Rolling Stone

Several years ago I received a Rolling Stone with N' Sync on the cover. This followed a Brittany Spears cover and one for Backstreet Boys a few weeks earlier. This was too much for me and I soon sent them a letter I'm sure they never read along with my subcription cancellation. I have never bought an issue since. Maybe a silly elitist stance, or a music snob taking his utterly meaningless revenge on a music industry that has grown increasingly homongenous, uninventive and thoroughly unimaginative. Sure there is still great music on the edges, in local bars, available for download and even among the increasingly undifferentiable mainstream acts. But we essentially have three popular tones today -- the angst-ridden, attitude filled, empowered young female star singing of lost love, sex and the random musings of her mind, angt-ridden, ethereal males exhorting their own failed love, successful love and other largely meaningless though truthful confessional tunes and a variety of geriatic has-beens that continue to play because nothing better has come along to replace them. Nostalgia is certainly a strong impulse, but do we really still need to see the Rolling Stones creak their old bodies across the stage or revive the old Allman Brother with a mere two original members and fewer hit tunes than brain cells since 1973?

A little more than a decade ago, the hybrid move of music showed great promise for the future. Since then, Ipods, p2p and other technological advances have seriously endangered the fate of the music industry. Their response has been to charge astronomical prices for concerts of the hottest acts, to create carefully constructed brands that safely replicate the past and to reduce their catalogs and focus on one has been rejuvenation after another and anything teenage girls and boys will listen to. In line with this general movement is the latest Rolling Stone issue, which treats the maligned Jonas Brothers with far too much earnestness and respect. The boys have no life outside music, of course, except some dating that does not include sex (the three have signed on to abstain until marriage) and seem to have more business acumen than actual talent. Is this really the future we want for our children and our art? It's nothing new really, but the encomiums we too often offer to teenage stars and their skills at branding, marketing and essentially selling themselves as what other teenagers want may be overlooking the overarching trend to commodify everything in sight. I will stop here for now, but continue with this theme this week . . .