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.
