Business may be going from bad to worse but the music is thriving, says Neil McCormick.
Yet, paradoxically, while business may be bad and getting worse, music itself
continues to thrive, the very ether throbbing to the virtual din of start-up
enterprises, one-man bands and hardened road veterans competing for the
world’s hopelessly divided attention.
The real trick in confusing times of rapid technological change, free
distribution and collapsing sales is how to break through the information
overload and make pop music that is actually popular, resonating throughout
the whole world and not just in margins of the imagination. Justin Bieber
has proved there is still a global hormonal market for blue-eyed teenybop
pin-ups, but, if you can catch that kind of attention while offering
something resembling artistic vision, purpose and originality, well, maybe
there is hope for this pop malarkey after all.
So let’s hear it for the return of Lady Gaga. There have been times when I
doubted we would see her like again, a single iconic figure in the Madonna
and Prince mould who manages the almost impossible trick of being mainstream
and cutting-edge, so boldly brilliant she demands a love-her-or-loathe-her
response. Gaga was the world’s biggest-selling artist of 2010 with her
extras album The Fame Monster (5.8 million copies, to add to the five
million of 2009’s The Fame).
In May, she releases her follow up, Born This Way, in which we will really
find out what she’s got to offer beneath the towering wigs and meat dresses.
More of the same may not be enough in a fast-moving (and rapidly tiring)
novelty-seeking market, but Gaga’s instincts for style and controversy have
been underpinned by genuine musical skills and an Abba-like melodic nous. If
she’s prepared to push herself beyond the superficial she could propel pop
into places it has never been before. It’s either that or the sputter of
anti-climactic fireworks as she dons her exploding bra one more time.
If she has a rival, it may be Kanye West, whose genre-busting, grandstanding 2010 masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was so outrageously brilliant it made most of what passes for pop music sound flat.
West has been recording with rap legend Jay Z, a union he describes as the hip-hop equivalent of “Bono and Mick” (Jagger, presumably). Their forthcoming album, Watch the Throne, has the potential to be more than a super-duo vanity project. There are few rappers who think more deeply about what their music represents (Jay Z’s book Decoded is a must-read for anyone seeking insight into why hip hop has been the essential musical narrative of recent decades) and fewer producers who can match West’s mad musical ambition. This is an album that could raise the bar for a genre that, as recently as two years ago, was being rather prematurely pronounced dead.
In the US, big hip hop names are coming back into the fray, including Dr Dre, the Beastie Boys and Wyclef Jean (fresh from his foray into politics with If I Were President: My Haitian Experience). Audacious female rapper Nicki Minaj made waves at the end of 2010 and is already proving an inspirational (if controversial) character (already hailed as a hip-hop Gaga).
Back in the UK, we have witnessed the coming of age of Britrap, energised by the commercial success and musical adventurousness of Dizzee Rascal and Tinie Tempah. This year will see a final flourish of one of British rap’s most original characters, the Streets. Mike Skinner’s new album, Computers and Blues, will be the last for his poetic alter ego.
His mantle has arguably already been picked up Plan B (aka Ben Drew), who wowed us with his soul-singing incarnation on last year’s The Defamation of Strickland Banks but plans to follow with a return to hardcore hip hop, tied in to a movie and soundtrack, Ill Manors (which he has written and directed himself). Drew’s polemical and political rapping is not for the faint-hearted, but if he can hold his mainstream audience with his multimedia skills, he could turn out to be the most interesting British pop star of the new decade.
If rap has pulled itself back from the brink, can rock do the same? This year, some big guns will be roaring again. Loudest and lairiest may be Beady Eye, Liam Gallagher’s new group, which, to be fair, look and sound a lot like his old group. Essentially, the line-up is Oasis without Noel, but they have a renewed sense of vigour and purpose, and if their February debut, Different Gear, Still Speeding is as good as Liam claims, we’re in for a retro rocking treat.
U2 are threatening a new album with hip-hop maverick Dangermouse at the controls. Following the underperformance of 2009’s No Line on the Horizon, the Irish supergroup are widely deemed to have lost some of their swagger, but, if so, nobody appears to have told them. Expect to see them convert critics and slay begrudgers with a barnstorming set at the Glastonbury festival.
Competing for the title of world’s greatest rock band, Coldplay, REM and Radiohead also have albums in the works. Potentially the most interesting, however, will be Elbow’s Build a Rocket Boys!, their 2009 Mercury triumph having at last confirmed their place among rock’s elite.
And a veteran band who could surprise everyone are Duran Duran, whose Eighties bombast is reheated by superfan Mark Ronson on a new album, All You Need is Now.
Just so long as we don’t have to depend on NME’s new favourites the Vaccines or Brother to save rock and roll by retreading over-familiar indie and Britpop clichés. I would rather wait for the return of Glasvegas, who at least have a Clash-like sense of political passion and moral purpose.
As for Jessie J, the big-voiced, urban-styled singer already anointed with the Critics’ Choice award at the Brits, surely we want more from our new talent than just excitable approximations of US urban pop.
If it is originality, integrity, emotion and new musical perspectives you seek, then try the post-dubstep ambient soul of Jamie Woon and James Blake, poster boys for a new intimacy that somehow combines the sensitivity of singer-songwriting with bowel-shaking sub bass.
Other unhyped and almost fantastically unfashionable new artists worth keeping an ear out for include Delta Maid, a Liverpool beauty who looks like a Wag and sounds like Patsy Cline, and gloomily poetic art-rockers Chapel Club.
Oldies but goldies set to return in 2010 include legendary songwriters Paul Simon, Randy Newman and maybe, if the gods of music are smiling on us, Leonard Cohen with a long-threatened and oft-delayed new studio set from the 76-year-old poetic genius.
Of course, you could always hold out for an Abba reunion. There has been some excitement following remarks from the reclusive Agnetha Faltskog. Before you remove mothballs from your velvet jumpsuit, however, you might bear in mind that her estranged fellow members recently turned down a billion-dollar offer to reunite, with songwriter Björn Ulvaeus describing the very idea of the sexagenarian supergroup as “utterly ludicrous”.
Even with the parlous state of the modern music business, it turns out some people don’t need the money, money, money.
If she has a rival, it may be Kanye West, whose genre-busting, grandstanding 2010 masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was so outrageously brilliant it made most of what passes for pop music sound flat.
West has been recording with rap legend Jay Z, a union he describes as the hip-hop equivalent of “Bono and Mick” (Jagger, presumably). Their forthcoming album, Watch the Throne, has the potential to be more than a super-duo vanity project. There are few rappers who think more deeply about what their music represents (Jay Z’s book Decoded is a must-read for anyone seeking insight into why hip hop has been the essential musical narrative of recent decades) and fewer producers who can match West’s mad musical ambition. This is an album that could raise the bar for a genre that, as recently as two years ago, was being rather prematurely pronounced dead.
In the US, big hip hop names are coming back into the fray, including Dr Dre, the Beastie Boys and Wyclef Jean (fresh from his foray into politics with If I Were President: My Haitian Experience). Audacious female rapper Nicki Minaj made waves at the end of 2010 and is already proving an inspirational (if controversial) character (already hailed as a hip-hop Gaga).
Back in the UK, we have witnessed the coming of age of Britrap, energised by the commercial success and musical adventurousness of Dizzee Rascal and Tinie Tempah. This year will see a final flourish of one of British rap’s most original characters, the Streets. Mike Skinner’s new album, Computers and Blues, will be the last for his poetic alter ego.
His mantle has arguably already been picked up Plan B (aka Ben Drew), who wowed us with his soul-singing incarnation on last year’s The Defamation of Strickland Banks but plans to follow with a return to hardcore hip hop, tied in to a movie and soundtrack, Ill Manors (which he has written and directed himself). Drew’s polemical and political rapping is not for the faint-hearted, but if he can hold his mainstream audience with his multimedia skills, he could turn out to be the most interesting British pop star of the new decade.
If rap has pulled itself back from the brink, can rock do the same? This year, some big guns will be roaring again. Loudest and lairiest may be Beady Eye, Liam Gallagher’s new group, which, to be fair, look and sound a lot like his old group. Essentially, the line-up is Oasis without Noel, but they have a renewed sense of vigour and purpose, and if their February debut, Different Gear, Still Speeding is as good as Liam claims, we’re in for a retro rocking treat.
U2 are threatening a new album with hip-hop maverick Dangermouse at the controls. Following the underperformance of 2009’s No Line on the Horizon, the Irish supergroup are widely deemed to have lost some of their swagger, but, if so, nobody appears to have told them. Expect to see them convert critics and slay begrudgers with a barnstorming set at the Glastonbury festival.
Competing for the title of world’s greatest rock band, Coldplay, REM and Radiohead also have albums in the works. Potentially the most interesting, however, will be Elbow’s Build a Rocket Boys!, their 2009 Mercury triumph having at last confirmed their place among rock’s elite.
And a veteran band who could surprise everyone are Duran Duran, whose Eighties bombast is reheated by superfan Mark Ronson on a new album, All You Need is Now.
Just so long as we don’t have to depend on NME’s new favourites the Vaccines or Brother to save rock and roll by retreading over-familiar indie and Britpop clichés. I would rather wait for the return of Glasvegas, who at least have a Clash-like sense of political passion and moral purpose.
As for Jessie J, the big-voiced, urban-styled singer already anointed with the Critics’ Choice award at the Brits, surely we want more from our new talent than just excitable approximations of US urban pop.
If it is originality, integrity, emotion and new musical perspectives you seek, then try the post-dubstep ambient soul of Jamie Woon and James Blake, poster boys for a new intimacy that somehow combines the sensitivity of singer-songwriting with bowel-shaking sub bass.
Other unhyped and almost fantastically unfashionable new artists worth keeping an ear out for include Delta Maid, a Liverpool beauty who looks like a Wag and sounds like Patsy Cline, and gloomily poetic art-rockers Chapel Club.
Oldies but goldies set to return in 2010 include legendary songwriters Paul Simon, Randy Newman and maybe, if the gods of music are smiling on us, Leonard Cohen with a long-threatened and oft-delayed new studio set from the 76-year-old poetic genius.
Of course, you could always hold out for an Abba reunion. There has been some excitement following remarks from the reclusive Agnetha Faltskog. Before you remove mothballs from your velvet jumpsuit, however, you might bear in mind that her estranged fellow members recently turned down a billion-dollar offer to reunite, with songwriter Björn Ulvaeus describing the very idea of the sexagenarian supergroup as “utterly ludicrous”.
Even with the parlous state of the modern music business, it turns out some people don’t need the money, money, money.
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