Welcome to Spotify's Algorithmically Generated Hellscape

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This is Big Thief.
This is Soundgarden.
This is Neil Young… Well, not anymore.

We’ve all seen these playlists when searching for our favorite artists on Spotify. If you open the app, press the little magnifying glass, and type in the name of virtually any band with more than 50 songs, you’ll probably see some variation of the same results; the Artist’s page, a few popular songs or albums by them, and then a playlist boldly declaring, “THIS IS [insert artist name].”

Those playlists exist for any artist that meets the minimum criteria, and they are designed to put together a decently-sized 2- to 4-hour-long playlist of all the artists’ most streamed songs in one place. Spotify’s “THIS IS” playlists exist for artists of all sizes and every music genre. This is Ed Sheeran. This is Michael Jackson. This is Weird Al. You get it. 

The scale of these playlists ranges from gargantuan collections of classic works to mildly successful indie rock groups from your hometown. In some cases, they act as decade-spanning histories of massively influential artists like The Rolling Stones. In other cases, they are pretty serviceable representations of a band’s collective work, like Stone Temple Pilots. In every case, these playlists are meant to do one thing: emulate a Greatest Hits record. 

This allows a casual user to search for a band, stumble upon this playlist, and scroll through a bunch of their most popular songs in one place. These playlists, along with the addition of a dedicated lyrics function, signify a change in Spotify upping their SEO and bolstering their recommendation engine. Alongside these more helpful quality of life changes is a new initiative that’s simultaneously goofier and far more sinister. 

Back in early November, Twitter user @_gaydro posted a picture of their Spotify app showcasing a playlist flatly named “Evil Mix.” The description beneath the automatically-generated playlist cover reads, “Evil music picked just for you.” 

People in the comments and quote tweets were quick to dive into their own Spotify apps and report back the most obscure and outright hilarious examples they could find within their libraries. Fast clown music. Spooky evil jazz mix. Tennessee pirate mix. Each title seemed more incoherent and absurd than the last; a gobbledygook combination of nouns, buzzwords, and vaguely musical terms, all denoted as from Spotify and “made for you.”

One Redditor commented on the sheer breadth of dog-specific playlists that Spotify had crafted for him: Calm Dogs Mix, Dogs Calming Mix, Dogs Pet Calming Mix, and more. “I must have searched once for music to help my dog figure fireworks out, and now I am gifted with this kind of variety… If you scroll slow enough, the page just keeps loading, so I don't think there is an end to the algorithm attempting to satisfy your every need,” they observed. 

These playlists are essentially an extension of Spotify’s Daily Mix program. In a press release from early 2021, Spotify explains the fuel behind these mixes with an impressive stat, explaining that “every day, half a trillion events—whether they are searches, listens, likes, or countless other actions—take place on Spotify, powering and guiding our machine learning system. This gives us the ability to drive discovery in a way that audio has never seen before.” In their own bland, corporate, grey-cubicle-approved marketing words, “Spotify Mixes represent the next generation of focused, personalized offerings.”

So that raises a few questions, why so many? Who is this for? What the hell is going on? It was a fun day to be online and see what insanely specific playlists people were able to dig up, but I didn’t think much of this phenomenon until I traveled home for the holidays and was poking around the family computer to find that my own mother had saved one of these playlists. Happy Birthday Mix. There it was, staring me in the face. I finally understood.

Those far-out examples of “Goblincore Mix” and “Crazy Bagpipes Mix” are inherently goofy, but these “normal” instances like “Happy Birthday Mix” make much more sense. I can practically see my mom, on her birthday or the birthday of one of my brothers, searching Spotify for “happy birthday,” finding that playlist, and saving it. I mean, why not?

Maybe I’m just being overly precious about “mah playlists,” but it rubbed me wrong to see some algorithmically-generated bullshit garnering attention and listens just because Spotify has created a glut of playlists meant to catch any possible combination of terms a user could type into their app. 

In almost every case, these mixes are filled with “just some songs.” The more straightforward playlists will populate with a handful of songs you’ve already listened to and a dozen others that the Spotify Machine Brain thinks you will enjoy. For instance, my 70s Rock Mix (clocking in at an even four hours) opens with “Iron Man” and Tangerine” before throwing to some Heart and Pink Floyd. In these cases, Spotify is serving you music it already knows you like and throwing a few deeper cuts into the mix here and there. That’s where the “made for you” comes in; Spotify is just pulling your own data and serving it back to you under the guise of something specific like “Sensual Noise Mix.” 

As you would expect, the goofier playlists are where things get even weirder. The more absurd mixes contain songs that fit their criteria in very literal ways with song titles, artist names, or even album covers that fit the description. For me, “Fast Clown Music Mix” includes songs from a band named Clown Core taken off an album called Van, which has cover art depicting a blue minivan. The same playlist opens with a song off an album called Mirror Might Steal Your Charm, which features a sort of jester-like figure on its cover. Now that sounds like Fast Clown Music picked just for me.

So why does this matter? This technology is still in its infancy, but I believe these mixes are something Spotify is testing to trick their users more effectively. People have no insight into how these playlists are made, what goes into them, or how many of them there are. People just look up a term and are served a loosely-themed collection of music that they’re probably already familiar with. Alternatively, they’re given a playlist packed with a bunch of tangentially-related songs that fit some surface-level criteria.

Where this gets complicated is that Spotify can choose what songs are placed within these mixes with zero transparency. After all, we’re talking about a company that gives out $4 for every thousand plays. They’re notoriously cheap and view the music being uploaded onto their platform as mere content. On the one hand, Spotify is making music more accessible than ever; on the other hand, they’re actively devaluing art. 

A couple of years back, Spotify introduced “Discovery Mode,” which is like the platform’s own version of pay-to-play. With this feature, the streaming company borrowed a concept from the days of radio where an artist (or, more likely, label) would pay a station to play their songs more frequently. With this in mind, it’s easy to see how Spotify could manipulate what tracks appear on these playlists and therefore get streams. 

Am I saying these bands are fake? Not necessarily, but that is something Spotify has been accused of. By the same logic, it’s easy to see how Spotify could fill hours of these types of playlists with ambient music, “peaceful piano” tracks, and faceless acoustic fare. It doesn’t matter if the artists behind these songs are real because the playlists are meant to fill a specific vibe, mood, or need. Cozy Christmas Music Mix. Dinner Party Mix. Beach Music Chill Evening Mix. They mean nothing.

This could just be the rambling of one overly-concerned overly-online music nerd, but I think that any time Spotify removes the agency out of music consumption, it’s a reason to be wary. Their series of “This Is” playlists are a microcosm of a platform-wide issue of pushing streams (and money) only to the top. Most artists do not turn a profit from Spotify, and that isn’t a sustainable business model. 

Tricking people into clicking on (and listening to) an algorithmically-generated playlist of songs is a step further. It’s gaming a system that’s already rigged. It will be fascinating to see what comes of these playlists over the next year or two. I’m interested to see if they become more plentiful, elevated higher within the app, or how often they start popping up over actual playlists and albums made by real humans. 

The truth is that Spotify has a vested interest in keeping you on their platform, but even more so if you’re listening to the artists they want you to listen to. They don’t want you to think. Spotify doesn’t want you to search for a small artist or listen to a specific album; they want you to throw on a four-hour-long megamix of music they have already chosen for you. Conscious listening is bad for business, Spotify wants you to devour slop from their trough.

Ultimately, when Spotify chooses what we listen to, we’re not listening to music anymore; we’re just listening to Spotify.

The Countrygaze Manifesto

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One time in 2009, I was sick as a dog. I was a sophomore in high school, and this was still a period before widespread smartphones or apps. The only sources of entertainment I had were my trusty iPod and a tiny little netbook laptop. It was a sunny spring afternoon in Oregon, and I was experiencing that delirious kind of sickness where your brain can barely function. I was bored as hell, but even in my stupor knew I had seen all that MySpace had to offer. Eventually, I found myself surfing Wikipedia, aimlessly clicking around various band pages in no particular direction.

I wound up on the page for Saves The Day, a band I had recently become enamored with, thanks to a particularly impactful Vagrant Records sampler. Wow, browsing the Wikipedia page for a band at 1 pm on a weekday, say what you will about me, but I have always been the same type of music nerd. I’m also the type of music nerd who just enjoys reading about a band, taking in as much history as possible in order to better understand them. Out of all the information on Save The Day’s page, the one thing that stuck out to me most was a pair of words in the band’s “genres” section: pop-punk.

I was in an exploratory mood, so I clicked on the link and what I found blew my mind. It sounds silly to admit, but it wasn’t until I was face to face with that Wikipedia article at the big old age of 15 that I realized my favorite type of music had a name. Pop-punk.

At this point, I was truly beginning to expand my musical taste; post-hardcore, grunge, indie, and metal were all seeping in around my strong foundation of classic rock adoration and Guitar Hero soundtracks. Underneath all of this was pop-punk. Seriously. Some of my first CDs were Sum 41, Good Charlotte, Simple Plan, and Green Day. I had spent my entire life listening to this subgenre, and I didn’t even know it. 

I was too young and musically dumb to see the bigger landscape of what music was. I grew up hearing “Who Let The Dogs Out” in every movie trailer and listening to “Drops of Jupiter” on the radio. To me, “In Too Deep” was the fastest and coolest thing I had ever heard. I didn’t know what genres were, much less something as specific as pop-punk. This was also before Twitter, Reddit, and message boards leveled the playing field on musical knowledge. Some of that stuff existed, but I didn’t know where to find it. I knew what I liked when I heard it, but I hadn’t realized that things like subgenres could lead me to other bands and scenes I would enjoy in the same way.

Editor’s Note: Both “Who Let The Dogs” Out and “Drops of Jupiter” are undeniable bangers. I’m only using them here as examples to provide context to my understanding of music at the time growing up and becoming musically conscious in the late 90s/early 2000s.

Fast forward another 13 or so years, and I am still the biggest music nerd you can imagine. I run multiple music blogs, have a Twitter feed clogged with hundreds of esoteric bands, and my iTunes library boasts an unwieldy 70k songs. This blog is a years-long testament to my musical obsessions, large and small. I’ve fallen in love with countless bands and embedded myself in more subgenres and scenes than I care to count. Over the past year, one of my most powerful obsessions has been with a semi-invented genre called Countrygaze. 

Countrygaze is exactly what it sounds like; a little bit of country, a little bit of shoegaze. This is best exemplified by groups like Wednesday and MJ Lenderman, also known as indie music’s favorite power couple. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that Wednesday specifically are the countrygaze blueprint, and Twin Plagues is a textbook example of what the genre stands for. Sure, other bands have played at this intersection before, but nobody has owned it or honed it quite like Wednesday. 

On the Bandcamp page for Twin Plagues, underneath the cute video for “Handsome Man” and the excellent essay by Hanif Abdurraqib you’ll find a basic but telling section; the tags. This is tucked all the way at the bottom, beneath the credits and the legal. In this section, Twin Plagues is self-labeled by the band as “rock, country-gaze, indie, lo-fi, shoegaze, and Asheville.” Spoiler alert, the full-circle moment in this article comes here because I felt the same way reading “country-gaze” as I did when I first read pop-punk. Are you kidding me, there’s a name for this specific thing I’ve been obsessed with for the past year? Thank fucking god. 

If you’re unfamiliar with shoegaze, this might be a good spot for a brief crash course. The genre was first popularized in the 90s by artists like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive. Depending on who you ask, the term shoegaze could apply to everything from the more biting grunge of artists like Hum to the dreamier soundscapes of artists like Cocteau Twins. The usual signifier of shoegaze is the heavy use of effects pedals to create distorted riffs cranked out at an all-consuming volume that often overshadows the band’s own vocals. 

Over the past two decades, the shoegaze genre has maintained modest popularity, mostly in niche subcultures and heavy-adjacent music scenes. Bands have been making great records in this realm for as long as people have been making oversized pedalboard jokes.

Here’s where Countrygaze builds off of this foundation in a novel way. Wednesday’s lead singer Karly Hartzman never gets too dreamy on the vocals, but she also isn’t afraid to distort or modulate her voice. To me, that's an essential part of this fake subgenre. Many of the songs in Wednesday’s discography have shoegaze textures but keep the vocals a little more upfront. Lyrically, these songs could easily be mistaken for country on paper; they hinge on simple observations but ladder up to bigger topics like heartbreak, death, and other forms of loss. The band telegraphed this connection pretty heavily on their covers album from earlier this year which puts the likes of Gary Stewart and The Drive-By Truckers shoulder to shoulder with bands like Smashing Pumpkins and DIY shoegazers Hotline TNT. Take these influences, and you can see how a band would internalize them, then output an album like Twin Plagues or 2020’s I Was Trying to Describe You To Someone. 

Look no further than any of Wednesday’s music videos to understand what countrygaze looks like. In these videos, Wednesday play their songs in fields of dead leaves or empty K-Mart parking lots. Home videos exist alongside footage of tour life and cozy North Carolina living rooms. Nature is present and abundant but is often dotted with litter and dirty patches of snow connected by colorless gray highways. These videos are all beautifully shot, using earnest POV footage, and edited in a way that matches the songs perfectly. Heavy as the music and some of the themes are, most of these videos are also humorous and endearing, whether it’s clown metal face paint, Ring Pop props, or simply the sight of the members rocking out to their own riffage in the back of the van, they show a band loving the art they’re creating. If you want to know what countrygaze is, simply throw on a playlist of Wednesday music videos, and let it roll for an hour. 

As I sank deep into a Twin Plagues rabbit hole by the end of 2021, I started to put together a playlist of songs that fit this hyper-specific criteria. Fuzzy shoegaze riffs, a little bit of twang, and super simple lyrics. That’s the formula. Many songs out there have one or two of these things, but very few artists put all three together. Even Wednesday themselves sometimes drop the fuzz for classic country balladry like on “How Can You Live If You Don’t Love How Can You If You Do.” Other times, they drop the riffs for hypnotic lo-fi abstraction on tracks like the closing cover song “Ghost of a Dog.”

On the flip side, you have songs on Twin Plagues that read as complete and utter embodiments of Countrygaze. The shreddy, seesaw riff on “Handsome Man” paired with lyrics of overpasses, broken glass, and trashy family photos. One song later, the sight of a dilapidated fast-food restaurant forces Hartzman into an existential crisis. A woozy lap steel guitar soundtracks this internal struggle, eventually giving way to a torrential shoegaze riff that towers above everything that came before it. Choices like this give the songs a grungy loud/quiet/loud dynamic that encourages the listener to lean in only to be bowled over moments later by an overwhelming crush of noise. This shift also contextualizes the song’s lyrics, making them feel big or small depending on what Hartzman and company decide to prop them up against. Speaking of which, there’s a lyric on “Cliff” about putting a loved one’s ashes in a Dallas Cowboy urn, and honestly? If I were to distill this semi-fake subgenre down to a single line, it might be that one. 

In almost every case, these songs are small in theory but big in practice. The worlds are lived-in, often populated by modest people who are trying their best despite circumstances that are not always in their control. There’s truthfulness and relatability in how the band depicts these southern mundanities, making it feel as if you’ve lived the memories yourself in a dream or a past life. There are specific details and nouns that stick out, but there’s also a hot and oppressive southern haze that ties the whole thing together. That’s why I think Twin Plagues is the foundational record for this genre, because it wrote the playbook. This record is the canvas, and other bands are now beginning to play within it.

By the beginning of the year, I had declared myself fully “Wednesday-Pilled.” I had purchased all the band’s albums off Bandcamp, was taking excited selfies holding their vinyl, and slowly stitching together the tapestry of this wider countrygaze sound. I realized some of the more mellow stuff from Greet Death fit this category. I was talking to friends on Twitter about the novelty of this sound and discovering new artists in the process. Then-just released songs like “Kerrytown” by Big Vic, “Doubts” by Cloakroom, and “Q Degraw” by Wild Pink proved that this was an ongoing phenomenon and affirmed that this genre was something worth chasing down. 

I threw together a silly little Spotify playlist, and then the weather got warmer. By the time spring had rolled around, the term “Countrygaze” had largely slipped my mind. The weather was warming up, and I needed upbeat music to match the tempo. I was also at the beginning of an exciting new relationship, deeply in love, and happy with my life for the first time in a long time. I was ready to leave the all-consuming crush of countrygaze in a sadder section of my Spotify library. Then MJ Lenderman released Boat Songs. 

I had heard Knockin’ and Ghost of Your Guitar Solo the year before, but nothing had really connected with me outside of the latter’s titular instrumental. But something clicked with Boat Songs, and the record ended up soundtracking my summer. Maybe it was just something about that dumb hat or the charming thrill of hearing a man sing “Harris Teeter,” but the record delighted me. It also blew the doors open on Countrygaze by providing a distinct counterpoint to Wednesday’s particular brand of art school shoegaze. 

While Wednesday songs are often sweeping and poetic, MJ Lenderman's songs are folksy and goofy. They recount sports esoterica and romanticize wrestling. They hold sportstar Dan Marino and Disney's Toontown in equal regard. MJ Lenderman dares his audience to imagine a scenario in which they’ve bought a boat or tool around town in an SUV. He’s talking directly to the kind of audience who both relates with and wouldn’t mind belting along the lyrics, “I love drinkin’ too, yeah, I love drinkin’ too.” It’s basically the ultimate “Dudes Rock” music, but there’s also something deeper going on under the hood.

In contrast to the examples listed above, MJ also offers up a surprisingly deep philosophical probe on “Tastes Just Like It Costs” and stares down the loneliness of the universe on “Six Flags.” He also has a knack for writing lyrics that sound like they’re already colloquialisms. “Tastes Just Like It Costs” isn’t just a great chorus; it’s good advice and a cautionary tale. You get out what you put in; you pay for shit, ya get shit back; tastes just like it costs. 

At one point, near the tail end of Boat Songs, MJ takes a stab at articulating the feeling of love on “You Are Every Girl To Me.” In this song, love can be found in the vibrant colors of a community swimming pool and the simplicity of a birdfeeder. Love can also be found in small, heartfelt gestures like homemade dinners or buying someone a silly shirt. Ultimately, no lyric could be MJ Gospel more than the one found at the end of the second chorus when Lenderman sings, “Jackass is funny / Like the Earth is round.” Yes. We need more love songs about Jackass.

Another exemplary MJ Lenderman cut is “Someone Get The Grill Out Of The Rain” off Guitar Solo. The track is only a minute and 13 seconds long and doesn’t venture much beyond the conflict stated in its title. Someone left the grill out in the rain. MJ is gonna write about it. Halfway through the song, Lenderman lifts the veil and reveals what the song is really about.

“It'd be such a bust
That grill should rust
Precious memories are the ones
That suck
Just can't get enough”

At one point, my girlfriend and I were talking about MJ Lenderman’s lyrics, and we arrived at the conclusion that he’s adept at writing “a song about nothing that’s actually kinda about something.” Just look at that quote above from “Grill.” Sure it’s a song about a BBQ being left out to the destructive whim of mother nature; it’s also about a whole lot more. Similarly, a track like “I Ate Too Much At The Fair” is exactly what it sounds like. Again, the lyrics barely venture beyond the ones that make up its title but are presented in such a way that gives them an inherent deeper meaning. You can project a lot onto a song like “Fair,” but you could also just take it at face value as a song about eating too many elephant ears and feeling a little sick. That’s the beauty.

Through a detailed patchwork of originals and covers, Wednesday and MJ tackle things as commonplace as billboards, TV dinners, and trash fires. They take these everyday occurances and shift the listener’s perspective until those same concepts become holy. Together, Wednesday and MJ Lenderman offer two sides of the same Countrygaze coin. One brings big, towering riffs, and the other provides shorter, smaller slices. Both circle around the complex realities of life; they’re just approaching it from different angles. They are also dating, which makes this extra cute. They are the Countrygaze Couple we all wish we could be.

Most recently, bands of all shapes, sizes, and locations have been fleshing out their own corners of countrygaze. Wild Pink packed a wallop into their new album with the one-two punch of “See You Better Now” and “Sucking On The Birdshot.” Greet Death cooned “Your Love is Alcohol,” and no booze-based metaphor has ever hit the same quite since. Bands like Dialup Ghost have taken the lyrics in a radical political direction. In contrast, others like Spirit Was have leaned further into abstraction, melding equivalent but equally disparate genres like folk and blackgaze. Even albums from a couple of years ago, like Moveys and Empty Country, could now fall under this Countrygaze category retroactively. 

Exciting new groups like Big Vic and A Country Western have been adding their own artistic flare to these sounds, pushing the genre in artsy new directions that retain the distortion and the occasional hint of twang. Even Wednesday themselves show no sign of stopping; back in September, the band dropped an eight-and-a-half-minute bruiser called “Bull Believer,” and it’s already one of my favorite tracks from the project. That single (along with a signing to Dead Oceans) signaled a fruitful new page for the fake little genre that could.

The cherry that came on top of this avalanche of highly-specific tunes came when I found myself bored clicking around the Wednesday Bandcamp page a few days ago. I was reminded of the term ‘countrygaze’ and decided to Google it just to see what would come up. 

The top search result was the page for the Bandcamp tag, of which Wednesday’s discography sits prominently at the top. There are also a few artists underneath the core three Wednesday albums, including scoutmaster and Nash To Stoudemire (two Wednesday side projects) and one from an LA group called Grave Saddles. This group has released an EP, a single, and most recently, a 2022 Tour Tape proudly tagged with the “country-gaze” moniker. 

I gave the three-track release a listen, and much to my surprise, I found myself really enjoying it. Most of all, I couldn’t shake how perfectly all three songs fit within the “countrygaze” label. I love this little tape, and it’s got me excited to follow this band to see what they do next. And this is how Countrygaze becomes a real thing. 

Wednesday still feel completely out of reach for me (plus, nothing I write could ever stack up to this profile in Oxford American), but I recently became mutuals with Grave Saddles on Twitter and decided to take that connection as an opportunity to ask them about this genre. Based on the group’s releases, it seemed like they had been active since 2019, but it wasn’t until 2021 that they began using the “Countrygaze” tag on Bandcamp. I asked guitarist Chris Broyles what he thought of that descriptor, how the band arrived at it, and whether or not it was influenced by Wednesday.

Broyles explained that they threw the Countrygaze tag on that release because it seemed to be the most widely agreed-upon term for whatever this scene is. They had a band before this one that often got relegated to the umbrella “shoegaze” descriptor. The band admitted they “100% lifted the tag from Wednesday” but also view that subgenre as one part of a larger movement called post-country. In the band’s own words, post-country is “essentially country songs or the essence of country songs that forego established conventions or instrumentation.”

The band traces their interpretation of this term back to Arthur Miles’ “Lonely Cowboy” in 1929, a song they jokingly called “proto-post-country” and view as an outlier in the country music canon. They say this scene begins contemporaneously with Acetone and their catalog, observing that “if there seems to be one common thread across a lot of these countrygaze bands, it’s that we’re all big Acetone fans.” 

Conversely, I asked Big Vic’s lead singer and guitarist Victoria Rinaldi what she thought about the “countrygaze” label. She feels like, if anything, the term fits Girl, Buried, but only retroactively. While Rinaldi is a fan of Wednesday and Lenderman, she says that Big Vic recorded the bulk of their record before Twin Plagues had come out, so Wednesday didn’t have much of a direct influence on the album. She also says the Americana tinge present on “Kerrytown” specifically came from her love for Wilco and Silver Jews. 

As captured in playlists by two of the movement’s figureheads, you can see everything from Acetone and Vic Chesnutt alongside droney shit like Earth and Sparklehorse as well as grungy 90s rock staples like Sunny Day Real Estate and Dinosaur Jr. Looking at that list of influences, it’s hard not to be excited by the promise of this genre. It feels like we’re on the precipice of something fresh, exciting, and truly unique. Wednesday and MJ have been setting the speed and the tone for what Countrygaze could be, but groups like Grave Saddles are running with it full force. 

Most of all, I’m excited to see where Countrygaze goes next. If the internet has proven anything, it’s that it has the power to make genres like this into legitimate scenes of interconnected artists all collaborating and building off each other. We’re coming off a banner year from the Wednesday/MJ Camp, with both artists having released fantastic full-length albums to increasing coverage and acclaim. With Wednesday poised to drop another record in the next year (on the same label as Phoebe Bridgers, Japanese Breakfast, and Mitski, no less), it feels like we’re only at the beginning. The future of Countrygaze is as wide and open as the rolling landscape of a classic country song. Strapping in and watching this scenery pass by has already been one of the most thrilling discoveries of my music-listening career. Where things go next is anyone’s guess.

The State of Pop Music

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Stop me if I sound old. 

As we find ourselves on the precipice of fall, I defy you to tell me what the “Song of the Summer” this year was. I know that’s a nebulous term that can range from something as concrete as the most-streamed song in a three-month window to something as personal as your favorite song of the season. In fact, some people insist the Song of the Summer doesn’t even need to be released this year, a categorization that I personally reject. And that’s kinda what I wanted to talk about: where are the songs this year? Hell, what are the songs this year?

Sure, I have my fair share of summer bops I’ve had on repeat, but these are mostly smaller songs from indie labels and DIY acts. It might be hard to believe, but not too long ago, I was “tapped in” to popular music. My annual summer playlists were vast tapestries of culturally-relevant hip-hop and vibrant pop tunes. Back then, it felt like there was ubiquity to these songs, which meant that the playlists practically made themselves. You heard these songs coming out of car windows and venue speakers. You saw clever lines turned into memes, and music videos became internet-wide events. Now? I have to go to Billboard just to see what’s charting because I’m that far out of the loop. I guess what I’m saying is I used to be ‘with it,’ but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me, and it'll happen to you, too.

Maybe I am just Grandpa Simpson-ing, but I think there’s something deeper going on here. Just look back at the oft-cited summer of 2016 and compare it to this year’s offerings. Six years ago, summer gave us (arguably the last great) landmark albums from big-name acts like Kanye and Drake. DRAM had “Broccoli,” and Rae Sremmurd had “Black Beatles.” Gucci was home, and Frank Ocean was back. Travis Scott and Schoolboy Q were mounting their careers with Birds In The Trap Sing McKnight, and Blank Face. Chance the Rapper followed up his smash hit Acid Rap with the great-but-not-as-good Coloring Book. Young Thug was on a tear of stellar EPs, and Lil Uzi made himself a household name with Vs. The World. Both Lil Yachty and 21 Savage introduced themselves to the world in earnest. It felt like an exciting time to be following popular music, and I don’t think that’s just nostalgia.

On the pop side of things, 2016 is still the last time we heard from Rihanna. Beyoncé was making headlines with Lemonade, and The Weeknd was following up the smash hits of Beauty Behind the Madness with the slightly poppier Starboy. Whether you like them or not, 2016 also birthed “One Dance” by Drake and “Closer” by the Chainsmokers, two songs remarkable if only because of how many records they set and how long they hung around the charts. 

To be fair, within the pop/hip-hop dichotomy I tend to fall more on the hip-hop side, so maybe I just have a myopic view of culture. To me, XXL’s 2016 Freshman Class is a perfect example of how the year was a peak for the genre, at least on some level. Meanwhile, what popular artists released music this year? Lizzo? Harry Styles? Yeat? Put a gun to my head, and I couldn’t even fake hum a single melody off Harry’s House, and I bet you can’t either. 

Maybe I’m just checked out of pop culture, but I’d argue that there hasn’t been any legitimately unifying pop music since 2019’s “Old Town Road.” Hmm, what ever could have happened in 2020 that altered our sense of community?

I’ll admit, within my personal music listening over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed a decreasing emphasis on “popular” music in general. I say that not to sound cool or above it all, but because I legitimately don’t know what counts anymore, and that’s a problem. I wasn’t invited to every single party in college (shocking, I know), but even then, I could be anthropological about it. Especially throughout the middle and late 2010s, it was so easy to troll subreddits and Twitter to gauge what people were excited about. Now it feels like the whole of culture has shifted to something far less unified. 

Maybe that’s good. I’ve written before about the death of The Monoculture. Never again will we have a large-scale unifying act like Nirvana that comes in and shakes up the entire music industry, if only because there’s less to shake up. Music in 2022 is competing with the return of movies, a constant barrage of streaming TV shows, and of course, the ever-present deluge of social media. It’s a war for attention, and music doesn’t always win that fight. That’s not to mention how streaming services have made music consumption more on-demand and egalitarian than ever before. No longer are we beholden to what radio stations and MTV will play for us, and I think that’s unequivocally a good thing. 

The flip side of this is that there are far fewer universal touchpoints than ever before. Drake, once the biggest artist in the world, is now about four albums deep on a string of releases designed to juice up streaming numbers with bloated tracklists and middling, inoffensive buffet-style artistry. Come in, take what you want, throw it on a playlist or two, and get the fuck out. No questions, no customizations, and no quality control. Look no further than the number one global artist on Spotify right now: Ed Sheeran, the musical equivalent to a Great Clips haircut. 

I’m not even trying to shit on pop culture; just asking, where is it? It feels like the pandemic has irrevocably stifled culture as a whole on some level. Just look at everything vying for our attention; it’s never been easier to tune out individual pieces of culture if you don’t like them, even culture as a whole to some degree. What I’ve found is that when social life was sapped and reset to zero in 2020, it felt like there was less incentive for me to keep up with culture. Not only that, but there was less culture to keep up with. 

I look back on my “Summer 2020” playlist as an exemplary relic of this time. A hilarious attempt to cobble together a string of hip-hop and pop hits of the era where each entry feels like a palpable shrug of ‘I guess…’ You’ve got “Toosie Slide,” “Rockstar,” and “WAP,” but man, who cares? I guess “WAP” is still pretty good and made a decent cultural impact, but that’s about it. 

Summer 2021 I tried even less, mostly just filling the lineup with songs that felt like they “should” be on a summer playlist. I still remember thinking, “I guess this new Lorde song counts,” and “people like this Megan Thee Stallion song, I think.” It was all a fool’s errand: trying to capture a moment in pop culture that never really existed. 

That’s why this year, I just threw on songs I liked that seemed to capture the summer vibe. I don’t care if only a few thousand people ever listened to the new Camp Trash album; those songs are summer to me. And that’s the dilemma with most “Song of the Summer” entries; is it the culture’s song of the summer or your own? 

Summer aside, I’ve felt less and less incentivized to keep up with pop culture as a whole over the last year or so. Maybe it’s just my age (hello, 30, I see you peeking over the horizon), but I've come to realize how ephemeral all this is. When people were rallying around “Old Town Road”  back in 2019, it felt like an event. When people discuss the 2016 XXL cypher with Kodak Black, 21 Savage, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty, and Denzel Curry, it feels like a shared cultural touchstone. Be honest with yourself: how many of those touchstones have you felt over the last two and a half years?

I’ll still check out the occasional “big name” pop album just to see if anything grabs me, but more often than not, I’m left with a feeling that it’s missing something. I listened to the new Weeknd album earlier this year and thought it was pretty slick and cool sounding, but I don’t think I’ve returned to it since February. Beyoncé dropped an album in July that I still haven’t listened to and feel zero pull towards. And apparently Harry Styles is doing like fifteen nights of shows in California, so I guess someone has to be listening, right?

There’s an odd symbiotic relationship between albums of this scale and people’s embrace of them. That kind of goes without saying (and technically could apply to any genre), but follow me here. To borrow a parlance from Stan Twitter, if an artist puts out an album and nobody listens to it, the record “flops.” It takes support and fandom to keep a piece of art relevant. But the symbiotic part comes in the form of affirmation and re-engagement. If I listen to a song and the chorus gets stuck in my head, I’ll probably want to go listen to it again later. If I am keeping up with an album’s rollout and hear the lead single while I’m out in the world, I’ll be more drawn to it in the future. If I recognize the song used in the background of a TikTok or some meme, I’ll feel a sense of payoff, as if my previously committed attention has been rewarded. 

Where is that connective tissue in 2022? Maybe it’s just harder to find in the ever-splintering media landscape, but it feels like few of these culturally-sustaining practices exist now. For an old fart like myself, it turns out I’m perfectly content to just stay in my realm of whiny emo and dumb indie rock. After all, what reason do I have to keep up with what’s popular? Furthermore, why would I listen to something that’s “popular” when it doesn’t feel like it is? 

And therein lies the problem: the feeling of popularity. That’s the draw of most pop music on at least some level; the knowledge that you’re participating in something bigger than your specific taste. You’re joining a club of millions, a worldwide network of people bonded by a specific chorus, verse, sound, or person that you all share an affinity for. That’s a hard thing for me to feel in 2022. 

Pop music needs to be more than just catchy and well-made in order for it to succeed; it actually needs to be popular. That’s a harder and harder thing to achieve in an increasingly fragmented world. I’m more than willing to throw on some bland, common-denominator music if it gives me some sense of connection to the larger pop-culture sphere, but either my time for that phenomenon has passed, or the world has become too divided for that magic trick to work any more. Maybe both. 

Mitski and the Complications of Modern Fandom

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Indie-Pop singer/songwriter Mitski recently embarked on a North American and European tour to promote her sixth studio album Laurel Hell. This is her first tour and album since 2019’s Be The Cowboy, which concluded with Mitski taking some much-deserved time away from the spotlight. Upon release, Laurel Hell received acclaim from music critics, and has done well commercially, charting #1 in both the US Top Alternative Albums and US Top Rock Albums. However, despite the critical praise and commercial success, Laurel Hell has been divisive among fans, which is not uncommon when an artist returns from a hiatus period. The consistent criticisms range from Mitski’s vocal performance sounding “bored” to her songwriting being “trite.” The album also borrows much of its sound from 80s pop hits, which sometimes limits Mitski from committing to the signature dauntlessness that has defined her music up to this point. What sets Mitski apart from her contemporaries in the indie genre is her urgency and ability to channel raw emotions into spellbinding performances. However, the production on this new album makes her delivery feel impersonal and frustrating. 

Beyond the critical scores and fan debates about the composition of the album – there has been quite a bit of discourse surrounding Mitski herself and the way certain fans consume her music. It started with a Twitter thread from Mitski in which she asked that fans refrain from taking videos of the entire set or songs. She said she felt as if she was being “consumed as content” instead of sharing an honest moment with fans. This idea is not a new one – the majority of concerts I’ve been to have a “no phone” policy, in which there are signs in place and aggressive ushers who are more than happy to escort you off the premises if you so much as check the time. The split reaction within the fanbase to this request caused the first in a series of moralistic debates. You were either on Mitski’s side, or you weren’t. The tweets were deleted following an intense weekend of discourse and fan in-fighting.

Mitski’s choice to communicate this sentiment over her management-run Twitter account is unconventional, given that her social presence online is nonexistent. Despite her genuine intention to relay her wishes delicately, it makes sense that the clinical nature of the tweet thread went over the heads of her audience, who have been born and raised in internet culture. Weeks prior, the disconnect between Mitski and her fandom was apparent when she was traveling the press circuit to promote Laurel Hell. In Cracked Magazine’s “Mitski Reacts to Posts About Mitski” video, Mitski reveals how she lives in “blissful ignorance” of what’s happening online while reacting stiffly to Stan Twitter memes about her music. Halfway through the video, she reads a tweet that says: “New Mitski it’s a big day for sad bitches.” Mitski taps her hands on the armrests of her chair and says, “Y’know, the sad girl thing was reductive and tired five years ago, and it still is today.” She pauses to say she appreciates the person who made the tweet, but then follows up by saying: “Let’s retire the sad girl schtick. It’s over.” Retired from Sad, New Career in Business, indeed. 

While this detachment style may allow Mitski to live in 'blissful ignorance,' it doesn't allow for many fans to receive her words with the earnestness she hopes. Mitski appeals to a very online generation, and with the rise of applications like TikTok, where hyper-categorization for oneself is how you appeal to its algorithm (i.e., get views), it is only natural that fans will view her music as a piece of their identity. Mitski asks not to be “consumed” by her fans, but perhaps she needs to come to terms with her life as an entertainer. Mitski’s real name isn’t even Mitski – it’s a stage name, a persona that she embodies as a performer, making entertainment to be consumed. The very nature of a concert relies on the performer to gain monopolized, undivided attention from onlookers. I mean, why else would you be on a stage, a literal platform that elevates you above an audience? 

It’s innate human behavior to connect with art on a level of self-introspection. A defining element of art is that it means different things to different people; everyone consumes art through their own lens, but this isn’t a reality that a subset of fans are willing to accept. Whether they’re a devoted member of the fanbase or not, it seems that everyone is rushing to supply their takes on the situation. However, a collective sentiment has emerged of supporting the artist no matter the circumstance, even if that means turning on others in the fanbase. As if Mitski will personally thank those who protect her image and adhere to her social demands. 

While Mitski wants people not to consume her and reduce her music down to catchphrases, a portion of her fanbase has equated that to other fans disregarding the racial context of her music. This argument is strange to me because the overwhelming majority of Mitski’s music is about, well, love. Falling in love, falling out of love, being in love too much, not being in love enough – you get the idea. The only song explicitly detailing Mitski’s struggles with identity as a person of color is her song “Your Best American Girl.” Perhaps an argument can be made that “Strawberry Blond” is about Mitski’s personal anguish that she is not white enough for the man of her dreams – but then again, Mitski has never publicly said that’s what the song is about. It is not clear how her racial identity or upbringing features in her music. She very well could be singing about alienation, perhaps as a woman, or just as a generalization. Mitski does very little to bring politics, background, and identity as an interwoven factor within her music. This isn’t a criticism – I just find it necessary to address when fans are other-ing each other and gatekeeping, as if only viewing Mitski’s music in relation to her being a person of color isn’t a reduction and exclusion in its own right. 

Whether it’s the desire to control how she is perceived as “sad girl” music or resistance to being recorded while performing, Mitski’s differing attitudes in communicating with her audience showcase her inability to commit to a public persona. Mitski will dish out contempt for her audience regarding how they categorize its lyrical and sonic content, but will approach delivering requests concerning concert etiquette like a kid trying to convince their parents to buy them a dog. In the past, Mitski has demonstrated her fearlessness and conviction. Her obsessive love ballads on Puberty 2 make me think of Nina Simone – this is the artistic height that Mitski is capable of reaching. In my opinion, Be The Cowboy was a step down from her two previous albums, and it’s disheartening to see this trend continue on Laurel Hell. This decline all happening while Mitski publicly conflates her inability to grasp her new life as a performer and entertainer, ultimately failing to define a boundary of what her fans are to her. 

When discussing her song “Nobody” in a Genius Lyric Breakdown video, Mitski explains how the chorus came to her in a real state of anguish, but she thought: “Let me use this pain and exploit it for money.” This, of course, can be perceived with light-heartedness, but it’s difficult not to take it at face value, considering Mitski is currently at the height of her popularity, and her name is equated with producing music to consume when you are in some state of distress. 

Perhaps she is personally tired of the “sad girl schtick,” but Mitski has to decide whether to embrace the description she trademarked or rebel and create a new identity for her music and voice to exist in. You can’t please everyone. If she truly wants fans to abandon labeling themselves in accordance with the themes of her past work, then why would she continue to write songs that have a similar pay-off? What is the difference between “Love Me More” (I need you to love me more / Love me more / Love enough to fill me up) and “Lonesome Love” (Why am I lonely for a lonesome love?) – Mitski is still indulging in the same self-aggrandizing individualism that was evident in her previous records, so why should the content be treated differently than before?

As an artist, you have to recognize that a great deal of effort is involved in rebranding and creating new material that allows your career and the subsequent music you make to possess a longer lifespan. Meaning, Mitski will have to rise to new heights and challenge her fans' perceptions of her through the design and function of her music. If you give your fans work that feels familiar, then they already have a conditioned response. By supplying your audience fresh and innovative ideas, you are by default requesting that they open their minds to imaginative possibilities; sometimes, you have to just let your music speak for you. 

Kaycie is a high school senior and writer. You can find them on Instagram at @boyishblues.

The Slow Cancellation of the Future: 70s Cosplay in Modern Pop Music

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Despite only being two years into the decade, the music of the 2020s has already revealed a trend of artists relying on styles that other musicians have established long ago. In his book Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures, Mark Fisher described this phenomenon as “The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush.” Our expectations have been lowered and we rely on a formal nostalgia, perhaps, as Fisher speculates, because there’s “an increasing sense that culture has lost the ability to grasp and articulate the present.” 

Before Fear of Death was released in 2020, comedian Tim Heidecker had to convince his audience that this was not an elaborate setup — his intention was for this studio album to be taken seriously. “I’m like Dylan,” Heidecker bites, responding to a viewer question during his podcast Office Hours Live. “My name ‘Tim Heidecker’ means Dylan,” he elaborates while his crew chuckle in the background. It’s clear that Tim is not in on the joke. The music video for the titular single on the record is intriguing. In the first 20 seconds, Tim is “showing” the band what cords to play. The camera is directly in his face, but he never acknowledges it. It’s a similar effect to the illusion in documentaries where subjects are aware they’re being filmed, but do their best to pretend to be un-spectated. Shot in 16mm, Tim Heidecker sees himself as a rockstar; one or all of his 70s musical idols at once, a strange showmanship emerges, and it’s a pattern you’ll see throughout the entire record. 

Heidecker has a public playlist on his Spotify titled “Fear of Death,” though it features no songs off his own album. Instead, you’ll find Paul Simon’s “Graceland,” Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” John Lennon’s “Mother,” Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up In Blue,” Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat,” and more. I want to praise Heidecker for wearing his inspirations on his sleeve, but sometimes when an artist says they’re “influenced by” something, what they really mean to say is that they have borrowed from it liberally. If you look up his songs on YouTube, the most popular comments consistently reference other artists. The top comment on “Nothing” compares Heidecker to Harry Nilsson, a prominent singer/songwriter from the 70s. A few comments on “Property” call the album Randy Newman-esque. Did I mention the record also has a cover of “Let It Be”? 

In a Washington Post article, Heidecker said he’s better at sounding like Dylan than himself. “My voice doesn’t have its own character,” he reasoned. Later, the article mentions how Heidecker felt his hair looked similar to “Wings-era McCartney.” In addition to this, reviewers and fans alike had no problem comparing Heidecker’s lyrical ability to that of Paul Simon or Stephen Stills. Is this not a tired precedent? Why are we placing these high accolades onto a comedian whose music career is a hobby, or at the very worst, an after-thought?

Fear of Death promises a pursuit of existential topics, but it has little to no emotional catharsis. Heidecker’s voice is loud, but what it projects is trite lyrics surrounded by equally loud but bland instrumentals. It’s an easy-listening album, but there are no elements that compel you to hear it out. Heidecker fears he lacks a distinct voice, and I believe he uses that as a shield from fully committing to a challenging artistic endeavor, instead settling for something that he can add to his resume, Wikipedia page, or whatever personal book of accomplishments he keeps for himself.

Elsewhere in the music industry, other even more established artists aren't immune to this kind of historical navel-gazing. The most recent albums from Bleachers and St. Vincent both struggle with the same problems. Bleachers lead singer Jack Antonoff also produced St. Vincent’s album, so it's safe to assume Antonoff was juggling both projects at once, and it shows. Both Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night and Daddy’s Home follow the same beats, right down to the album artwork and the costumes. Pop artists are chameleons, shapeshifting into new aesthetics to correlate with the sound of their album — it’s an extra step in branding that’s existed since the beginning of time. However, behind the Bruce Springsteen feature and rogue George Harrison worship, Antonoff reveals his agenda through the yelpy vocals and millennial pop beats. It’s a record tailor-made for alt-pop radio, but it hides behind these distinct influences, pretending to sound bigger than it is.

Antonoff performed some of these songs on Saturday Night Live earlier this year—dressed in cuffed jeans and a leather jacket, he feigns the rockstar aesthetic and sound, without any of the angst or true emotions that fill the songs he’s trying to replicate. There’s a desperation to it. The desire to stand out and be different. Young people don’t notice it because they aren’t familiar with the music it’s referencing. It’s akin to how tweens & teens listen to Lemon Demon and Jack Stauber before they find out who Oingo Boingo and Talking Heads are. Older people are waiting for something better to come along, and with their lowered expectations, they happily take St. Vincent in a Candy Darling wig riffing on a rejected Steely Dan instrumental over another Justin Bieber tune plaguing the radio. 

There’s an issue of class here as well. Both Antonoff and Heidecker come from upper-middle-class backgrounds, growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, respectively. Juxtapose this to Bruce Springsteen (as he is an inspiration to both), who grew up poor in the 50s, which in itself led to a lot of traumas. However, Springsteen tapped into that troubled generational atmosphere as it was in the turbulent process of spiraling down. He earned the title of rockstar by performing with a fearless passion. He believed in what he was singing because he lived it, and the things he didn’t live he observed through the experiences of his peers and fans. He was a natural showman, charismatic, and in the business of projecting a big story. I don’t believe you necessarily have to go through intense hardships in order to write a good song, but in the case of Heidecker and Antonoff, their economic class and shallow life experiences lead to boring records. An isolated life leads to a limited perspective. 

I should also touch on Daddy’s Home a bit more. Annie Clark (St. Vincent) used her father's 12-year incarceration for his role in a $43 million stock manipulation scheme as the crux of this 70s pastiche album. She attempts to be educated about the faults of the prison system and how it affects the black community, but Clark exhibits a clear dissonance when she stumbles through a watered-down reference to Nina Simone and positions black backup singers to sulk about her white father who committed a white-collar crime. Clark, of course, kept this story hidden until journalists forced her hand. “People are flawed, but also are capable of change. We can’t just write somebody off,” Clark said in an interview. To cope, she dropped into a cobbled-together character based on stolen and reappropriated aesthetics. Clark went from a “white-haired, sadomasochist cult leader” to a “dominatrix at the mental institution” to a “Cassavetes heroine” in the span of three album cycles. She attributes this current phase as a tribute to the albums she grew up on, which is the case for all millennial / gen x musicians. There isn’t anything unique about listening to Joni Mitchell and wishing you could be her. 

Artists are perceiving the past as a mythical entity, which is contributing to the slow cancellation of the future. Focusing on aesthetics alone can lead to limited hindsight about an era and its ideals. Through appropriation, these artists are shrinking the possibility for an organic/original sound to emerge. This leads me to the next topic of discussion: Greta Van Fleet. 

Greta Van Fleet is a band from Michigan who is best known for being Led Zeppelin emulators. As this article states: “the music, the costumes, even the backlash against them — is crafted intentionally to appeal specifically to people who are too young to know that they’re derivative and people who are too old to care because they remind them of when they were young. They’re a band designed to be regurgitated by algorithms, worming their way onto “Recommended If You Like…” playlists and nabbing themselves the No. 1 rock album in the country without so much as an original thought. They themselves are still young — but old enough to know exactly what they’re doing.” Greta Van Fleet does not push the world of rock music forward; their art is stagnant and without any new or original ideas, concepts, and styles. There is no authenticity, experimentation, or excitement. They’re gliding into their rising popularity, and with the external increase of 70s cosplay within their peer group, there are no signs of it slowing down anytime soon. 

Whether they're creating rock, pop, or overly-earnest singer-songwriter fare, artists like Greta Van Fleet, Bleachers, and Heidecker take the aesthetics of the 70s and believe that is enough. However, the songwriters of that era implored a strong use of language and narrative. Randy Newman was known for his tongue-in-cheek satires, Harry Nilsson was known for his spontaneous imagination, Joni Mitchell was known for her equally heartfelt and intricate poetry. Excellent writing and a knowledge of how to use figurative language is the core of what makes a song compelling, memorable, and worthy of being passed down to a future generation.

Another hit album of 2021 was An Evening with Silk Sonic. Throughout this release, the duo comprised of Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak indulged in a faithful and committed tribute to the R&B genre. Though music videos and lyrical references throughout the album fetishize the 70s, it is clear that their revival of this sound is tongue-in-cheek; they’re aware of how well-worn this aesthetic is. The irony doesn’t absolve the album from fault, but is an indicator of how it was a passion project, never meant to be perceived as anything deeper. However, as Pitchfork mentioned: “any significant level of investment poses the question: When artists invoke music as beloved as Motown and Philly soul, how can anything they create measure up?” 

What is the purpose of 70s cosplay if not to invoke feelings of nostalgia? Even to those of us who were born way after that decade, the sounds and color palates still feel warm and inviting. It’s easier to accept false replications of the past than to conceive of something new. Why should you seek out new genres or singers when you can listen to an established artist that makes you think of being a kid, sitting in the back of your dad's car while he had the classic rock station on? 

What’s worst yet is that this 70s revival refuses to acknowledge the influences artists from the 70s borrowed. Bob Dylan thanks Jimmy Reed and Woody Guthrie for his career, Led Zeppelin wears the influence of Muddy Waters and Skip James on their sleeve, Joan Baez cites Pete Seeger and Odetta as an inspiration. It is true that no one is uniquely individual or without inspiration, but what's different about artists of the 1970s to the ones of the 2020s is that they elevated themselves with these influences while constantly reinventing, experimenting, and being brave enough to let their voice waiver without the clutch of reverb and electronic drum beats.

The culture of nostalgia has reached an evolved form with films, documentaries, and music celebrating pop auteurs. The past already happened. To recreate it is a futile attempt to capture a moment that was never really there. What glamor is there in recycled fashion looks or referenced bass lines? Is there no pride in swallowing your inspirations and channeling a new ambition from them?

It is in my humble opinion that inspiration can be found in idiosyncratic talent and artistic motives. It is more admirable to place recognition in the greatness of creatives before you and try to imbue their philosophy in the voice you project into the world rather than stand in as a cheap knock-off. You don’t have to dress like Marc Bolan and sound like Bowie to be alluring—you just have to possess a relentless passion for performing. Modern artists are so terrified to fail openly, and their music shows it. To do something that hasn’t been done before requires a certain bravery that groups like Bleachers and Greta Van Fleet don’t possess. 

None of these albums will make an impression. They will be forgotten in the same vein of how we remember The Beatles and not the hundreds of copycat bands that came to be as a result of them. These albums are the result of admiration — but it’s not a case of, as Brian Eno stated, "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band" where the energy and attitudes were what was desired to replicate. Instead, this modern crop of albums represents the fetishization of aesthetic, recontextualization of the past in a contemporary lens, and carrying a pretense of leveling on the same heights as the artists they’re replicating. The lack of subtlety is tiring. These musicians assign themselves a self-importance because they are aware of the acclaimed arts of the past. The core issue with all of these projects is that they don’t understand the source material. They don’t understand the context in which the art they adore was made, and this self-indulgence prevents cohesion. What purpose does a referential album or gimmick serve in an age where all of history is accessible in three clicks? 

In the past, writers, musicians, and activists operated under a political sentiment of engagement. This is how counterculture was born. But as it stands today, we have no oppositional culture. We’ve surpassed the end of history in terms of chance for political upheaval or drastic societal change, and no one really knows what to do. Nostalgia, though well-worn and bittersweet, is a type of regression when liberally exerted. If artists keep dipping back into the honeypot, we may never witness the future. In order for the future to exist, we must participate in new thoughts and imagination and rid ourselves of styles we weren’t supposed to hold onto this long. 

Kaycie is a high school senior and writer. You can find them on Instagram at @boyishblues.