I need to collate some playlists of different genres and eras for a project, more of that in another thread. But it got me thinking, what do young people listen to know? People of 15-early 20s. If you have teens what do they listen to?
When I was their age there were always loads of ground breaking bands most teens were into. There was punk, then New Wave, Ska and Two Tone, then New Romantics, Electronica, the whole Madchester and Rave thing where there was quite a crossover between dance music and guitar bands. Goth, then Grunge, Emo, Brit Pop. Heavy metal and all its sub genres. Regardless of what your favourite genre was as a teenage or young adult, there were bands or singer songwriters doing it.
What is there now, apart from endless fairly generic dance music? Calvin Harris or David Guetta 'feat.' some singer or other? Apart from the 'urban' categories of stuff like Grime and Drill, I am hard pushed to think of much that isn't pretty mainstream.
There seems to be lots of 'Latino' artists and lots of young girl singers all doing that very contrived, generic sounding, breathy, husky, twee, girly thing with their voice. I can't explain it but you'd know what I mean if you heard it. They all sound identical to my ear. (I realise how old this makes me sound 😂
There's K Pop, and the very mainstream boy bands / Harry Styles, but where are the 2024 rock and pop trailblazers creating new genres? The equivalents of Pulp? The Smiths? James? Belle and Sebastian? The Cranberries? Depeche Mode? Stone Roses? Proper bands with proper songwriters?
Don't kids listen to bands any more, or am I just too old to know who they are?