Future’s So Bright: “citysearch.com’s three dozen music editors present the 20 musicians we know will lead the way in popular music for the next 10 years.”. It’s that “know” that does it, I think. The list is a mixture of 90s heroes, safe-bets and neutered critical favourites (three groups which crossover a lot, frankly), with the odd semi-surprise thrown in. Beth Orton is at #2.
To get personal for a second, there are times when I have to assume that I’m just completely perverse – the sense of critical consensus (BECK!) in pop music is enormous right now, but I and almost all the people I know who love music just seem so hugely adrift from it. There must be other people who read a list like this and feel this boiling dissonance, this sense that the topography of pop being laid out here is describing a music totally alien to the one they’ve invested so much in. I sit here listening to my records and writing the odd review and then encounter huge blaring lists like this, and it’s like I’ve stepped sideways into some parallel universe. I don’t feel happy or proud about that – it gets me down, to be honest, and because I don’t have some bullshit underground ideology to cling onto it also makes me start to feel worse, or doubtful, about the music I do like.
Until, obviously, I play it again.