21st Century Music

I was on Twitter during Popmaster yesterday and there were 2 tweets that got me thinking. The first was someone stating Anne-Marie was too young for tracks of my years because she's only 30 and wouldn't remember The Spice Girls. The second was a reply to that saying Fearne Cotton shouldn't be presenting "Sounds of the 90s" because she was born until 1981 and therefore wasn't 18 until 1999.

As someone who's similar in age to Fearne Cotton I completely disagree with the second tweet. The 90s was definitely my era when it comes to music. I remember the start of the 90s well and even recently saw home video footage of my young self in 1990 pretending to be a radio DJ. 

Aside from being too young for clubbing or raving I don't really see what turning 18 has to do with it. If you're not into music by the time you're 18 then you probably never will be. As kids though we had school discos or even just local discos for kids. 

As we're talking about decades though, the implication is presumably that a show about the 00s would be more appropriate for someone of Fearne Cotton's age. For me though I'd be OK with the early part of the decade but by 2009 I'd completely lost interest in modern music. The only modern mainstream music I was really listening to at the time was the new Prodigy album, an act I first got into in the 90s.

What distorts the picture though is going into the 21st century. Even though I've spent nearly 22 years of the my life in the 21st century it does in some ways feel like its all the same entity. Quite strange considering I wasn't even 22 when the 21st century began. 

Someone who I guess would have been in his 50s at the time once told me the music you listen to when you're between 16-25 is the music that will stay with you forever. Personally I reached the "modern music is rubbish" stage of my life long before I was 25 but at the same time I became a music fanatic long before I was 16.

The 21st century though was the beginning of the end. This is when the rave scene had more or less died. This was when a lot of dance music had gone commercial to the point we had Sophie Ellis-Bextor vs Victoria Beckham battling for number one and pop music was making it's way into Ibiza club nights.

Don't get me wrong, there were still positives and it didn't all go shit overnight. But gradually I was finding less new acts were taking my interest and some of the established acts I did like started making rubbish music. I could probably count on one hand the number of acts I have albums of who became established after 2005.

Perceptions on how old or new music changed too. By 2009 I was finding myself labelling anything from the 90s as old but if it was from the year 2000 it was new. I also remember back in 1989 and discovering Queen I was told they'd been around a long time. They made their Top 40 debut in 1974 which is the equivalent of an act now who made their Top 40 debut in 2006. I would consider someone who made their debut in 2006 to be modern though.

This brings my onto that first tweet about Anne-Marie. At first glance I kind of agree but really it's not so much the lack of years that she'd remember, more that it's the wrong years. She may remember the tail end of the 90s, but it would mostly be the 21st century which is all the same thing. 

Would people have been saying the same about Suggs, The Edge or Martin Kemp if they were doing the same in 1991? Possibly not because they'd have the tail end of the 60s, 70s and 80s and even the start of the 90s to pick from which are all different in their own way.