We all love music. I don't think there will be anyone (or very few people, in the worst case scenario) who would disagree. However, perhaps due to a mixture of ignorance, or perhaps a little idealism, we forget that for a song to reach us from a remote part of the world to the comfort of our ears, wherever we live, there is a gigantic, very hard and almost always cruel industry that makes it possible.... It is the same industry that in the 70's of the last century, marginalized MoTown and disco music for being “black”, but had no qualms in “correcting” and exploiting its course during the boom that the 80's meant for the world culture.
We all remember Michael Jackson. A formidable artist, no doubt about his quality as a singer, dancer, composer, producer and showman, but his other brothers, who in the 70's were with him in the Jackson's Five are not so well remembered. It's not Michael's fault that this was so, I clarify... But in the music industry, either you are useful to the interests that they manage and impose, or not; they don't go around with half-measures. .... And as you will notice, this post does have a critical look at something that today affects us and describes much of what we listen to.
Would you like another example of industry use and waste? Glam metal. During the years of Reagan's presidency in the United States, and therefore of his way of managing the Western world in the middle of the Cold War, the soundtrack of the 80's were two: glam metal and pop with synthesizers... The former had a notable influence on the youth of the time. Strident hair, lots of hairspray, guitars with powerful riffs and choruses that stuck in the memory of every person who heard those songs. Jon Bon Jovi, Poison. Motley Crue, Kiss, Van Halen, Guns and Roses, are some of the bands that reigned radios, televisions and sales lists all over the world...
That is, yes... Only until something else came along to supplant it. At the end of the 80's, on the west coast of the USA, a group of misfit kids, cynical and pessimistic of Reagan's consumerist and yuppie policies, created a movement that destroyed glam and established the next generation of music: grunge. About what it is and what it meant to me, I've already talked enough... But it's starting to become pretty clear what the pattern is, isn't it? Use and discard. That's how the logic of the music industry works in the world. That's why nobody remembers Sinead O'Connor today, but Camila Cabello does. And no, I have nothing against Cabello. It is an example.
Today, the band The Rolling Stones owes its name to a song by a guy that no one is able to recognize in a photograph. Fiona Apple was a pop artist who changed everything that was consumed within Pop in the 90's and nobody is able to recognize her? Why? Use and discard. That's the reason why there will never be a top ten of iconic pop songs, reggaeton or related genres. And what he denounced is neither new, nor original... Many people more educated than me have already said it. Such is the insanity, that not even figures like Amy Winehouse or Elton John are saved from the oblivion and discarding of those who once used them... By the way, the Rolling Stones owe the name of their band to the mythical: Muddy Waters... And if you Google “Like a Rolling Stone (name of the famous song in question) the interpreter is Bob Dylan.... Oh, the oblivion...