Stumbled on my own blog entry... (cont.)

“Music nowadays is so bad! I don’t understand how people took the wonderful sound of Pink Floyd and turned into Skrillex!” said the caveman when the first flute was invented.

Evolution, in a more scientific sense, is a form of natural selection. A lot of things appear, but those that are found to be beneficial stick and become part of the next generation and those that aren’t, eventually abandoned. It’s a continuous process. But obviously this is not science, it is art. Then again music, like every art, is constantly evolving as well. If it didn’t, we would be listening to knocking rocks (not a band name…yet?) rather than Joy Division. If music did not evolve, all those songs we love would have never existed. If art did not evolve, being blind, deaf etc. would not be that big a deal.

And say there was this magic button, that whenever you are satisfied with the stage of the genre, you could press “stop” and nothing would ever change. As magical as that sounds, it would be oh, so dull. We would have ten “Hey Jude”s and ten “Macarena”s! Also, once again, crappy music is a necessary parasite to masterpieces. It existed then, but in this scenario it would be crappy and identical, so double the crap!

All these are quite literal and practical arguments, something which in no way corresponds to music. Music corresponds to imagination, feelings and depiction of current reality. So, if our reality is changing, our feelings given closer examination and our imagination wild and roaring, how can music still be about “the way you sip your tea” and “the way you comb your hair”? We have Starbucks and curling irons; you sip you tea though a paper cup trying not to spill it over your white shirt and you are using ten different stinking sprays to minimise the damage from the curling iron. Life is high paced, 12 minute songs bore you. Music is, luckily, relevant.

This has been bugging me since the very first word I typed. I hate Skrillex, I really do. I find that his songs pinch that one particular part of the brain, right at the front. But I do love Muse and I do love the Horrors and White Lies and a thousand bands post Pink Floyd. None of those just emerged out of nowhere, not even Pink Floyd themselves! They evolved, they transformed, they handpicked the best parts of past music and made wonderful additions. And I know loads of people that like Skrillex and at least one song I like which was inspired by that hipster with the terrible haircut.

So my personal conclusion is Viva la Evolution! It has worked out quite well in many areas (my ecological alter ego has some objections here); I have no reason to doubt it. And I am curious to see where it is going and hell, if I don’t like the end results, I will just whine about how my children’s generation wrecked music. Looking forward to it.