What is modern music?

When I was on Popmaster I mentioned to Ken Bruce I was going to see High Contrast the following day and had to explain who he was as Ken had never heard of him, I think he said he wasn't down with the youth.

Yet the debut album of High Contrast came out in 2002, 16 years ago. To put that into perspective, in 1989 when I heard new Queen songs for the first time in living memory my Mum told me they'd been round for donkeys years. Their debut album came out in 1973 i.e. at that point in time Queens first album was just one year older than High Contrasts debut album is now.

To be fair the most likely reason Ken Bruce hadn't heard of High Contrast is that he's probably not that well known to people who aren't into Dance music, he's never had a Top 40 hit for example. But you do have contestants on Popmaster who get a question about a 2002 song wrong because they don't know modern music.

It raises an interesting question, how old does a song have to be before it's not longer considered modern?

Of course there's no definitive answer and ones age obviously plays a big part. For a lot of people modern music is a positive term in their younger years but they then reach the point where it's a negative term. It does however seem that modern music is getting older.

For some people modern music means anything in the 21st Century which in some ways seems a pretty logical distinction. It does however mean music that is 18 years old is considered modern. Casting my mind back to the year 2000 I don't recall anyone branding music from 1982 as being modern. In fact I don't really remember anyone, old or young branding 80s music as being modern during the 90s.

During the late 80s I do recall having conversations with my uncle who was around 40 at the time about the songs in the charts. By the end of the 90s he didn't really have much idea of what was in the charts anymore. In 2011 I had a conversation with him where I said I didn't like much modern music and that you can't beat the 90s. He's always felt the same about the 60s but was surprised to hear me say that because in his mind the 90s was modern music.

For me personally I think mid 00s is where the modern era begins. Not because I think a 13 year old record is new, but more it being a point where I started to lose interest in music of that time, at least in a mainstream sense.

That's not strictly an age thing though. Like I mentioned earlier, I used to converse with my uncle about the charts when he was around 40, I didn't turn 40 in the mid 00s, I'm still younger than 40 now.

If we look at what happened in the mid 00s it becomes more clear. The X Factor started in 2004 which has had a big impact on the charts ever since. Artists come and go but at the end of the day it's still Simon Cowell music.

Then in 2005 downloads became eligible for the charts and eventually were eligible if they didn't have a physical copy which would more or less halve the number of hits you'd have in the Top 40 each year.

In 2006 we saw the rise of YouTube and the end of Top of the Pops. This meant hours of finding that tune you hadn't heard since 1992 without the usual half hourly catch up what was in the charts that week.

Then you look at the music itself. In 2006 we had the debut of Calvin Harris, in 2018 we've just had the sixth week at number one for Calvin Harris.
I'd say a combination of these factors make it feel like we're in the same era. Sure we had old timers like Cliff Richard and Elton John score number ones in the 90s, but this wasn't music targeted to the youth, it just so happened that older people bought singles too. I strongly suspect the new Calvin Harris record is aimed at the youth market, I certainly don't know anyone in my age group who listens to him.

I do still think it's a bit barmy calling a song that's over a decade old "modern" but then looking at music since the mid 00s I find it hard to describe it any differently.