The Next Big Thing

[rabidrage]

So I've been doing a lot of reading lately about musical genres, and looking at wikipedia's list of music genres in particular, and I've come up with an interesting question. Since music seems to go in phases and trends, I thought about the trends that have come and gone in America over the years. Swing, doo wop, motown, rock, rap...what do you think is the next one? Rap will probably run its course within the next ten years and possibly have a competitor in another two or three, if the pattern continues. Techno never really took over, so...what's it gonna be?

[Romero]

Dixieland Jazz!

[howyadoin]

I'm just hopin' that shitty, generic teen pop will run its course soon. Anything beyond that is gravy.

[zombie]

No idea, so here's a shot in the dark: salsa-punk.

[mailedbypostman1]

I'm thinking techno-metal. As in serious technometal, not the crappy pop rock that's out now.

[Romero]

I'm just hopin' that shitty, generic teen pop will run its course soon. Anything beyond that is gravy.


Yeah, I wouldn't mind seeing that and crappy, mushy-sounding, mid-tempo, tunless alterna/modern/hard rock go. Garbage like Nickelback, 3 Days Grace, Finger Eleven, Theory of a Deadman, etc. It needs to die.

[mattx110]

I'm just hopin' that shitty, generic teen pop will run its course soon. Anything beyond that is gravy.
There's more music on the Disney Channel than MTV.

I'm sorry, but it seems like we're gonna have at least a few more years of it. And I don't see it ending or getting much less pervasive anytime soon.

We're sorta seeing lots of late 70s and 80s influence, so we might be working our way back to metal and grunge in a few years. But obviously wearing thicker glasses and tighter jeans.

[Sanagi]

We've reached a point where every genre has its following, and pop music has been completely sterilized for mass consumption. I'm not sure there's anywhere to go from here. Culture will never again be as monolithic as it was when everyone was hooked on the same TV and radio channels.

That said, you can count on China and India to become more important contributors to the world of pop culture.

[Jonathan Bogart]

Yeah, I'd bank on the Next Big Thing not being particularly American. In fact, in one essential respect American music has already sort of been passed by: reggae never got more than a foothold here, whereas it's as much a global pop language as rock, soul, hip-hop, blues and jazz (all definitively American) are.

I'd love it if Latin pop became a dominant force in American music (a lot of really interesting stuff is going on there, as Central and South America become one large media-dominated melting pot), but East Asia is undoubtedly where the money is. Look around for oppressed minority groups and you'll find your new blues and hip-hop.

[leonaozaki]

That said, you can count on China and India to become more important contributors to the world of pop culture.

God help us. Every single piece of Chinese and Indian pop music I've ever heard has been terrible.

rob

[Jonathan Bogart]

God help us. Every single piece of Chinese and Indian pop music I've ever heard has been terrible.
You can't have listened very deeply.

Punjabi MC's "Mundian To Bach Ke" is one of the best tracks of the last ten years. In fact much of bhangra (hip-hop-inflected dance music from India's Punjab province) is pretty great.

I'm less well schooled in Chinese pop, but would suggest that what's being talked about here is in some ways the opposite of pop, which is about all a Westerner can reasonably hear from China.

At least pop as considered the mainstream surface of music, which has changed very little in its structural and thematic elements over the past hundred years (broadly, pop has two settings: "dance" and "ballad") while everything else from rhythm to instrumentation to harmonics to performance style to cultural role has changed dramatically. All the previous Big Things bubbled up into pop from the underground and Changed It Forever. In order to find the Next Big Thing, mainstream pop isn't really the place to look. Yet.

[jimmyh]

God help us. Every single piece of Chinese and Indian pop music I've ever heard has been terrible.

rob

That's what i thought too at first.
After listening couple of them many times, thanks to my room mate, i quite enjoy it now.
How about screamo?

[GRANT!]

I don't think there's ever going to be a next big thing. Just a lot of different little things. The musical landscape is so fragmented and diverse right now that it'd be next to impossible for a new genre to pop up and take over the mainstream. Personally I think that's a good thing.

[Adam C]

How about screamo?

Considering, that much like emo, the current crop of screamo bands are a more melodic, poppier version of an earlier underground style sharing the same name, I think it has already made its ascendancy into the mainstream. This is probably about as far as it will get.

[leonaozaki]

You can't have listened very deeply.


Or, I have, and I don't like what I've heard. That's possible too.


Punjabi MC's "Mundian To Bach Ke" is one of the best tracks of the last ten years. In fact much of bhangra (hip-hop-inflected dance music from India's Punjab province) is pretty great.

I'll concede Punjabi MC is gifted and bhangra is less annoying than some other forms of Indian (used broadly) music. But "Mundian To Back Ke" is one of the best tracks of the last ten years? I'm going to have to respectfully disagree.


rob

[leonaozaki]

Yeah, I'd bank on the Next Big Thing not being particularly American. In fact, in one essential respect American music has already sort of been passed by: reggae never got more than a foothold here, whereas it's as much a global pop language as rock, soul, hip-hop, blues and jazz (all definitively American) are.

I dunno...I'd say reggae got more than a foothold down here in Southern Louisiana, both in the southwest (Cajun country) and southeast (Nworlins).

rob