With 2018 around the corner it seems about the right time to take into account the caliber of music we’ve been listening to this year. 2017 music can be described with one word, lackluster. The reason why is a lack of creativity and forward progress; artists both new and old are producing stale music that is uninspiring.
The year started with Brian Eno’s “Reflection” on Jan 1st, Eno conglomerates ambient sounds with continuous repetition reaches into the soul for almost an hour. To say the least a steady foundation to start the year, unfortunately, turns out the year has been as disappointing as receiving coal for Christmas with every release, thankfully Christmas is only once a year.
It’s not like there has been a lack of content, there has been a total of close to 1,000 releases so far. The blame goes to the artists that made this year feel like music is in a constant state of stasis, instead of making forward progress, the art has become stagnant. Some of the artists who have disappointed their fans, respectively, have been the following; Migos, The Shins, Queens of the Stone Age, Future, Gorillaz, Logic, Mac Demarco, sadly we could keep going at it all day but the list would be very extensive and most fans would end up feeling sad.
The biggest issue with the “art” these big name artists claim to be making, has been in a downhill slope for a couple years. The musicians have lost their hunger, their drive and their passion in the art, almost as if they’re making music so they can make a quick dollar or two by any means necessary, even if it means a crappy song.
An example of a stagnant and colorless album is “Humanz” by The Gorillaz, a lackluster, boring, and repetitive album without a pulse since the quality of production was shoddy at best. Then we have Logic’s release “Everybody” which was a clusterf**k of faulty logic and unnecessary commentary on issues, which sounds like he rapped about the first google search link he saw on the issue. Logic should be taken to jail for his inability to stop beating the proverbial dead horse.
But these are just two examples of many who are doing the same. But the fun doesn’t stop, there we are getting a resurgence of older bands contributing to the drab we’ve been all listening too. What’s aggravating about the resurgence of older bands is that in their time they were great bringing new sounds to the music scene; pushing the envelope further to entertain us. Unfortunately, instead we get nothing; boring lifeless albums makes the listener somber to hear their artists sound like crap.
Although much of 2017 has been characterless, there have been releases from artists that aren’t the big household name like Thundercats, Bonobo, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Sweet Myths, Death Grips and many more that are presenting new sounds and brewing new musical concoctions for their listeners. The interesting thing is it doesn’t matter how bleak music has been, most music fans are optimistic for the releases coming up this year from Beck, MGMT, System of a Down, and King Krule.
