Musical Importance

I have been wondering lately why none of the music that comes out seems to have meaning or impact on my life. When I was in my teens and early twenties, music had importance. A band like U2 came out and they not only had a message, but that message had a great beat and you could dance to it. George Michael had songs that were potent and fit into the rhythm of my life. Prince and Guns n Roses spoke to my inner wild child in various ways. Tori Amos had deep, emotional resonance. These days, nothing speaks to me. I don't think in terms of songs expressing an era of my life and I don't feel the same rhythms. I simply listen to music and either enjoy it or not.

That led me to wonder, does music being important and a way of expressing your life have a shelf life? Each person I speak with seems to have the same 14 to about 25 age range wherein the music spoke most loudly and clearly to them, and meant the most to their lives. Today, those who still love music, seem to be searching to replace, replicate, or recapture that feeling. And, while they may get a nostalgic glimmer here and there, it is usually of the "this reminds of when..." rather than being a completely new moment of music importance.

One person I spoke to thought that his younger relatives, who just happen to be entering or in that 14-25 age range, were having that feeling about music now, with today's music. Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Rhianna, Justin Timberlake, and others are speaking to them and those songs are becoming the rhythm for their (current) lives, just as my 80s and 90s artists were for me. This seems to lend credence to the idea that it is an age, rather than the type or quality of music.

On the other hand, music has proliferated in the last decade and a half, as have most other forms of entertainment. Our discretionary dollars are stretched thinner and our attention spans are shorter as there are so many channels of TV, types and sources of music, number of movies, games, and internet distractions. Using YouTube and other internet sources, a person can pick up a lyric sheet and a guitar and self-promote and self-publish themselves, and develop a following without going through the usual musical path. With so many choices to weed through, maybe the entire product is watered down.

As late as the 1980s, the recording industry had a stranglehold on new artists and the music pipeline. While some would argue this stifled creativity, it also meant that the artists had to be hungrier, more creative, and better than all the others to rise to the top and get on the radio and into your hearts and minds. Today, the average person has to weed through the detritus of crappy talents and hackneyed artists to get to that cream. Does this affect how we view the music, when we have to do so much more of the work? Or does it make that cream of the crop we do find that much more important, because we had to work for it?

Lastly, does age itself have anything to do with it? When I was 14-25, I was still forming who I was to be and my impressions of the world. I had little to do beyond that except school, so I had more time for music, movies, TV, books, friends, family, and just being. These days, I have a wife, I have political and social concerns, jobs, a mortgage, and other issues that plague me on a daily basis. I don't have the same time to be affected by a new band, that hip new song, or time to spend thinking about music. Music is something I put on in the background while I am working or doing other things, instead of something I purposely did, as an end unto itself.

At most, I get a strong sense of nostalgia and I remember the "good ole times" when particular songs come on. So, in the end, I guess music still has importance to me today. However, where once it defined and set the rhythm of my life as it was and would be, now it is a tool to take me back and help me remember what I once was and where my life has been. Before, it was the window and telescope I used to see my life and my future, now it is the mirror and magnifying glass I use to see my past. In the end, I guess I have answered my own question: music is still important. However, like most everything in my life, that importance, and its meaning to me, has changed as I have changed.