The year they stopped making music.
In 2015, the year I graduated from
university, musicians realised, with their fans alike - that the good music had
been written; the bad ignored and erased from our memory; and the greats had
been idolised.
By 2012, auto tune had taken over
the music industry, and originality had gone out of the window. The "artists" had nearly given up:
not even the music and lyrics - signing off to the unknown labour of the music
industry, and taking all the credit.
The lyrics had all been used; the
tunes had all been taken. Nothing was left to produce.
Music fans relayed to the days when
everything was recorded life, harmony was done by real people, and the drums
were on set - not a series of faders and tracks. The soundtracks from
classic eighties movies like Footloose became bestsellers: beating the record
sales from their hay days. Nobody was interested in the fake notes of drum and
bass, or R&B. Fans wanted the soul: the courage and fear that came through
when the Greats belted it out standing next to the microphone. The music was
going to save their lives, not make them a star with a perfume range and a high
heel collection for Debenhams.
When I graduated, Vinyl was the way
to go. Music was backtracking and returning to the well-known and well-loved
tracks of the eighties. Downloads were still as big as ever, but the original
vinyl's had become classics: objects to be treasured - not kept in dusty
attics.
