Environmental Music Choices

Sweet beats, guitar riffs and smooth drum snares. We hear them from a very young age, we absorb them. We might make fun of our parents for listening to such out of date music, but soon, we learn that the music of their generation gives us ultimately, so much more pleasure than listening to music of our own.


The 90's pop revival and forging of r'n'b as a genre is something that my generation remembers vividly. Girl bands such as Spice Girls and Destinys Child, boy bands such as Boyzone, Take That and many more, became popular in the 90's with the re-imagination of what being a young person is. Making money from youth had always been in society's head, but never so much as the music marketing of the 1990's.


When I was a child, growing up and listening to a lot of these pop bands, I made
fun of my father for listening to the music of the 1980's, and my mother for being
a 1970's fan. As I got older, I slowly realized that I would much rather listen to
the amazing glam-rock of the 70's, and the pumping electro-pop of the 80's, then
the childish music of my younger years. Which is what makes the music of our
parents, and sometimes even our grandparents, so much more timeless.


The fact that they bring back so many more memories also influences us in future
choices. Electronic music is often a high choice of mine, as I listened to so much
of it when I was a child. The newer generation, and by this, I mean, perhaps people born after 1995, if their parents are younger, they are not going to get this exposure to fantastic older music. Does this mean in 10 years time, 90's is going to be counted as a great time for music?


Personally I don't know how it could be, there was so much generic, manufactured
and tightly controlled pop/r'n'b, and the development of rap and hip hop (Which
started in the late 80's but didn't really become popular until the 90's) that the
singer/songwriter and bands that had worked incredibly hard to get where they
were, started to die off. Not that I am saying all 90's music is bad, it definitely is not, but as a decade, it had less to offer than it's predecessors.


In the 2000's, we had more R'n'B, and much less pop. Endless girl bands trying to show us how badass they were, and boy bands that would never actually refer to
themselves as a 'boy band' - less they sound 'gay'. Now, in the 10's, we are
starting to bring back some of that fantastic versatility from the 70's and 80's,
with a bit of candy-pop from the 90's thrown in for good measure. We have
fantastic rock bands, pop bands and soloists that cover all different sub-genre's
of pop, hardcore/metal bands with actual meaningful lyrics, and alternative
artists that don't really fit into any one category, we are spoilt for choice.


The fact that these younger artists are taking influence from all over the world,
and indeed, all through the history of music, is such a fantastic thing. All of us
have different tastes, and when we find that band or soloist that really hits our
heart, we are made the better for it.