When did this happen exactly?
I listened to a song a couple of weeks ago that really reminded me of another song that I couldn’t quite place. The strings were basically pulled directly (albeit transposed) and even the drums were almost the same, just slowed. Anyway, after trying to figure out what the original song was, it was eventually brought to my attention that it was Bruce Springsteen’s Streets of Philadelphia. I was listening to the song on YouTube, and doing my usual thing of reading up about it when I came across which genuinely startled me: the vocals in the video were recorded live at the video shoot, something Springsteen himself insisted on so as to make the video as authentic as possible. Just to give context, just yesterday there was a news article on Yahoo suggesting that Britney Spears’ live concerts come with a warning that her performances featured no live audio, and that she was in fact miming.
When did this happen? I assume there wasn’t a flick of a switch, turning music as an art form from overly-authentic (the idea of recording vocals live at a music video set is a little absurd to me, especially considering ol’ Bruce was walking around an open city) to entirely false overnight, so presumably we’ve been subjected to the changes gradually, over time, and the changing demographics did not care enough to raise their hands and protest.
The whole music industry has undeniably changed into a less artistic, less authentic monster over time. Maybe this was dictated by the newer generations simply caring more about the artist rather than what the artists produce, but before you would never have been able to put a pretty face on stage and get him/her to simple gyrate for millions of pounds because the audience for that type of “music” just didn’t exist. Even studio recordings are false, with singers singing songs written by other people, singing lyrics penned by someone else, and with the singer’s actual vocals getting pitch-corrected by clever software to hide the fact that often… they just can’t sing. People interested in today’s pop music are essentially watching people with pretty faces dance around, while what constituted pop music up until the early/mid 90’s was mostly genuine, mostly real.
I’m going to stop now. Just like to quickly point out that I couldn’t give a rat’s arse what pop music sounds like these days, I just wish it were real. Music’s an art form, and the stuff that features in the charts these days as far removed from Springsteen era pop as pantomime is from Wilde.
N.B. The song that kicked off this little rant is The Autumn Leaves by some chap called ATB.
