth! Fragile egos! Fame and adoration!, when a lot of those were more of a facade rented for a video than a lifestyle, and in fact artists were stuck in record deals that were going nowhere, deals taking 80% of their income. I think of artists facing mistreatment, the various ignored cries for help in the face of rotting mental health that artists have endured. I think back to protests by Prince against the rights to his literal legal name, and Pearl Jam’s criticism of Ticketmaster… fans were not supportive of their moves at the time. Ask the Taylor Swift fan in your life how they feel about Ticketmaster today (not that artists hadn’t been talking about it before). Pearl Jam were right, weren’t they?
And so I’m glad that there’s a bit more transparency in the industry, and musicians’ careers aren’t undone by one biased interviewer or by an unnecessarily mean review by a writer who fancies themselves a playwright rather than a journalist (*ahem* Pitchfork *ahem*). All the same, as either an artist or a listener, it’s a bit hard to navigate how much is going on on social media and get a sense of what it’s like out there. And sure, magazines (now websites) are also sailing the same choppy waters. Unfortunately, sometimes clicks and engagement mean more to a website’s finances than a well-written article about an artist or a scene, which doesn’t help with skewed impressions of a scene.
So yeah, Pete Doherty’s right. Some of the artists coming out today would’ve been the biggest bands in the world 20 years ago. They’d have had a legendary interview in like, NME that would still be scanned and shared today. They’d be able to continue making their music without having to spend time sculpting their whole persona to be internet-friendly, clickable or viral. They could thrive off songs that you can sit back and enjoy as a full piece, rather than wondering which 30-second clip could soundtrack the most tiktok funny videos.
I don’t know. Maybe I slag off TikTok too much, I don’t even go there. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about curation. I’ve been thinking about how music moving to the internet was all about freeing it from the grip and arbiting of snobby music journalists on TV, radio or in print, who thought they could dictate what music was good and what was not. (Could it be that rock music was genuinely just mediocre and we had 5 decades of circlejerking just promoting a certain kind of music—notably, music that was predominantly white, while historically non-white and especially black-dominated genres of music were written off as lesser art? Absolutely, I would be remiss not to acknowledge that there is certainly a racial element to it: guitar band culture has always been super white, with the rest of us as occasional guests. Social media certainly has broken that down, giving music fans the power power to make up their own minds, and they have spoken!)
Still, I see that in a sea of content that no one person can possibly get through, there returns that old need for curation, and this I certainly know TikTok has. TikTok channels that talk about and recommend music are doing what music journalists did in print with a sampler CD attached, but as a 2 minute video instead. I know rock music fans in particular have always hated when an external piece of media makes a song popular and send over new fans “from” a popular source (see: 2008 Muse fans about people who came through Supermassive Black Hole being in Twilight, and for example people being introduced to goth subculture from the Netflix show Wednesday).
Hating song snippets being in popular tiktok videos is nothing new. But at the end of the day, it is a form of curation in a way too, because it’s almost impossible to “organically” discover something new on social media nowadays. I’d say you certainly could go on a blind Bandcamp deep-dive and actually find really good artists—that’s how I stumbled over Dry Cleaning and Fontaines D.C.: quite blind, on Bandcamp! Live, “in the flesh” (:P) at a music venue is another way to stumble into good music (I’ve found a few good bands this way too). But mostly, you need some curation, some direction these days: even Bandcamp has lists, interviews, features and Bandcamp Radio to point you in a specific direction. Bandcamp made it compulsory for artists to add at least a broad (real) location where they were based, so that fans looking for city and country-wide music scenes would be able to discover other artists from around there. It has worked!
I wonder if this will lead people back to some older forms of media: magazines, radio? I suppose those have been updated in the form of YouTube/TikTok channels, tweets and podcasts, in some sense.
But Pete Doherty is right. In a different world, one where a musician didn’t have to do the job that 20 separate people would’ve once done: music journo, PR, print & publish, A&R, a billion things in admin; there are plenty of acts today who would’ve been huge if only they’d been able to exist 20 years ago.
MattWilliamsonLive 