Photo: Johnny O Band | Story by Andy Price, Music Radar | They were once the linchpins of the music industry, but today, the ever-shifting tides of economics, coupled with technology and a lack of youth interest seems to have rendered the band an obsolete concept. Should we be worried – or is this just another natural evolution of popular culture?
Though it’s something we’ve all been conscious of, the speed of the drop-off in new bands is pretty alarming once you examine the stats.
In a recent episode of The Rest is Entertainment podcast, author and television presenter Richard Osman deployed some jaw-dropping data that underlined the plummeting appeal of bands.
“We’ve had half a decade roughly so far, the first half of the 2020s.” Osman said, “I looked at the first half of the 1980s. There were 146 weeks when bands were number one [in the UK charts]. In the first half of the 1990s, there were 141 weeks when bands were number one.
“In the first five years of this decade, three weeks. One of which was the Radio One Live Lounge All Stars, most of whom were soloists anyway. One of which was The Beatles [with Now and Then] and one of which was Little Mix – the only kind of official band who’ve had a single week at number one in this entire decade.”
Picking up on this story and venturing his own lived experience was Rick Beato. His contention is that the rise of manufactured pop groups, such as N’Sync and Backstreet Boys in the 1990s began the swing away from chart-topping acts writing their own material, relying instead on co-writer/producers or writer/producers that would tackle the construction of their monolith hits.
“This was where people like Max Martin start to come on the scene.” Beato says, before explaining that the trend for writing with external songwriters began to become more prominent in rock music too.
“I know because I was part of this thing; being a producer/songwriter. You started to see artists, like Aerosmith, that had Diane Warren write the biggest hit they ever had – their only number one – I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing.”
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Read more on this fascinating subject here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/bands-are-dying-why-we-dig-into-the-data/ar-AA1rg6zw?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=40aef238083b4003a217476284d2b3a2&ei=49
Photo: Johnny O Band | Photo by Annette Cannon at Blues on the Mesa fest