Best Of

A melancholy subtext to this music chat is “what will PBers be nostalgically talking about, musically, in 2047”?

There won’t be any 2020s music for them to nostalge about. The biggest touring band of the moment is Oasis

I guess they could go on and on and on about Taylor Swift until @HYUFD-botX178 threatens to invade the website with royally-approved cybertanks

Culture came to a halt in the mid 90s. Popular music now doesn't really sound very different to how it did 30 years ago. Bands don't really get off the stage any more. We still also have Pulp and Elbow. Indeed, the world in general doesn't really look that different. I look out the window at passers by and they are dressed like they might have been in 1995. Whereas if I looked out the window in 1995, the world would have looked very different to how it would have in 1965; and even more so from 1965 to 1935. And my daughters listen to stuff from the 2020s, but also stuff from the 1990s and 1980s. The equivalent for me at their age in the late 80s would be listening to things from the 40s and 50s. Which I definitely didn't do.

I find this very odd. And yes, counter-examples can be found, and there is tech, and (slightly) different standards of behaviour and the country has far more people and politics is different. But the look and feel of the world we live in is puzzlingly similar to that of 30 years ago in a way which hasn't happened for generations.

I'm not sure I agree with that. The whole shift to online over the past 30 years has completely revolutionised the way people go about their lives. Imagine how lost most of us would be if we were teleported back 30 years. No Amazon, no PB, no Twitter/X, etc. Our kids (early 20s) sometimes ask how on earth we got things done without the internet (yes, I know the internet existsed then, but it had yet to achieve its potential). They really can't imagine life pre-internet. And yes, it probably has had a major negative effect on music.

Things have moved on. Nowadays kids ask “how did you know anything or do anything without ChatGPT”. I’m serious. I do it myself constantly

The only exception to this, perhaps in the world, is my older daughter. She abhors chatbots and devours books. She read all of Kafka’s The Trial on one Ryanair flight to meet me in Beziers last year. She reads EVERYTHING

The other day she said to me “Dad I can’t wait to go back to uni so I can carry on learning. All I want to do is learn things”

I love her to bits. I also love her wryly rebellious sister equally but that’s likely coz shes more like me

Ok. I’m turning off sentimental dad mode, now

ChatGPT was down for a few hours a couple of weeks ago, and Reddit was flooded with posts from people saying they had forgotten how to write emails, etc, without its help, some with a hint of seriousness.

A melancholy subtext to this music chat is “what will PBers be nostalgically talking about, musically, in 2047”?

There won’t be any 2020s music for them to nostalge about. The biggest touring band of the moment is Oasis

I guess they could go on and on and on about Taylor Swift until @HYUFD-botX178 threatens to invade the website with royally-approved cybertanks

Culture came to a halt in the mid 90s. Popular music now doesn't really sound very different to how it did 30 years ago. Bands don't really get off the stage any more. We still also have Pulp and Elbow. Indeed, the world in general doesn't really look that different. I look out the window at passers by and they are dressed like they might have been in 1995. Whereas if I looked out the window in 1995, the world would have looked very different to how it would have in 1965; and even more so from 1965 to 1935. And my daughters listen to stuff from the 2020s, but also stuff from the 1990s and 1980s. The equivalent for me at their age in the late 80s would be listening to things from the 40s and 50s. Which I definitely didn't do.

I find this very odd. And yes, counter-examples can be found, and there is tech, and (slightly) different standards of behaviour and the country has far more people and politics is different. But the look and feel of the world we live in is puzzlingly similar to that of 30 years ago in a way which hasn't happened for generations.

Isn’t this partly because we have less common cultural reference points? If you look back at the time before the late noughties, a lot of things we remember are as a result of TV moments everyone watched, bands everyone followed, stories everyone read.

The internet is the culprit. I don’t need to listen or watch what the BBC want me to - I can listen to and watch whatever I like, from whatever era, instantly.

Yes, you're right, and @Foss alludes to this. But the interesting side effect of this is that fashions (in music, in clothes, in all sorts of cultural preferences) don't change as wildly as they did pre-internet. (Thinking aloud here) - by lessening the power of the tastemakers, tastes stay much more static.

It’s quite difficult to say how I feel about it all. In many ways, it’s very freeing - the democratisation of culture, the ability to digest and shape your perspectives in the way you want.

On the other hand, it does create significant challenges for the Demos, more division, less unity, less commonality, fewer ties that bind. Some of which I think we are seeing playing out now.

The cultural establishment is starting to wither. If things continue as they are, the political establishment cannot be far behind it.

A melancholy subtext to this music chat is “what will PBers be nostalgically talking about, musically, in 2047”?

There won’t be any 2020s music for them to nostalge about. The biggest touring band of the moment is Oasis

I guess they could go on and on and on about Taylor Swift until @HYUFD-botX178 threatens to invade the website with royally-approved cybertanks

Culture came to a halt in the mid 90s. Popular music now doesn't really sound very different to how it did 30 years ago. Bands don't really get off the stage any more. We still also have Pulp and Elbow. Indeed, the world in general doesn't really look that different. I look out the window at passers by and they are dressed like they might have been in 1995. Whereas if I looked out the window in 1995, the world would have looked very different to how it would have in 1965; and even more so from 1965 to 1935. And my daughters listen to stuff from the 2020s, but also stuff from the 1990s and 1980s. The equivalent for me at their age in the late 80s would be listening to things from the 40s and 50s. Which I definitely didn't do.

I find this very odd. And yes, counter-examples can be found, and there is tech, and (slightly) different standards of behaviour and the country has far more people and politics is different. But the look and feel of the world we live in is puzzlingly similar to that of 30 years ago in a way which hasn't happened for generations.

There is plenty of music now which is as groundbreaking as, for example, punk was in the 70s.

Punk culture was groundbreaking, the music wasn't

A melancholy subtext to this music chat is “what will PBers be nostalgically talking about, musically, in 2047”?

There won’t be any 2020s music for them to nostalge about. The biggest touring band of the moment is Oasis

I guess they could go on and on and on about Taylor Swift until @HYUFD-botX178 threatens to invade the website with royally-approved cybertanks

Brings to mind my rule about singer/songwriters; any material written over twenty years since their first release should have to go before some kind of panel that decides whether it would have got the green light if they were an artist with no back catalogue of success. Very few make the cut, and many reputations would be preserved

A very useful and worthwhile test - one which Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon would pass with flying colours.

For a long while Paul Weller was my musical hero, but he fails the test quite spectacularly. The drop off post Stanley Road is a cliff edge

A melancholy subtext to this music chat is “what will PBers be nostalgically talking about, musically, in 2047”?

There won’t be any 2020s music for them to nostalge about. The biggest touring band of the moment is Oasis

I guess they could go on and on and on about Taylor Swift until @HYUFD-botX178 threatens to invade the website with royally-approved cybertanks

Culture came to a halt in the mid 90s. Popular music now doesn't really sound very different to how it did 30 years ago. Bands don't really get off the stage any more. We still also have Pulp and Elbow. Indeed, the world in general doesn't really look that different. I look out the window at passers by and they are dressed like they might have been in 1995. Whereas if I looked out the window in 1995, the world would have looked very different to how it would have in 1965; and even more so from 1965 to 1935. And my daughters listen to stuff from the 2020s, but also stuff from the 1990s and 1980s. The equivalent for me at their age in the late 80s would be listening to things from the 40s and 50s. Which I definitely didn't do.

I find this very odd. And yes, counter-examples can be found, and there is tech, and (slightly) different standards of behaviour and the country has far more people and politics is different. But the look and feel of the world we live in is puzzlingly similar to that of 30 years ago in a way which hasn't happened for generations.

There is plenty of music now which is as groundbreaking as, for example, punk was in the 70s.