An Observation: The Effect of the 2008 Financial Crisis on Music
Music has evolved, as it always does, in the past few years - notably getting more electronic, more ‘retro’ sounding and more heavily produced. The raw guitar sound that was prevalent a few years ago is no longer heard nearly as frequently.
Of course fashion in music changes just as in does elsewhere, but fashions change due to certain influences - and the state of the economy is a major one. You might expect music in times of financial hardship to become more resentful, angry and downtrodden, but this is far from the direction the mainstream industry has taken - instead the mainstream has become more club-orientated, more cheesy R&B and Hip Pop and much less instrumental and emotional, in my opinion.
What is most startling is how a whole generation of bands disappeared around the time the financial crisis was in full swing. Bands such as Mumm-Ra, Larrikin Love, Pull Tiger Tail and Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong all dispersed, seemingly overnight. At one time Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong were tipped to be the next big thing, earning relentless hype from the NME and coming 7th in the BBC’s ‘Sound of 2008’ poll - but they never even released an LP.
The commercial music industry has suffered in the last decade, experiencing difficulty as a result of piracy and an inability to adapt to the changing ways in which people consume music. This means their reliance on credit would have been high, something which became in short supply due to the crisis. It seems likely that they would have experienced high pressure from creditors to remain stable - and to drop bands that appeared a risk. The new wave of raw, emotional Indie bands were this risk. Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong are the extreme of this - an album was recorded and sent to critics, but deemed by the record label to not ”represent their current sound” and promptly scrapped.
This wasn’t the end of the world, and is little more than an observation, but it does seem that few new guitar bands have emerged to truly take up the mantle these, and bands such as Bloc Party, which changed their sound heavily, left behind.
