The very first thing I assumed after I awoke Wednesday morning was that there’s now an SNL Curse. Any feminine U.S. presidential candidate — even one who seems to be cruising to the White Home — will in the end lose the election if she seems on Saturday Evening Reside. First Hillary Clinton in 2016 and now Kamala Harris in 2024.
I’m curious how music will react to the brand new Trump administration. Tradition is all the time simply downstream from what’s taking place in society. Traditionally, issues shift relying on whether or not the White Home (and 10 Downing Avenue, for that matter) is occupied by a right- or left-wing administration. This correlation between politics and music matches in properly with my principle of the 13-year pop vs. rock cycle.
When Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, took over for 2 phrases within the Fifties, American music grew to become much more rebellious, manifesting, no less than partly within the delivery and progress of rock ‘n’ roll. And let’s not neglect concerning the folks motion with its many left-leaning artists discovering buy with progressives.
The subsequent two phrases — John F. Kennedy’s shortened presidency adopted by Lyndon B. Johnson — had been Democrat. Huge social change ensued, due to the calls for of the boomers, the Vietnam Battle, the civil rights motion and the combat for girls’s rights. It was a chaotic time. Boomers, emboldened by the promise of progress and indignant about Vietnam, started to make music that mirrored their needs, wants, desires and fears.
By the point Republican Richard Nixon took over in 1968, rock had grown very loud, and in some instances, very indignant. It was throughout his first time period that steel (Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Steppenwolf et al) was born, and storage rock, a precursor to punk, started to unfold (suppose Stooges, MC5, and The New York Dolls). It was additionally a golden period of protest music in rock.
When Nixon resigned in shame in 1974, his Republican successor tried to maintain the Republican lights on however in the end misplaced to Democrat Jimmy Carter — however not earlier than punk sprouted in NYC (Ramones, Speaking Heads, Blondie) after which unfold to London (Intercourse Pistols, The Conflict). In some ways, punk was a response to the right-wing methods of presidency since 1968. It burned extremely popular and really brilliant with righteous anger.
The Carter years had their points, however for essentially the most half, individuals felt adequate after the Watergate nightmare to get out and social gathering. Disco exploded. New Wave was enjoyable and quirky. Radio was dominated by feel-good pop and rock.
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That every one ended with the Reagan and Thatcher years as right-leaning governments took workplace on each side of the Atlantic together with a recession that pushed rates of interest past 20 per cent. Really feel-good music started to ebb whereas new laborious and heavy genres — hardcore punk, goth, industrial, hair-and-spandex bands and crushing ranges of steel — took root and started to unfold. And whereas pop did have a second within the latter half of the ’80s, it will not final.
The ’90s started with one other 12 months of Republican and conservative rule and younger individuals had been fed up. There was a brutal recession, the primary Gulf Battle, and a way among the many new gen Xers that they had been by no means going to attain the usual of dwelling loved by their mother and father. Rock exploded in reputation on each side of the Atlantic as a result of it was the style (together with a fast-growing hip-hop scene) finest for expressing anger, concern and a want for change. Therefore grunge, extra punk, industrial, Britpop and so forth.
This, after all, didn’t final. With Democrat Invoice Clinton taking workplace in 1992, the deeply unpopular Margaret Thatcher out of workplace, and a quickly enhancing financial system, rock’s rock-the-boat strategy fell out of favour. Pop — lady singers and boy bands, particularly — dominated for a number of years.
Then got here 9/11, one of the traumatic occasions we’ve ever seen. Invasions and wars adopted beneath Republican George W. Bush. Joyful, dancey music as soon as once more appeared inappropriate given the state of the world, and late gen Xers and early millennials gravitated to music that was extra severe and darkish. We ended up with the indie rock revival, emo, extra punk and a resurgence in bands like U2, Inexperienced Day, 9 Inch Nails, Foo Fighters and Purple Sizzling Chili Peppers.
To date, so good. However then this decades-long correlation between the recognition of rock music and right-wing administrations begins to disintegrate.
You’d have thought that the monetary disaster of 2008 and its aftermath would have resulted in indignant music taking on the mainstream. It didn’t. The 2 phrases of Barack Obama had little considerable impact on the general trajectory of rock and pop. The truth is, issues began falling aside.
Why? Expertise.
When Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, I boldly predicted that rock would as soon as once more rise as a bulwark to a right-leaning America. We’d all quickly be awash in contemporary new steel bands, loads of punk, and darkish beat-heavy bands. Elder millennials and livid gen Zers would produce loads of heavy rock and intense hip-hop.
Nope. It didn’t occur. As a substitute, standard music continued to splinter into not simply a whole lot of genres however 1000’s. Trump did Trump and the conservatives stumbled by the 2010s with out there being any considerable widespread mainstream musical response or motion.
COVID-19? You’d suppose that every one the concern and points surrounding the pandemic may need introduced us collectively when it got here to being on the identical web page with music. Nope.
Streaming has change into utterly entrenched in our music consumption habits. Smartphones permit instant free entry to tens and tens of thousands and thousands of songs. In contrast to the pre-internet, pre-streaming period, there isn’t a centre to music, no consensus about what we needs to be listening to if we wish to belong. We’re all our personal music administrators, free to customise our music consumption in no matter manner we wish utilizing your entire library of recorded music.
MuchMusic and MTV not set tendencies with music movies and deserted them altogether. Music magazines have disappeared. Social media breeds one-hit wonders. Rock radio has struggled to search out new superstars. Oh, there have been a number of, however nowhere close to the numbers we noticed again within the ’90s and early 2000s. Not even shut.
The 2024 U.S. presidential election uncovered extraordinarily deep and sophisticated divisions in American society. Now that the nation might be ruled by the furthest right-leaning administration within the nation’s historical past, how will music reply? Will points like abortion and girls’s well being care, entry to contraception, tax cuts for the wealthy, the affect of billionaires on nationwide and worldwide coverage, Russia, Ukraine, China, Taiwan, Venture 2025, and all the remainder of it change the tone and tenor of standard music?
Possibly. The course of music has all the time been pushed by youth. Certain, lots of people might be indignant, however let’s see if they will get collectively to indicate it. A nation — the world — turns its lonely eyes to you.
