Like technological and social disruptions, I think usually the difference is that the new thing has a different agenda than the old - different goals. As a result, the old can't make sense of it - by their goals the new thing is obviously worthless. To the market-dominating Blackberry phone maker, obviously their phone was far superior for email, so why would someone in business buy an iPhone?
My working theory is that the new thing 60s rock'n'roll aimed for was personal expression. Vaudeville acts weren't expressing things about themselves (very much - it's always a matter of degree). There was no 'Let It Be' moment, or expressions of aggression or deeply felt love. Vaudeville and a lot of the pre-Beatles pop music was (very generally) entertainment, not so much art. Look at jazz too, going from Ellington to Coltrane. Look at the rise of folk music. 50's crooners mocked the singing voices of rockers because that was their goal - an aesthetically beautiful voice; they perhaps didn't see the point of rockers was personal expression.
Again, that's speaking very generally. There were many beautiful voices post-Beatles, and there was self-expression before them, and the dividing line isn't perfect.
Now it seems to me that we are leaving behind personal expression. If true, I think partly it's an outcome of culture wars: it's associated with liberalism, so many reject it; and real personal expression can be uncomfortable and non-conformist, and that's divisive and provocative to many. But I am building speculation on speculation.
What personal would there be left to express in a world reduced to a market of bespoke customers—not only their tastes, but their very spectra of conceivable interior experiences preemptively curated by adaptive recommender systems?
Pop music was always the instrument of creating such consumers; the inevitable replacement of subsistance farmers by sub-subsistence factory workers; the media industry as a core tool in the toolbox of the infinite growth death cult, robbing people of certain things previously considered essential human, by channeling their personal experiences through the designated—the Japanese have a great word for it—idols.
You can't have global power projection without an unidirectional informational channel to common working folk, you see, to make sure they know which way the wind is blowing, and to keep them unable to imagine an alternative to what they're trapped in. We're just on a new level of that, one where the expression of that reality which any of us personally experiences is left perpetually in the rear view mirror; all that remains in the here and now is "content production", and its layers upon layers upon layers of technical facilitators in cutthroat competition for the largest crumb of the donut hole.
It's the reification of post-post-post-so-far-post-that-it's-kind-of-meta-modernism: it's all about how it's about nothing at all! And yet it's massive. The kids, those ultimate judges of practicing vs preaching, have spoken: can't sell out of your "authenticity" if you were authentically in it for the money and fame in the first place. There's still room in all that for originality, even creativity, but it's explicitly just business, never anything personal because that'd be bad taste; drawing a line between the interior world and the social game—or worse, trafficking in those goods which can only be found in the former—has completed its transformation into a social taboo.
Hence, the exquisitely crude, the blatantly false, the unapologetically predatory, has won the battle for the hearts and minds, and is now officially in control of the planet. If you think anything else is going on, you just don't know it yet, and we wish the best of luck to you and yours.
> nd to keep them unable to imagine an alternative to what they're trapped in.
Feels like this is all of human history and not just now.
> can't sell out of your "authenticity" if you were authentically in it for the money and fame in the first place.
I have to say i think it's better that way. At least they don't have to pretend to care. Makes them easier to avoid.
> never anything personal because that'd be bad taste;
I guess you and i live in totally different internet bubbles. I've not really seen this.
> Hence, the exquisitely crude, the blatantly false, the unapologetically predatory, has won the battle for the hearts and minds, and is now officially in control of the planet.
Definitely believe this. I'm not sure it's permanent though.
Much of this is because there is not much of a recorded music industry before 1950.
Miles Davis Kind of Blue was one of the best selling albums of the 50s. The #1 best seller though of the decade is the Elvis Christmas album.
By the 60s, Sinatra and the Rat pack were considered lame. That was your dad's music. The Beatles are the Beatles because of the size of the baby boomer generation and that someone had to be the stars of the new generation. As great as the Beatles are, the marketing of the Beatles albums was just as great.
Like technological and social disruptions, I think usually the difference is that the new thing has a different agenda than the old - different goals. As a result, the old can't make sense of it - by their goals the new thing is obviously worthless. To the market-dominating Blackberry phone maker, obviously their phone was far superior for email, so why would someone in business buy an iPhone?
My working theory is that the new thing 60s rock'n'roll aimed for was personal expression. Vaudeville acts weren't expressing things about themselves (very much - it's always a matter of degree). There was no 'Let It Be' moment, or expressions of aggression or deeply felt love. Vaudeville and a lot of the pre-Beatles pop music was (very generally) entertainment, not so much art. Look at jazz too, going from Ellington to Coltrane. Look at the rise of folk music. 50's crooners mocked the singing voices of rockers because that was their goal - an aesthetically beautiful voice; they perhaps didn't see the point of rockers was personal expression.
Again, that's speaking very generally. There were many beautiful voices post-Beatles, and there was self-expression before them, and the dividing line isn't perfect.
Now it seems to me that we are leaving behind personal expression. If true, I think partly it's an outcome of culture wars: it's associated with liberalism, so many reject it; and real personal expression can be uncomfortable and non-conformist, and that's divisive and provocative to many. But I am building speculation on speculation.