What’s Happened to Our Charts & The Musical Tribes?

The last 20 or so years have seen the UK charts collapse into a state of mediocrity and ‘sameness’. Musical genres in the charts today don’t really exist, the youth don’t have loads of different types of music anymore, there’s no longer tribes of followers of certain types of genres anymore. Proof of the pudding is always in the eating and a quick look at the current Top 10 reveals not only two separate tracks by Ed Sheeran there but two more separate tracks by Lewis Capaldi! The only deviation from the rule is a Stormzy track that’s holding in there at number four.

 1979
A glance back forty years ago this week to 1979 and look at the variety in the charts. The Top 10 consisted of:

1. Anita Ward Ring My Bell
2. Blondie Sunday Girl
3. Roxy Music Dance Away
4. Earth, Wind & Fire Boogie Wonderland
5. McFadden & Whitehead Ain’t No Stopping Us Now
6. Electric Light Orchestra Shine A Little Love
7. Tubeway Army Are Friends Electric?
8. Sister Sledge We Are Family
9. The Shadows Theme From The Deer Hunter
10. Edwin Starr H.A.P.P.Y Radio

So just in that little lot you’ve got Disco, Electro, Rock, Soul, New Wave and even a movie theme! Look a little bit further down the chart and you discover the following:

• Squeeze – Up The Junction
• Dollar – Who Were You With In The Moonlight
• Gary Moore – Parisienne Walkways
• The Clash – I Fought The Law
• Chas & Dave – Gertcha
• Janet Kay – Silly Games

And even Kevin Keegan with Head Over Heals!!!

That then brings Pop, Blues, Punk, Reggae, Cockney singalong and even a novelty track from a footballer into the equation. So that gives nearly a dozen different genres in one week’s chart. An odd week you may say? No, it was that diverse all the time back then. In a few months’ time we could add even more genres to the list such as Ska, Two-Tone, Heavy Metal, Country, Goth and the New Romantics. Back then the charts weren’t entirely made up of acts for kids, you were now in an era when adults bought as much music as teenagers which influenced things significantly.

Tribes
All these genres of music had their own tribes of fans. They all followed a certain type of music and dressed a certain way. Everybody didn’t like everything and everybody didn’t dress the same. Your disco kids wouldn’t go near a blues track like Parisienne Walkways nor would they dress like a punk or a new wave fan. Echoing the Mods versus Rockers battles of the sixties, some fans hated other because of their music, I remember at the time fights at school between the punks and the ‘hippies’!

These tribes continued through the 80s into the 90s and then they disappeared into the blandness in both music and fashion that we have today. Everybody dresses the same to a point now where teenagers and their parents (especially girls) seem to dress almost exactly the same. 

What Happened?
So in the words of the Talking Heads – ‘How Did We Get Here?’ 

I’m not sure! Is it the way we now consume music in bite-size chunks? Is it the very narrow range of pop music now played on commercial radio? Is it kids wanting to look older and dress like their parents or the converse that the parents want to look younger and dress like their kids? Is it shows like X-Factor and Britain’s Got Talent that thrive on mundane, generic acts? Is it the cancelling of shows like Top Of The Pops which brought the musical diversity into all our homes every week? Are there too many other outlets and distractions for today’s youth that music is a long way down their list? Is it just corporate greed?  

I honestly don’t know! What I do know though is the music industry is a poorer place for it. Nobody really has any interest in the charts anymore. Yes there’s good new stuff out there if you go looking but that’s the difficulty, it’s not played on most radio stations nor is it on the TV anymore so its not presented to you, you’ve got go hunting to find it! 

I’m pretty sure if I asked my 19 year old son to name a track out of the current Top 10 he’s struggle, when I was his age I’d have known at least half of them. 

Sad Isn’t It !