Predictions for the Future from a Rambling Fool

The airwaves have been crammed of late with looks back at the best music of the past year and the past decade. Everyone, from media behemoths Rolling Stone and Pitchfork down to your average everyday music blog, has sought to distill the past into a few definitive albums or songs. No complaints here—it’s often both instructive and interesting to take a peek in the rear-view mirror as we hurtle forward in this rapidly accelerating Megabus that is music culture. But now it’s a new year dammit, and it’s time that we turn our gaze to the road ahead before we hit that tinyass smart car.

Y’see, the past is important to digest, but it’s an easy thing to look at. It’s there, it happened, and there are recordings, pictures, movies, youTube clips, etc. that chronicle it. The future’s much more challenging, but no less important, to look at. While we have no idea what will come, we at least have the power to shape it, if only by tiny degrees. Who knows, you, the reader, might invent the next groundbreaking music technology, you might found the company that displaces Google as the head honcho of the tech world, or you might have the voice, guitar chops, or computer skills, that will lead to the next decade’s defining recordings. Who knows? I have high hopes for TSRE readers.

So if you’re like me, looking at the future with confidence and wonder, then bear with me as I make some predictions. I’m not going to subject these predictions to any timeline—they may not come to bear in the next year, decade, or ever—so let’s just call them predictions for the future (vague enough?).

Prediction Numero Uno: There will be another Beatles.

(Naysayer enters stage left)

NS: That’s preposterous! There are too many genres and subgenres, too many cultures and subcultures, too much access to music, and just altogether too many people, to ever allow for there to be another artist as widely popular and culturally potent as the Beatles.

Ben, the Rambling Fool: Yes, Naysayer, that seems to be the consensus. And I recognize that there’s a ton of logic to that argument—perhaps too much logic. Common logic/opinion is all too often wrong, so I’m going to go against it here. I just think that, at some point down the road, we may realize that we’ve dug ourselves too deep into the dark, secluded holes of the internet, and will work to poke our heads out of the sand, looking for something to rally around in the open air. This year, you could see this urge manifested in the public’s reborn love for the music of Michael Jackson. At some point, this urge will lead us, the public, to something new rather than an old classic, and that something might just be an artist that comes to resemble the Beatles in terms of cultural effect and accessibility.

Prediction Two: Remixes and Mash-ups will fall from popularity, and we’ll look back at them as a pleasant enough yet insignificant fad.

(Angry Hipster enters stage right)

AH: Oh man, you are so wrong about that. You can’t fight the democratization of music. It’s a great thing that anyone with a computer can create his or her own music out of the preexisting work of others. Reinterpreting music is a practice that has been around for ages, from opera producers creating fresh interpretations of the classics to the great classic rock acts of the 60s and 70s reinterpreting roots music. Remixes and mash-ups are just a logical extension given the technological advances of the last decade or two.

Ben, the RF: Well argued, angry hipster. You may be right. I may be crazy. But it just seems to me that remixes are too easy to make these days; too many people have the capability, and the result is a staggering number of remixes and mash-ups. When there are new remixes being produced each day, the public has no time to digest them, no time to determine if any remix is really worth returning to. And all the time that we take listening to remixes and mash-ups is time that we’re not spending revisiting the original songs. There just seems to be such an incredible transience to music these days, exemplified by a site like hypeMachine. And I think there will be a strong backlash in the future—at some point, the public will find itself with a burning hunger for music that is more lasting and more substantial, and will leave all of these remixes and mash-ups in the dust.

Prediction the Third: Radio will somehow reemerge as a viable medium, either in the form of podcasts or else in some as-yet unimagined form.

(Video emerges from the floor, center stage)

Video (in a deep, ominous voice): Wrong again! I killed the radio star years ago. Don’t you remember the Buggles?

Ben, the RF: Oh right, Video, as if you’re doing so great these days. Did you forget that the music video isn’t getting any love from MTV anymore? I mean, seriously, what good have you done for music since those classic Michael Jackson videos of the early 80s? You’re extraneous and expendable—the radio is not.

(Video sheepishly returns to the catacombs below the stage)

As the radio waves have been taken over by corporate homogenizing douchebags like Clear Channel, blogs have assumed the role of dispensing new music and music commentary to the public. And while I’m not predicting the demise of the music blog, I do think that we will gradually move towards a product that more closely resembles radio. While music writing can be great, sometimes it’s just easier to convey personality with one’s voice. Effects like sarcasm and imitation are just much easier to employ if the listener can hear your tone, your cadence, etc. So I think that a big personality or two will bring back the radio program as a way of disseminating music and commentary.



That’s it, folks, three predictions for the future from a rambling fool. You probably think I’m an idiot at this point, and you should feel free to say so. Below, find three songs that relate to my three predictions above, in one way or another. Enjoy, and have a very happy new year.

The Beatles - Paperback Writer (YSI) (dropbox)
Notorious BIG - Party and Bullshit (in the USA Remix) (YSI) (YSI) (dropbox)
Elvis Presley - That's All Right (YSI) (dropbox)