There are those certain songs in life where you remember where you were the first time you heard them.
I will never forget where I was the first time I heard U2's 'Sunday Bloody Sunday.'
I was watching MTV is was 1983, I was sitting on my parent's shaggy 70s carpet...
and I just remember thinking, I've never heard anything like this before.
I've never heard a band so passionate
about what they believe in that I can feel it ripping through their instruments and their vocal chords.
I also remember where I was the first time I heard Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.'
It was 1991, I was home from college, I was sitting in my friend's Z-28 outside a restaurant parking lot.
And I remember having the same thought, I'd never heard anything like this before,
I'd never heard such a perfect sonification of angst before in my life.
And I also remember where I was the first time that I heard this song...
ů which should be playing right now... hopefully.
But imagine, if you will... When's that Best Laid Plans thing? That's tomorrow right? We'll go see that one.
Imagine, if you will, Benny Benassi's, do you guys remember Benny Benassi's 'Cinema'(Skrillex remix)?
I was setting up a production for a summer camp in 2011 and they were test the speakers with it
and I asked my friend, what is this? And they said, "It's dubstep."
And I remember having that same thought. I remember thinking... I've never ever heard anything...
I've never heard anything like this before, I've never felt music push me off this emotional cliff...
and felt such a blissful release before. And then I'm driving in my car later on in the year
and I hear Britney Spears' new single, and sure enough it has this very drop-like breakdown section...
and I just remember thinking, hmm, it's starting.
And I remember thinking that it wouldn't be long before there would be this invasion of...
dubstep everywhere. And pretty soon it was, it was in our commercials, in our movie trailers,
it was inescapable. And I don't think we can give dubstep sole credit for things like 'risers' and 'sidechaining'
we can trace elements of those things in other sub-genres but I would argue that dubstep's breaking down the door
on the scene in about 2011 was really probably the gateway for America's mainstream cultural obsession with EDM,
and it was an obsession that commercial markets jumped on, and so pretty soon everywhere
we heard this form. We heard this frenzied build over this pre-chorus reaching this apex of this instrumental
break, and for a while there were these attempts at these half-time, drop-like dubstep breakdowns, but pretty soon...
those morphed into just these instrumental breaks, and every once in a while, maybe a vocal refrain
of a word or two, or some vocal chops.
And so for a while we were in this non-stop dance party on mainstream radio for a couple of years
and while we weren't looking, someone came in and stole something from us, and what they stole was the Chorus.
That traditional chorus, right? I mean, music is all about tension and release, and that moment,
where that chorus lyric aligns with that musical release of tension, was gone.
And I would argue that next to the rap song form's influence on the pop market
that this has been the biggest change in song form that we've had for over 50 years.
And yet we're not really taking about it, because let's be honest, it's a money-maker, it's a festival fueler,
it's a casino sellout event, it's bigger than an influenced genre.
So in the past year what I've done is... I've been studying every song that has hit the top 10
in billboard's pop charts since around 2010 to see if I can trace this influence,
and I don't think it's any mistake or coincidence that around 2011 we saw the charts start to change.
And more and more songs had this new form where the traditional chorus was gone,
and it was just this instrumental break. Now I can present some boring slides to you of some data,
but I thought it might be more fun, since we're at Loop, to perform the data.
So what I'm gonna do is... this is not meant to be a dance party but what I want you to do is...
I'm gonna very quickly blitz through this in chronological form, which you can read here in Session view.
I'm gonna do a mash-up of some songs that have hit the top 10 since 2010, and I want you to pay attention
to the fact that I'm only gonna play the instrumental breaks. I also promise I've done no additional sidechaining.
None whatsoever.
I also want you to notice how scary it is that I can do this so easily. But that's another talk for another time.
Alright, as fun as that was, I'm wondering if we've been at the party just a little too long.
I mean, I love electronic music - I grew up playing in new wave bands.
I was the kid that was programming New Order/ Depeche Mode songs in my Insonic step sequencer
so I love electronic music, but I'm afraid that we've built this "drop-addicted culture,"
and I'm afraid of what will happen if we take the high away. It's true we're starting to see these instrumental breaks
disappear, but why do I still feel like I'm getting ripped off when I listen to the radio?
It's as if we've taken away these instrumental breaks but left these pre-choruses and we thought, eh, that'll do.
It's almost as if we have forgotten how to write a traditional chorus we haven't needed to do that in a while.
I read this book about 15 years ago on visual media but I think it relates to other creative mediums.
So Hillman Curtis said this about website design:
Have we forgotten what we wanna communicate?
I mean these are all valid emotions but are we still trapped in a market that's putting a lot of value on communicating
just a handful of them. I still love listening to a little bit of dubstep, I love firing up some Skrillex collabs
with Foreign Beggars but I also love singing along with this song.
Roll down the window...
Remembering what it's like to be young again, 20 and invincible...
But I also love singing along with this song too.
A well-placed octave jump...
the implied bass walk-down... just reveling in the love that I have for my husband.
And then I still get goosebumps to this day every time I hear the chorus of this song:
I can't help it, I have to put my fist up in the air
and scream along, and sure, I remember it, kind of in a cheesy way, just times in life where I wasn't sure
that I was going to make it, but I did. So I'll leave you with a couple of questions here.
Do we now have an entire generation of young people who've maybe missed out
on making some emotional connections in more of a holistic way through this art medium,
because of this influence? And then, even though we're seeing the chorus start to come back
does it really matter? I hate to sound depressing, but in a market that's so bent on social media
and influencers and branding, is the average teenager really listening to music...
to make an emotional connection anymore? Maybe we just need to realize that pop music is by definition
just that: whatever is popular. And maybe a tried and true song form that's been around over 50 years,
maybe even that is subject to change by a market that ultimately dictates what will be popular or not.
As I close here, I'm gonna challenge you, maybe as creatives and producers,
we can get back to this trifecta which we know is really powerful, a trifecta that we can use to communicate
maybe a wider range of emotions than the ones we've been communicating lately.
Because at the end of the day, that's the beauty of art, right?
That's it. Music helps us process life.
To loosely quote Angels & Airwaves, I think music helps us just...
helps life not hurt so badly. I mean, what an amazing thing we have.
The power to help life hurt a little less through what we create.
I don't know about you but that's something I'm willing to leave the party for every once in a while.
Thank you so much for your time.