There’s a chance that current musical output hasn’t really
become more conservative. There’s a big chance that there are pockets of ad
hoc, left-field, anti-commercial dissent all over the place that remain unheard
and unseen by the majority. There’s a chance that this stuff will break out and
we’ll have a new revolution. There’s a chance that pigs might fly and that
we’ll all live happily ever after but there’s a bigger chance that they can’t
and we won’t.
Courtney Barnett
This year I found the BBC’s self-fulfilling Sound of 2015
even more depressing than usual. It was really a case of ‘is that it?’ Is that
the best we can do? In the dying stages of 2015 Radio 1 had promised to
resurrect rock music but their efforts seem not to have made it as far as
warranting their validation for the year to come. The top five choices
were all a bit meh and then some.
Predicting success for the likes of Kwabs or James Bay is
hardly going out on a limb. Both have had ‘hits’ and radio playlists already, they
are signed to major labels and are making pop/soul music that is great but far
from challenging. Bay strikes me as being in the George Ezra school, good but
not outstanding – I prefer my singer-songwriters to be saying something, or at
least trying. Kwabs could be a true great, he has the lungs for it – if the
songs are there (or can be found) he could be around for some time. Kwabs is
unquestionably better than Sam Smith whose success has been astounding.
I should never look to the ‘sound of’ selections to find
ground-breaking music; it is only a list of those most likely to become
successful. As mentioned previously
the very fact that you’re on the list makes it even more likely. I suppose the
trouble is that we all don’t know where to look – there are too many places to
find music and the increasing proliferation of such places makes most of the acts
they feature even less likely to break the mainstream. Radio breaks most new music
in the UK and the first rule of radio is repetition.
If stuff is safe it’s because the industry has contracted to
such a degree that no-one takes risks. We need the artistic community to start
this process but how will we know if they ever do? Most of the artists on the ‘sound
of’ list have been around for a few years already, perhaps we still have years
to wait for things to change?
Here’s a selection of my current predilections.
Wolf Alice
PUBLIC SERVICE
BROADCASTING
BELLA FIGURA
Comments