What kind of crazy, fucked-up world do we live in where a Korean boy band sings to track and blows away every performance on SNL this year?<\/p>\n
One in which Blackpink has been the highlight of Coachella so far.<\/p>\n
I mean you want to hate BTS, on principle. It’s manufactured, we’ve seen this movie before.<\/p>\n
Only we haven’t. We thought NSYNC could dance? There’s no Joey Fatone in BTS and the moves were more complicated and executed flawlessly.<\/p>\n
And the song was pop, not hip-hop.<\/p>\n
Oh, how far we’ve gotten from the garden.<\/p>\n
I was talking to Susan Rosenbluth, she went on the road with the band, she told me the girls know all the dances and now I get it!<\/p>\n
That’s right, the Koreans know more about music than the Americans, at least those in the music industry. We’ve gotten so far from the garden, we don’t even know what an apple is anymore. The labels and the media tell us it’s all hip-hop all the time, but I got an e-mail from a promoter, telling me he wouldn’t book Lil Nas X, there was no demand. But BTS!<\/p>\n
Now the song won’t set the world on fire, be embedded instantly in your brain and having you testify as to seeing God, but god, you can listen to it, it’s not offensive. That’s how far we’ve come, where the standard is being INOFFENSIVE and NOT GETTING ARRESTED!<\/p>\n
It’s pure show business. And that’s far from what the modern music business was built upon. Then again, Mariah Carey broke almost thirty years ago, a generation and a half ago, the only credible songs Gen-Z are aware of are those from the classic rock era, which they’re listening to, but they want something new, to call their own.<\/p>\n
Music is like politics. Did you read the “New York Times” article saying that social media is an inaccurate view of the Democratic party? As in the far left is posting constantly, the center is not.<\/p>\n
Used to be record labels were full service enterprises, everything from pop to classical. Now it’s all hip-hop, all the time. Even the pop acts use beats. And the biggest act in the world is Adele, and she sounds nothing like this.<\/p>\n
We’ve got to get back to the song.<\/p>\n
We no longer live in an homogeneous society. Everybody doesn’t like the same thing. So pockets of the audience are underserved, and these pockets trump what is supposedly mainstream.<\/p>\n
I’d buy a ticket to BTS and stay to the end. You can give me a ticket to most of the modern acts and I’d leave before it was done, it’s too boring and you can’t understand the lyrics and…<\/p>\n
SNL is long in the tooth, it’s rarely funny, it’s just the endless repetition of the same tropes. And when BTS hit the screen my mind told me this was a new low for the show, giving up any pretense of credibility, just going with what was popular. But by seeing BTS I was converted.<\/p>\n
And I’m not the only one.<\/p>\n