Lack of Musical Excitement

The Grammys are tomorrow night, and despite the subtitle of this blog mentioning music, I could care less about the biggest night of that industry. Why? Because music has become to fractured, crowded, and boring.

It used to be that when a big artist released an album, everyone got excited. There where lines around the block. People united to buy records. Now? With a seemingly new big release every week, records no longer have the longevity they used to. Every week has a "big star", whose album is a must have. How can there be an level of excitement, when every week is demanding your attention?

As I have mentioned before, with the influx of more and more musical genres, people's taste are becoming more refined. That refinement leads to more and more influxes of new sounds. While new is not necessarily bad, it is not good for old schoolers or for consumers who have a set of tastes that are outside "new". If you have a certain niche, and that niche is being filled, it is easy to ignore current releases because that is what the business has told you to do.

Concerts are still being sold out, some artists are still making a killing with their album sales, but I do not see the days of mega-anticipated albums returning anytime soon. I see no artist with cross-generational and cross-taste appeal of The Beatles or the early Bruce Springsteen or the influence of Led Zepplin arising anytime soon. It's a shame that the music industry has so willingly splintered itself so much that it is unable to unite anymore.

That being said, I hope Gnarls Barkley wins some awards tomorrow.