Music... somehow you get the feeling that music these days is mass-produced. Always there, always within reach, everything just a swipe away. Millions of tracks in your pocket, and yet what ends up playing is usually whatever some algorithm decided to suggest. Things were better back then, of course. Or so says the part of me that likes to wallow in nostalgia and conveniently forgets how much of a hassle most of it actually was.
Because back then we had to save up, at least until a certain age, to buy music on CD, vinyl, or even cassette. An album was a decision. You stood in the shop, turned the case over in your hands, read the names of songs — maybe you knew one of them — and worked out in your head whether your pocket money would stretch. And if you'd picked wrong, you listened to the record anyway, over and over, until you liked it. Because you'd paid for it.
Or you had to be really patient and try to tape the song you were after off the radio. Finger hovering over the record button, ear against the speaker, all that waiting for the one moment... and then the hope that the DJ wouldn't talk over it. Which of course he did. Every time. At the start, at the end, sometimes right in the middle.
Handmade, Not Calculated
Back then music was handmade, not calculated. It was about substance, about feeling, it was about a message. Today it's about clicks. Today it's about money. Today it's about pleasing as many people as possible. Chorus up front, keep the verse short, and make it easy enough to shout along to. Right?
Sounds good, and there's a kernel of truth in it. But it doesn't quite hold up. The recordings from back then weren't more honest, and they weren't better either. A studio cost money, so a record had to sell. A label wanted to make money, so there was a target audience even then, a format, a very precise idea of what works. The charts weren't a law of nature, they were a market. We just kept the nice half — the great albums, the bands with something to say — and all the rest, the one-hit wonders and the calculated summer hits... we've pushed those out of memory.
About That Starving-Artist Thing
Let's be honest: back then it was about money for most musicians too, and there's nothing wrong with that. Anyone who spends years learning an instrument, who drives through the night in a van to the next gig, who pours time and nerves into a record, is allowed to want to make a living from it. The myth of the starving artist makes about as much sense as expecting every second of music you hear to carry some deeper message.
Quite the opposite. A song that pays the rent isn't a worse song. And a musician who pays attention to their audience isn't selling out.
No Wagging Finger
Still, the idea persists that good music has to hurt, has to warn, or at least lecture. That an album only counts if it leaves you with a guiltier conscience than before. I get where that comes from — the stuff that carried us through hard times often had exactly that depth. But turning it into a rule is nonsense. Not every song is a manifesto, and it doesn't have to be.
Music can, may, and should also just entertain. No moral required, no wagging finger wanted. A dumb, loud, far too catchy chorus can be exactly the right thing when you need it. Three minutes that want nothing but to lift your mood aren't second-class art. They're just honest about what they are.
Both Are True
Maybe that's exactly where the two camps meet. One side says everything was more real back then, the other says it's all rose-tinted nonsense. And both are a little bit right and both are overdoing it. There were always the big, important records and the rubbish for the car radio. It was always about messages and about money. Today is no different, the access is just easier, the pile bigger, the swiping faster. The rubbish from back then simply sat in the second-hand bin; the rubbish of today sits in the feed, where we all get to see it.
What's really changed isn't the music. It's our relationship with it. When everything is available all the time, you don't have to commit to anything — and committing was exactly the part that used to bind you to a song. The one record the money just barely covered. The one crooked radio recording. The value never lay in the song alone, but in all the effort around it. You can't buy that anymore, but you can choose it: actually listen instead of half-listening, hear an album to the end instead of swiping on, commit to something for once.
What's left in the end is a pretty simple thing that neither the nostalgics nor the cynics like to hear. Sometimes just switching off and letting yourself be entertained is exactly right. No deeper meaning, no analysis, no guilty conscience. Just a song playing, and a head that stops calculating for a few minutes. Whether it ran on cassette in 1987 or comes out of a stream today doesn't really matter. Good music was never a question of format. Only the question of whether you actually listened to it at the right moment.