Pop Music: A Short-Term Memory

I'm sure everyone has already forgotten about this song:

 

 

Or this one:

 

 



 

 

Or this one:

 

 



 

 

Eventually, everyone will forget about this song, too:

 

 

 

 

 

With YouTube at its peak of dominance, we are witnessing a trend in popular music: no more songs that remain within memory.  Today, your typical pop song will really catch fire and stay on top of the charts for a few months.  Then it gets erased from memory as the next big song rises to the top of the charts.

 

There are exceptions to this rule, but there was a time where popular music, quality notwithstanding, stayed in peoples' heads for years, not mere months.  Pop music has always been quite disposable, but YouTube, iPods, and MP3s have made it even more disposable. 

 

Music is not dead as an artform, but as a business, it has changed rapidly in the Digital Age.  The music business is about selling emotions as style, and because it is easier to market style over substance, something that is emotionally resonant (not in a literal sense, of course) will shoot to the top of the charts.  But what we define as "resonance" has also changed rapidly.  Viral videos and technology have made the world more complicated, and perhaps we don't really know what we feel. 

 

Every generation bears a set of cultural markers.  For the YouTube generation, the one-hit-wonder is a cultural marker.  Pop music burns away quickly, and that speaks volumes about the fragmented consumer culture.

 

Yet there is something I do find fascinating: in an era where it is so easy to find new music, people still seem to wait for music to come to them.  Maybe today's youth are waiting for something to truly wow them.  Maybe people in general are waiting for something to flip the culture of music upside down.  But fragmented audiences and tastes mean it is unlikely we'll ever witness a major cultural shift. 

 

Or perhaps I'll be proven wrong.