Where are the Beatles, the Bowies, and the Aretha Franklin's of this generation?

people will cite Radiohead as having made a lasting impact. Bjork too. Eminem undoubtedly. each decade generates new luminaries.

haha, poor Stuart

to answer the question- off the top of my head: jamiroquai, weller's solo stuff and mid-period M People.

Questions of long-term impact are misleading in a couple of ways. Firstly for a individual listener it's very hard to tell what will stand the 'test of time' - a record everyone else has forgotten or considered trivial may still be your favourite. Listening to music is more enjoyable - I find - if you're not worrying about how 'talented' or 'lasting' the people behind the record are.

Also, the question tends to push music into a particular shape - if you'd asked the qn ten years ago, for instance, lots of people would have answered "Nirvana" and they have had a big impact. But Dr Dre's impact at that time was still up in the air - a lot of people would have suggested it was a fad or wouldn't leave any positive traces. And the enormous diffuse impact of the hardcore dance scene has completely altered UK pop music but it would be difficult to point to a single artist responsible. It's a question you can only really answer with hindsight.

For me, bands like the Stereophonics will definitely endure, in the way Status Quo have endured, they will qualify for some sort of long-service medal but the 'impact' made on other music is negligible.

So, who are innovative and melodic out of today's acts then? Well, hardly anybody with success. Super Furry Animals and Beck would come close, but apart from the latter having one hit with "Loser", none of those have had the mainstream chart success that is needed to be able to be on the same level with Beatles and Bowie.
The same could also be said (although to an even larger extent when it comes to lack of mainstrem success) about Grandaddy and Flaming Lips.

So, really, I cannot come up with anybody at all, but I think that, maybe, Beck is closer than anybody else.

I think it wd be helpful if at the start of each post we made clear whether we're responding to it as a joke thread or not. I assume Geir has a smirk a mile wide.

Sorry!

impact isnt really the same thing as influence - i think her influence will manifest itself slowly and besides i think alot of people in the electronic arena ARE influenced by bjork - she's probably the one artist who could take the glitch into the mainstream. Alot of electronic artists are now mixing traditional song structures with electronics or acoustics with glitch to produce a hybrid and i think that, even if she wasn't the first to do it, she is influential in this respect.

So, being rockist and anti-rockist simultaneously, there is something to be said for his career - no band that formed in '97 has managed so much.

Next

18 Something 4 The Weekend Jul 1996
18 If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You Oct 1996
12 Ice Hockey Hair Jun 1998
11 Northern Lites May 1999
14 Juxtapozed With U Jul 2001
13 Golden Retriever Jul 2003

Something 4 The Weekend 12th July, 1996
Ice Hockey Hair 5th June, 1998
Northern Lites 21st May, 1999
Fire In My Heart 20th August, 1999
Do Or Die 28th January, 2000
Juxtaposed With You 20th July, 2001
Drawing Rings Around The World 19th October, 2001
It's Not The End Of The World 25th January, 2002
Golden Retriever 25th July, 2003

I would have loved SFA to have mainstream success, but having had 6 top 20 hits, the longest-lasting of which, "Northern Lights", falling off the Top 75 after just 4 weeks, doesn't qualify for that IMO. Ask the average 14-year-old American, European or even British kid who they are and he wouldn't have the foggiest idea.
Most 14-year-olds all over the world knew who David Bowie was in 1974, and they most certainly knew who The Beatles were in 1966.

As for Björk, I like her music, but I can hardly see she has influenced anybody at all (apart from Norwegian Anja Garbarek, who released a great internationally ignored album in 1994 called "Balloon Mood")

i'm sure Bjork was an influence on Moa and Emiliana Torrini anyway, not that it really means shit

In terms of voice itself, obviously not. Even if someone were to try to emulate her voice it wouldn't work. But elements of her style can be heard all over the music spectrum.

Fr'instance, listen to the last 2 minutes of The Roots' "Break You Off" and try to tell me that isn't at least a little bit influenced by Bjork. I mean, you could try, but you'd be wrong.

oh how dare she, really...who'd have thought someone would ever do that

Bjork has undeniably made an impact on music over the last 20 years. 'Birthday' was a remarkable record no? i couldn't stand it at the time because of the repetition and her heart-rendering wailings. i didn't really appreciate Bjork until she hooked up with 808 State, but even 'Debut' didn't do that much for me until a few years later. the fact she gets so many reactions out of me (from annoyance to awe) and the fact she does have quite a distinct - even unique - voice, style and approach (whether you love or loath) says something

Beatles = good, reasonably imaginative and charismatic musicians being there at the right time and place, in the midst of a cultural revolution which took popular music from being seen largely as light entertainment to something that had more profound social ramifactions, while fragmenting into the different genres that we know now.

Bowie = artist/performer type who came to popular music at a time when it was reaching out and soaking up modernist influences from art, literature, films, often to do with alienation and decadence, and thus made a good fit with his own sensibilities and magpie tendencies as a singer/songwriter.

The reason the Beatles and Bowie are such important cultural figures is that pop music at the time was so culturally significant and revolutionary, and I simply don't think you can say that about music today. The main genres are in place and have remained roughly the same for the past 20 years or so, since the inception of rap, electronica and dance music which overlaid the older genres of rock, metal, soul etc. Until we get futher major changes and a refocus on popular music as a primary locus of cultural/social significance, you're not going to get canonical figures emerging.

Hooray!!

wtf?!!

^^^ this

Beck is the Bowie/Prince of his generation.

ELO were The Beatles of the 70's, possibly 80;s too

Seriously, I never realized how many of their songs I knew till' i got that new best of they put out. Hit after hit, like a hotboxed bathroom

I happen to think the Stereophonics have a shedload of talent and that they'll be around for a while.

Valuable old posters.

ELO were The Beatles of the 70's, possibly 80;s too

Seriously, I never realized how many of their songs I knew till' i got that new best of they put out. Hit after hit, like a hotboxed bathroom

This is a great Accidental Partridge.

In defence of Stereophonics, they did release Dakota after that post. Still a great tune.

In defence of Stereophonics, *farts*

/I happen to think the Stereophonics have a shedload of talent and that they'll be around for a while./

Beck is the Bowie/Prince of his generation.

that's just geir

Surprised by the anti Aretha shit talk

One for the ages:

Hip-hop needs a gay Queen Latifah

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Wednesday, October 15, 2003 4:39 PM (fifteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Fake Geir.

if only Oasis had kept it together. at least we have Stereophonics who have still been making their influence felt in 2020

worse than the premise of this thread is the fuckwit rock boys scoffing at the notion that Aretha could be mentioned in the same breath as mediocrities like Bowie & the Beatles whose greatness apparently goes without saying. she getd a lot of bashing on the old threads- is this some kind of anti-tokenism one-upmanship or lingering fallout from the soulboy wars? there are other pretty transparent motivations ofc

*gets

was it more hipster/rockist/cornyindie to love or to hate aretha frankin in the 00s?

i'd venture to say it was good old fashioned learned racism.

Sometimes I wish I'd joined ILX a bit earlier, then I see these threads and nah.

the first person to say she's overrated is geir hongro and he's pretty sui generis as far as his musical outlook

Is it ok to like all three?

no

sorry I mean yes

anyone who says Aretha is overrated while defending the Beatles might as well put a white hood on afaic. Straight up racist bullshit.

The Beatles are timbrally more varied overall, which I'm sure is what Geir was getting at, he was known for his spirited defences of timbre.

there were plenty of tedious anti-beatles diatribes on old ilx, tho they're certainly less offensive than the misogynistic attacks on joni mitchell (tbh almost any old thread on a female artist is sure to include posts commenting on her appearance) or racist slurs against aretha franklin or bob marley

I mean, anti-Beatles diatribes are deserved.

The rest is racist and misogynistic nonsense.

Like to even compare them is a little weird imo.

I'm sat here with Alice (20) smiling at the comment from Alice (3) upthread, and wondering which Bjork clip she had the same hair of.

mark that post, completely out of context, needs to be new board descrip PRONTO

bob marley

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Monday, August 24, 2020 2:48 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah there's some fucked up shit in the marley threads here

lol Geir is trolling ILX from the past!!

who's geir?

Geir is eternal

Geir is eternal

Weird

ACCORDIN' TO THE FACT THAT GEIR IS ETERNAL

Every time I see people leaping to the defense of Joni Mitchell, I want to post the album cover she did in blackface

i just realized i have spent the last decade or so not really knowing how to pronounce "geir"

it's approximately like "gayer"

geir and gimble in the wabe

I was just going to try to explain Geir to Austin but it's kind of hard

Turning and turning in the widening Geir

geir and gimble in the wabe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=en1uwIzI3SE

I noticed that he replied me by name, which for Geir is a rare thing.

DJP, yeah, Joni's blackface period continues to be brushed aside in a really bizarre way.

tbc I don't think people should be sexist about her but... can we reckon with that plz

We talked about it a bit here:

Joni Mitchell: Classic or Dud

huh I thought I was in that conversation but apparently not, which means people are/have been reckoning with it in multiple places

I think I just want to bring it up constantly because, to my knowledge, she never apologized for it and never took on board how fucked up it was

Her explanation in the recent (excellent) biography also remains uh unconvincing.