(1) What is happening in music now that I care about? (Not "what has shifted culturally?" given that I don't think much has between 2000 and now (compare to the changes that occurred between 1960 and 1968). Well, there's the Hoar-pop of Danity Kane and Girlicious, though I think the hoar stuff is the least interesting thing about them and their image of the "bad girl" is quite ancient. Would be interesting if they bragged about having children and abandoning them, rather than ducking the issue of actual badness by just being slutty and saying "When the red light comes on I transform." What's interesting isn't that they need the red light to express their sexual desire but that they use it as a pretext for polyphony and harmony. It's the darting voices and the sudden blobs of harmonic beauty that make me love the music. Other things I like in the musical nowadays: that Aly & A.J. went from rock confessional to dance confessional without missing a beat (in fact gained some beats). But again, it's not that they sang "confessional," but what they sang, the slow gorgeousness of "Blush" while Aly agonizingly worked through the rules she was setting up so that she could ask someone to touch her, and the release and joy of "Potential Breakup Song," the whole liberated dance of potentially being free (and the hope that they can have their dance and not be free of the guy, the hope that they don't have to break up). Maybe there's a demographic spread of the confessional - the romantic search for self - into teenpop via Michelle and Nelly F. and Pink and the slew that followed, and into mainstream country by way of Taylor Swift and Michelle once again (but I really don't know enough about country to say how much of the confessional and the search for self were already there: I have to check out more of the career of Deana Carter). But I wouldn't say that the confessionals and the searches now are different in kind from the confessionals and searches of ten, twenty, or forty years ago, except the teen and dance confessionals are maybe less pretentious (and the pretentious confessionals are on a comeback too, if you want to count all the quirky post-Tashbed and Amy types now making a run at the charts).
Hip-hop is going dance and minimalist and maximalist and lots of hip-hop lovers are griping about it, but then hip-hop is always going dance and minimalist and maximalist and people are always griping about it, in fact the Eminem and Trick Daddy and Juvenile and Timbo-Missy-Jay-Z dances at the turn of the decade were as interesting as the ones we've got now.
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(1) What is happening in music now that I care about? (Not "what has shifted culturally?" given that I don't think much has between 2000 and now (compare to the changes that occurred between 1960 and 1968). Well, there's the Hoar-pop of Danity Kane and Girlicious, though I think the hoar stuff is the least interesting thing about them and their image of the "bad girl" is quite ancient. Would be interesting if they bragged about having children and abandoning them, rather than ducking the issue of actual badness by just being slutty and saying "When the red light comes on I transform." What's interesting isn't that they need the red light to express their sexual desire but that they use it as a pretext for polyphony and harmony. It's the darting voices and the sudden blobs of harmonic beauty that make me love the music. Other things I like in the musical nowadays: that Aly & A.J. went from rock confessional to dance confessional without missing a beat (in fact gained some beats). But again, it's not that they sang "confessional," but what they sang, the slow gorgeousness of "Blush" while Aly agonizingly worked through the rules she was setting up so that she could ask someone to touch her, and the release and joy of "Potential Breakup Song," the whole liberated dance of potentially being free (and the hope that they can have their dance and not be free of the guy, the hope that they don't have to break up). Maybe there's a demographic spread of the confessional - the romantic search for self - into teenpop via Michelle and Nelly F. and Pink and the slew that followed, and into mainstream country by way of Taylor Swift and Michelle once again (but I really don't know enough about country to say how much of the confessional and the search for self were already there: I have to check out more of the career of Deana Carter). But I wouldn't say that the confessionals and the searches now are different in kind from the confessionals and searches of ten, twenty, or forty years ago, except the teen and dance confessionals are maybe less pretentious (and the pretentious confessionals are on a comeback too, if you want to count all the quirky post-Tashbed and Amy types now making a run at the charts).
Hip-hop is going dance and minimalist and maximalist and lots of hip-hop lovers are griping about it, but then hip-hop is always going dance and minimalist and maximalist and people are always griping about it, in fact the Eminem and Trick Daddy and Juvenile and Timbo-Missy-Jay-Z dances at the turn of the decade were as interesting as the ones we've got now.