Dec
1
2023
David Byrne Radio Presents: Now and Then
By Todomundo
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This title is not a reference to the Beatles song, but similarly about the past. I was asked in an interview the other day if I thought that culture, including music, was currently stuck. Has anything new emerged to replace what has gone before? The reference is usually to the way rock and roll ended the reign of smoothly produced pop music and the way hip-hop created a world-wide rhyming movement that is ubiquitous now. One could add dance music—house, techno, garage, grime, two-step—as a wholly new thing as well. Hip hop and a lot of the templates for dance music emerged in the early 80s, so the argument goes that nothing new has happened since then. Some of us are old enough to remember those moments when things changed—who were we then? Are we different people now?
I’d argue that if one new style wipes everything else off the charts now, there is still amazing plurality—at least in terms of what people are doing (though it’s true only a relatively small percentage of artists actually make money off streaming income). But, as evidenced from this playlist, the range of styles and combinations of those styles is astounding.
-David Byrne
Dec
1
2023
David Byrne Radio Presents: Now and Then
By Todomundo