Ariana Grande - Thank U, Next

With every passing year, it feels like pop music as it is thought of, is crossing new milestones in terms of how popular music as the people are experiencing it is overlapping less and less with it. The charts still seem to function, but as if it's held together by duct tape. The sense of urgency that the top of the charts used to hold as a product of being what's hot right now, has started to evaporate as it feels like every song has to go through a 6 month vetting process before it's deemed okay to be heard by enough people to bring it to its highest chart peak. Radio in particular often feels like it needs to work with everything planned 3 months in advance. In all honesty, a lot of this has been the case for decades. It just strikes as particularly faling apart as we now have national charts decided by YouTube & Spotify plays, often with no direct financial interaction which results in a popular landscape which is far more difficult to regulate. It makes things interesting that popular hits feel as though they can be plucked from complete obscurity rather than being selected from the small handful that are presented to the public by the powers that be. What's also happened is that when songs do connect, they really stick. It is completely normal to see a plethora of hits that spend 6, maybe 9 months in the spotlight.

All this comes at a cost, which is what I was getting at with my opening sentence. I suppose you could say that pop hasn't gone anywhere apart from having to vacate increasingly more seats at the table from less adjacent genres, while pop radio is diving all over the place to latch onto anything that connects with their audience. In that sense I think you could re-phrase the sentence to be more about pop stars as they've been known for at least the last 50 years. When you look at the charts of old, there's a certain level of expectation in that the big names of the time are always there without fail. Especially so in the UK where it feels like every major artist is either putting out a career/era defining single, or whatever else they put out is still at least checking off their streak for top 10, top 20, top 40 peaks. These streaks would often last long after what you would naturally think is the expiration on an artist's hitmaking career, but what I often see is comments from people who were young at the time and were confused at why certain dinosaur acts were always charting so high. Not to say that there can't be a cross-generational appeal (just look at "The Horses") but predominantly these careers were being kept alive by the same fanbase decade after decade, and the less financed youth weren't able to really overpower it.

What keeps happening over and over again is that major stars of the past release new music, and it sells really well on iTunes, but tanks quickly because there's no audience big enough streaming it, which takes the lion share of chart points nowadays, even if Billboard & the OCC repeatedly try to quell it by adjusting the formula. You see fans of such artists in disarray that the still reputable new material from their favourite artists is falling far short of past performance, and simultaneously baffled that people are instead latching onto a rap artist whose name is 5 steps away from the end for them https://twitter.com/pixelatedboat/status/1090112445882880000

It's all because the John Mayer - "Waiting On The World To Change" process has been accelerated dramatically for the simple reason that monetisation is favouring a younger, less bourgeois audience with less inclination towards perceived 'value' of music because they're no longer putting their taste at price point. People who buy music, are more likely to do so with the intent that they're going to keep listening to it for a long time to come, whereas if you just stream it, there is zero investment in it after the time you spend hearing it for the last time. So this perceived value that has been indoctrinated in audiences forever has had its spell broken, and chaos ensues.

I think there's also an element of artists managing to be popular nowadays via a certain relatable tilt. That's been around forever of course but it was always through the filter of eloquent lyricism to capture a mood. The only thing that held it back was the very apparent barrier where the biggest stars felt like literal...stars in comparison to us feeble ants. Like they were groomed for presentation, and after they've done their song, they'll go back to their ivory towers and celebrate through hedonism. Not to say that actually is the case, but there certainly always felt like there was an urge to act like everything was all together, even when it wasn't. I think back to Britney Spears' breakdown, which happened at a point when she no longer seemed like a normal person, and so there was an outpouring of ridicule from people who would never even consider that 'hey, maybe she has feelings too'.

Times have changed a lot since then though. The rise of social media means that fans can peer into the world of their favourite artists every day, and through the window that they choose to open, rather than what is presented via tabloids and the like. It brings a rise in parasocial relationships which, while not actually as significant as they feel to the person in question, go a long way to bringing the artists back to the level of the people. So many stars of the past just can't connect in the same way, possibly because they're too old, possibly because they're not ready for the shift, but either way, someone who's 16 years old now doesn't really have an affinity for a pop star who had hits 10 years ago, they want someone who feels more like them.

Which is why after 6 paragraphs I can finally address Ariana Grande herself. I often see her touted as just about the only pop star who still matters. You can run all sorts of numbers in favour of other artists still, but the way I see it, she's a rare pop musician who feels completely in tune with the times of today. People like her songs, but they really like her in general. Over time she's gradually seeped more of this persona into her music and it's paying off extremely well. Her life is filled with nonstop drama that just comes her way because she's in the periphery. She may be the biggest pop star at the moment, but she's living a life that nobody could honestly envy.

I find myself compelled by the way she spins the drama around in her songs. Songs like "no tears left to cry", "breathin" and this all embody the idea of powering through the worst shit. This song in particular feels more pertinent about it because it was released just two months after Mac Miller passed away, and there's absolutely no way the song could even be conceived prior to that. This in itself is yet another strength in Ariana's deck of cards, that she's so readily adapted to this age where new music is expected more frequently than ever (look at the difference between say Jeff Buckley, whose posthumous releases come sometimes over a decade apart, while XXXTENTACION's label has pushed out two in two months) from younger fans. If you're an artist like Drake whose output regularly sounds like his songs were made in a week (I say this even for the ones I love), but it's more rare for an artist in Ariana's wheelhouse. Yet she keeps doing it, and is about to release the album of the same name only 6 months after her last.

Honestly though there's no better way to prove her cultural standing than the very status of the song. The titular phrase, to my understanding, pretty much was invented in this song, and yet it's instantly been weaved into popular culture as an extremely flexible phrase of dismissal. She even got in on Drake's other wheelhouse because I personally saw the 'one taught me...' line as an established meme before I even heard the song and found out where it came from. I can't describe Ariana as anything other than savvy. It may not be able to heal all her wounds, but at least the song is a smash.
Laatst gewijzigd: 07/02/2019 18:46