(April 15, 2014) In a recent article, Vanity Fair posited the following question to its readers: "Which Decade Had the Worst Music?" A whopping 42% said the current decade was the worst, more than double the votes of any other decade.
(April 15, 2014) In a recent article, Vanity Fair posited the following question to its readers: "Which Decade Had the Worst Music?" A whopping 42% said the current decade was the worst, more than double the votes of any other decade.
What's more, the Vanity Fair crowd not only disliked the songs of today, they didn't like the styles - especially hip-hop. Answering an obviously loaded question, they voted 73%-19% that Jazz was more important than hip-hop; and a full 50% said that hip-hop was the form of music that had most likely already hit its peak. [Note: I'm not sure the Vanity Fair folks would've liked the answer if they asked people under age 30 what magazine had most likely already hit its peak...]
There has been a lot of buzz over the "meaning" of the Vanity Fair article. But it probably is overthinking it a bit to attach a much meaning to such an unscientific poll of such a narrow group of people. I think Vanity Fair's goal was really to get people talking about the article itself (which was rather fun) rather than to draw any major conclusions from the poll results. So, mission accomplished. That same poll, if issued by Vibe, would probably have had a substantially different result (sorry, Taylor Swift).
The Vanity Fair article ultimately has no real import, save perhaps on one issue: Rather than prove that there is no great music today, it may instead support the notion that much of the great music of today is hidden from the masses, such as Vanity Fair readers, who have to search further than their local radio station - and harder than they had to do in previous decades - to hear it. That's particularly true in R&B music (see our article "The Whitewashing of Popular Radio"), which has had a increasingly tough time getting mass exposure. So, it is easy for an uninformed audience, and certainly an older audience, to offhandedly say "there's no good music anymore." But those who follow music know that this decade has created substantial brilliance in nearly every important musical genre. From where we sit, it has brought four years of musical treats for soul music fans who have made the sometimes heroic efforts to find them.
So we're not going to fall into the simplistic, pat answers of the Vanity Fair article, and we hope SoulTrackers won't either. There are too many talented artists out there today making great music. Let's all keep seeking them out.
By Chris Rizik
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