Listen to the beat of: Ultravox, Soft Cell, Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Yazoo, The Human League, Eurythmics and Dead or Alive. Or any of their contemporary scene colleagues.
Listen to the texts if you want, but there is no surprise there. With few excuses you can as well read the lyrics of Elvis Presley -Who was a great artist and without doubt would have thrived in any of the bands mentioned above.
But prior to writing this I have been listening to these stars of the 1980’s and also to what is gripping today, in the 2010’s. That is 30 years give or take, well enough time for a new generation to evolve and beginning to take the rudder for all ours future.
So it occurred to me that one might guess in what direction our world is going, based on what I’m hearing.
The beat in the eighties is pushing forward, you hardly had time to breath before the next band was on cue at MTV. This was the time when it became more possible for unknown artists to be known. It was also the golden days of the pioneers in music television. Any new hot artist presented would add to the channels karma. Thus can some of the pushing beats be explained, as a positive feedback.
But it also mirrors the society at a mass. The atmosphere surrounding our sphere seemed to be filled with positive, and rushed, pheromones. We did not know it yet but we stood before a great relieve, in less than 15 years the iron curtain would fall. Could we hear the rush already, there in the beat of the eighties?
Fifteen years later the internet also arrived at large and from there we see a huge change in almost everything. Not falling to numerology here, but fifteen is an age when you start to give a shit about what you’ve been taught and try to go your own way.
So we have 1980+15=1995 or in another way: Children of the parents who were pushed forward by the music of the eighties were about to come adult in 1995, when the wall fell and the internet was officially born.
Fast forward another fifteen years, it’s 2010. And that is where I have started to collect the winds of todays streams (no pun intended) in music.
It might take another fifteen years for me to concoct my recent impressions into another gauging. And it won’t ever be a century but I felt it would be a good headline 🙂
However! The feeling I get from what I’ve heard so far is that the pushing tempo has turned down in favour of highly emotional or ironical tunes and texts. If I try to interpret what’s behind this it could be some kind of despair, especially if I compare it to the just as popular ”angry music” in the form of rap.
So, what will come in the next fifteen years? Can we make a forecast based on the trends of the previous century? I think that music of the youths can tell us much. Maybe I’ll be able to get the answer from an intelligent computer in 2030, but such a thing I haven’t heard of from spotify just yet.
The times are interesting, as always!
