Is "the Band" Dead, or Is It Just Taking a Break?
I thought it was just my imagination, but I was thinking about who is "famous" for making music these days and it struck me that, while I could rattle off a long list of people, I couldn't easily think of many bands making headlines recently.
So, I checked out the Billboard Top 100 Artists list for this week and yep...there's not a single band among the top 10. While there are certainly lots of bands making lots of music, good or otherwise, they seem to be largely ignored by the media. Why?
While larger-than-life personalities have always dominated popular music of all genres -- from Elvis to Madonna to Prince to Jay-Z to Beyonce to even [musters up courage] Justin Bieber -- there have been eras where bands got equal billing and just as much notoriety.
In the 50s, Motown bands were constantly on people's lips. In the 60s, the Beatles, the Doors, the Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys were ultra-famous. In the 70s, you had mega-bands like Led Zeppelin, Styx, Queen, and the Who constantly putting on stadium shows. The 80s were also rife with gigantic bands, such as Bon Jovi, Metallica, R.E.M., and AC/DC. The 90s brought us media favorites like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Radiohead, Green Day, and many others. The 2000s, however, seemed to be a turning point, with relatively fewer huge bands; Arcade Fire, the White Stripes, and the Strokes still being relatively famous.
But now, in the 2010s, the emphasis seems to be almost exclusively on The Artist, not the band. Why is that? Has the Internet's influence on how we find out about and consume new music elevated the individual above the group? Are we more interested in the crazy antics of so-and-so on social media instead of a band's collective (and possibly less exciting) contributions to culture?
Or is it just a cycle? If so, we should see some new huge bands popping up in the next several years to capture many a news cycle and generate legions of adoring fans. It would be nice to have some more balance, because the kind of music an individual artist produces is fundamentally different than what a true band tends to put out.
Time will tell. Stay tuned.
Huh. Not really a fan of any of the top 10. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteThere aren't any real "bands" anymore. What percentage of pop artists actually play an instrument?
ReplyDeleteWell, in terms of corporate pop music, I guess so. A band is composed of too many personalities, and is more likely to have actual composers in it. In this list, how many of the living ones actually write any of the music they perform?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, most of what I listen to is 'bands' or two people presenting themselves as a band - Elbow, Woven Hand, Arcade Fire, Solas, Underworld, Orbital, Tweaker, Black Keys, New Pornographers, ... most of the rest is singer/songwriters. I haven't got a thing in my 140GB of music from any of the above, other than Prince.
David Archer To be fair, you are "of an age" (like me) ;-)
ReplyDeleteInteresting observation. Perhaps the casualisation of the broader workforce has come to music. Rather than a permanent line up, artists are going with session musicians and dropping the collective pronoun of "band"
ReplyDeleteCraig Froehle I guess. I only listed artists who are currently active, though.
ReplyDeleteI think that pop vocalists have always been popular. Tom Jones, Petula Clark and others dominated the charts back in the day. And before the Beatles, bands were rarely in the forefront. Instead, it was star and his backup band, like Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to look at the charts for this week over time. The results ight be surprising.
It seems more like a product of the individualist idealism we have carefully cultivated over the last several centuries. This is 'Murica. You get what you want by being your best. Cooperation? Naw. Me first.
ReplyDeleteDavid Westebbe Before the Beatles, we had all sorts of famous groups in the 50s: The Coasters, The Platters, The Drifters. My point is that we always seemed to have a mix of solo stars and bands...that is, until recently.
ReplyDeletePatrik Hanson My off-the-top-of-my-head working definition of "band" for the purposes of this post is when the group's name is at least as famous or popular as any one of its members.
ReplyDeleteExamples:
- Rush is more famous than Geddy Lee
- The Doors are more well-known than Jim Morrison
- Pink Floyd is a more widely recognized name than David Gilmour or Roger Waters
Bruce Springsteen is an artist who happens to have a longtime band, but "Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" isn't "a band."
During most, if not all, of The Beatles' existence, The Beatles as a band was more popular than any one of its members
Mick Jagger is super famous, but only as the front man for The Rolling Stones, which I suspect has more name recognition worldwide than Jagger does. So The Rolling Stones is clearly a band.
It does get confusing when you have a single artist going by a band name, but those are pretty rare.
Patrik Hanson IMO, Manson is an artist who named his band/act after himself. I would call him an artist, not a band, similar to Alice Cooper. I mean, if you heard that Alice Cooper was going to be on a late night talk show, would you expect to see him talking to the host or the entire band?
ReplyDelete