Popular music reflects, for better or worse, the culture it services, at any given point in time. That’s as true in the new millennium as it’s ever been.
And one aspect of Western culture in this new millennium is that romance is pretty much dead: there’s less I-love-you-I-want-you-I-need-you in the air than there has been in living memory.
Gone are the days of the love song. Gone are expressions of undying devotion and irrepressible longing. Gone are those relatable musical valentines that made us feel warm and tingly.
In their place, we have women more objectified than ever; blatant sexual expression with no recognizable trace of humanity; revenge screeds that reek of pettiness and insecurity.
That’s what the music is sending back, and it reflects a culture that no longer cherishes romance; young people in general are no longer interested in long-term relationships, and even less in the kind of devotion that becomes the motivation of a life path.
Why this is so is beyond the scope of this book; make of it what you will, it’s simply the new reality, and our task here is to acknowledge it and quantify it.
The journal Sexuality and Culture has published a study in which 1,250 pop/rock songs that made the US Billboard charts were analyzed. The study revealed that between 1960 and 2000, almost 60% of all songs that charted were about romantic love; that number dropped to less than half by 2010, and has dropped still further since.
On the other hand, the study found that while romantic love has been increasingly absent in pop/rock, sex is very much on the rise. In the Sixties, less than 10% of all songs were about sex; today, that number has more than doubled for songs done by women and quadrupled for songs by men.
In the 2017 HuffPost article “Where Is the Love? A Generation Without Love Songs”, pop culture writer Lamar Dawson gave this trend some qualitative observation.
“Gone are the days of making mixtapes for your crush,” he wrote. “Gone are the days of calling the radio station dedicating a love song to your boo.”
Those days, per Dawson and a friend he spoke with about the subject, were populated by artists like Lionel Ritchie, Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey... Celine Dion and Anita Baker and Babyface. Artists who sang about “wanting love, needing someone to hold onto and cherishing the love being created together.”
He noted that since 1996, “There’s been a noticeable decline of love songs on the Billboard Hot 100,” as we noted from the study cited above; in 1996, 14 of the Top 20 year-end chart were love songs, which Dawson defines as “I-love-you-I-can't-live-without-you-I-miss-you-please-don't-leave songs. Songs you'd dedicate to your significant other. Songs acknowledging your desire for a connection on an intimate, romantic level. Songs that’d be included in those music collection box sets you’d order from the TV. Songs you’d dance to at your wedding. So not, you-broke-my-heart-and-I-want-to-kill-you.
In 2016, Dawson noted, there was only one love song in the Top 20 year-end Billboard chart.
Per his own survey, he learned that between 1996 and 2004, about 40% of the Top 20 year-end songs were love songs. As of his writing in 2017, most annual Top 20 lists contained less than 1-in-5. In 2014, there were three; in 2015 and 2016, only one. In 2012 – none at all.
(For some context, let's remember that the Beatles - the best-selling, most influential band in pop/rock history, gave us more than 200 songs between 1962 and 1970 - and more than half of them were love songs.)
Dawson raises the culture question, as we ourselves are doing right now: is this a reflection of Millennial culture? Dawson notes that Millennials “are often described as self-absorbed with a need for instant gratification,” but is this a fair assessment? And even if it is, “does it explain our lack of desire to connect with a romantic partner in deep and meaningful ways? After all, that takes time and effort and we simply don't have the patience. Also if true, does our music choices reflect this lifestyle?”
We can call out Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift as the pacesetters in this area, successful artists/songwriters who repeatedly whine their way into the Top 10 when their relationships go sour (which seems to happen often enough that one can now support an entire career on that alone). No wonder, then, that the Millennial generation has re-embraced Fleetwood Mac, one of the five most successful bands of all time, largely based on Rumours, their diamond-status study of relationship train wrecks. The parade of Mac hits from that album is very much the template for the Clarksons and Swifts of the moment; Lindsey Buckingham put Mac in the Top 10 in the US for the first time with “Go Your Own Way”, which he aimed squarely and painfully at his ex (and bandmate) Stevie Nicks – who countered with “Dreams”, which punched him right back and delivered Mac its first US #1.
And we miss the fact that Nicks also offered up “Silver Springs”, a tender and heartbreaking offering from her to Lindsey that honestly underscored what might have been, if they had just worked things out.
It was excluded from the album. Adding insult to injury, it was used as the B-side to “Go Your Own Way”.
Can we say this all sounds very Millennial? Please, please, let’s hope not; Buckingham and Nicks are both Boomers, after all; can we just agree, or at least discuss whether, this kind of music should be the exception and not the rule?
Comentarios