Do Any 2 People Share the Same Favorite Musicians Anymore?
Music didn't go bad. Popular music did—insofar as "popular music" still exists. But you've heard that all before.
It's probably a safe bet that every popular music fan in the 1960s, at least in the English-speaking world (and perhaps Germany), would have named The Beatles as their favorite band for at least one day. Now, unless your name is Taylor Swift or Beyonce Knowles, it seems you’re lucky to ever have two people who feel the same way about a single artist. Saturday Night Live even once killed off Jack Bauer to make a joke about Beyonce’s popularity:
Taylor Swift, meanwhile, helped carry the most recent Super Bowl to all-time record viewership. Few celebrities are bigger than the NFL as a whole, but she is one.
Do you already see where I’m going with this?
Whither Pop Culture
Several people have lamented the disintegration of the popular culture as the internet has diversified people’s interests. You don’t need me to tell you that the days of gigantic TV finales of M*A*S*H (106 million viewers) and Seinfeld (76 million) are over.
Another commonly-cited culprit comes even earlier than the internet: the diversification of TV networks. In the United States, you used to have three channels: NBC, the king; CBS, the worthy adversary; and ABC, the black sheep. In the United Kingdom, by 1992 there were still just 4 networks.
I’m not sure the loss of a monoculture can be entirely blamed on this kind of thing. Also by 1992, 60% of U.S. households had cable TV. That didn’t stop shows like The Simpsons, with 21.8 million viewers for its season premiere on September 24 of that year, or Seinfeld (16.3 million for its season premiere on August 12) from being huge hits in their fourth seasons. By its 2023–24 season premiere on October 1, 2023, The Simpsons was down to 3.6 million. And that was with a pro football lead-in. (FOX didn’t get an NFL contract until 1994.)
But we’re not here to talk about television.
Music
Let’s take “Weird Al” Yankovic as our statistical example of how music consumption has changed throughout the years. He sold about 75,000 copies of his final album, Mandatory Fun, during its opening week in 2014, and it was enough to get him to the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 for the only time in his career. His second album, In 3-D from 1984, sold over a million copies while never peaking above #17 on the list.
In my introductory post I listed my sub-interests in the music category as classical, classic rock, and “several electronic genres.” You’ll note that Beyonce and Taylor Swift fit into none of those categories. The Beatles I can do you for, though.
As for more modern stuff? There is still good music out there, it’s just not very popular. Every time my Spotify DJ starts trying to play “today’s hits” as if there still is such a thing, I skip 'em.
So, who are some acts I do listen to?
A Taste in Three Acts
If you’ve never heard of VNV Nation, Ronald Jenkees, or Public Service Broadcasting (my latest discovery), you’re surely not alone. They all fall under the “several electronic genres” category, so if that’s not your kind of thing, first, I’m sorry, but second, it proves the point that modern music preferences can be extremely stratified.
Ronan Harris, the man behind VNV Nation, is from Dublin, moved to London in his early 20s, and has for more than 20 years resided in Hamburg, Germany, the country where his music has always been its most popular. The last four VNV albums have all made the top 10 on the German charts, and VNV has also been top 10 several times on the U.S. Dance chart, but only once in the Billboard 200 (at 186 in 2009). In the U.K.? Zero times charting.
Public Service Broadcasting sounds like some PBS rival, but it’s a British act that is popular in their homeland, with their latest album peaking at #2 on the U.K. charts—but no U.S. charts yet. This group started off using archival audio instead of traditional lyrics, hence the name.
Jenkees is by far the least widely popular of these three artists, except in a slice of YouTube. But the whole point of this post is that popular and good aren’t always the same thing.
See here for the musical acts that I’ve listened to the most in the past 15 years. You would have to go about halfway down page two to find a group that has been both active and massively popular within that 15-year period.
The point there is not, “Oh, look how countercultural my music listening habits are,” but rather that I suspect my situation is not very unusual these days.
Your Turn
Am I right about that? Where 55 years ago there might be several of us binging the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, but now a random sample of five people may have 25 different groups in their combined top fives? Let me know in the comments!
Though we have access to more musical choices than ever, it's kind of tragic that we've mostly lost the ability to bond through shared audio-cultural experiences. Go back 50 years, and when you walk into someone's house or hop in their car there's a good chance you'll be familiar with the music being played. I wasn't around then but I imagine it created a kinship to effortlessly be able to sing along to lyrics with pretty much anyone.
But in today's instant download world, I don't even bother broaching the subject of music because the odds of having any tastes in common with the person I'm talking to are slim to none. When other people tell me their favorite bands or albums I usually just have to shrug and say "that's cool" because I didn't know said band even existed. My favorite sub-genre is Scandanavian power metal and I don't recall meeting a single person in real life who shares that interest.