Ridiculous Opinions #184
So, I am irrelevant when it comes to popular music. That is a clear statement. I have always wanted to be hip when it comes to music, but once I had children, that was over.
But I constantly wonder about the future of music in this day and age. How do artists stay relevant? How do we get back to the joy of listening to music? How do we focus on something for more than one song in order to grasp the whole, rather than the parts?
Lo and behold, I have to give credit to Peter Gabriel for the way he is releasing his new album. But before I do that, I need to answer a question that most of you are asking…Who the hell is Peter Gabriel?
Peter Gabriel is a musical legend who got his start in the 70s with the prog-rock band, Genesis. (And yes, I am well aware that most readers are also asking, Who the hell is Genesis? but I don’t have all day here). Gabriel was famous in the 70s for his ultra-elaborate, theatrical concerts, where he would perform in complex costumes, shave backward mohawks onto his head, and write songs called The Carpet Crawlers.
Gabriel left Genesis for a solo career and proceeded to write some of my favorite songs, including Shock the Monkey, Biko, and Games Without Frontiers. Gabriel was a pioneer of world music, and while our more progressive colleagues might sit back and say he engaged in cultural appropriation, those of us in the know realize that every artist from around the world that he worked with was given the opportunity to release their music to a worldwide audience on Gabriel’s own Real World Records, which, for this boy growing up in Oklahoma, was my first real exposure to world music.
Gabriel had truly mainstream success at the end of the 80s with his album, So. You’ve probably heard several of the songs off of that album in some form or another, including In Your Eyes, Sledgehammer, and my personal anthem, Big Time. He was MASSIVELY successful around that time. But he also became prickly and made his requisite “divorce” album, Us, which is my personal favorite of the bunch. He went on a massive tour (documented in the very artistic Secret World Live) and then waited ten years to make his next album, Up in 2002. Then, he disappeared.
He didn’t actually disappear. He toured that entire time, but did not release many original songs. But about a month ago, he resurfaced by announcing a new tour and album called i/o.
I think that it's always a battle to fight for people's attention in this day and age, and I think that Gabriel has no intention of reaching a younger audience. I mean, I’m very excited, but I’m in my fifties, but good luck on convincing a young person to listen to music by a guy who looks like he might have written The Hobbit.
With this new album, Peter Gabriel is catering to me. But in catering to me, he is catering to an attention span that is completely shot; a man who has to force himself to listen to more than one song in a row; someone who is mainly interested in hearing his favorite songs and not something new.
But I am still interested in the concept of the album. I want to listen to albums, even though I don't anymore. I want to get back to that thing where I sit down with a good pair of headphones and listen to something from start to finish. Every once in a while, I do this, but not always.
In this instance, Peter Gabriel has made me want to listen to his new album and it's very interesting the way he's doing it.
He has a newsletter, which I subscribed to long ago. Back in the late 90s, when the internet was still in its infancy, he had something called The Full Moon Club, where he would send an email every full moon. He brought it back with his upcoming album. So, in early January, he released his first single called Panopticom, and in the email, he explained what he was trying to achieve with the song.
In the email, he talked about the musicians involved and what he felt the meaning of the song was. I listened to the song before I read the email and I was like, This is inaccessible. There were some good parts, but I was rather meh, and I filed Gabriel away into the typical obscurity and irrelevance that most older artists fall into. After all, I have had 20 plus years of Peter Gabriel irrelevance. His last album was from 2002 and though I liked it at the time, it wasn't a classic for me. I've followed him for years and with each passing year, it felt like I was watching someone who didn't give a crap. After all, he hasn't released an album since 2002. Thus, I thought this new song was kind of terrible.
But then I read the email and I put something together in my head...This is the new liner notes.
Back when I used to listen to music, I would get an album and just pour over the album art and the liner notes (liner notes are the information that artists used to put in the books that accompanied CDs…song lyrics, stories, producers, thank yous…they are missed). I used to look for who the players were on the song and any clues as to the meaning of what I was listening to. I used to look at the pictures and the artwork and marvel at what I was seeing. Gabriel's email managed to hook me into this new song. Once I read through that first email, I understood what I was listening to.
That’s the problem with music nowadays. We don’t always understand what we’re listening to. If it doesn’t hook us in the first couple of minutes, then we file it away and listen to something else. Or at least, that’s how it is with me.
So, I gave the song another shot, where I kind of forced myself to listen to the music. And dammit if I didn't start to like the song. Once I got over my initial This is new and unfamiliar reaction (which I often have), I started to appreciate what he was doing. That's kind of what is missing from the way I listen to modern music. I no longer appreciate what (some) artists are attempting to do, because my attention span and desire for the familiar keeps me from enjoying it. I want to gain back that appreciation.
So, a week later, Gabriel sent another newsletter. This one contained a different mix of the song (the first one was the "Bright Side" mix, which was slightly more electronic, and the second was the "Dark Side" mix, which was more organic and sounded more like a band in a room playing). Again, he explained what he was trying to achieve with this mix and why he did it. Now that I was familiar with the song, I was able to appreciate the textures he added and it quickly became my favorite version. It was still that obscure, art-house Peter Gabriel that both attracts and repulses me, but it was good stuff.
But then, I got another email a week later. Now, he's got a third mix of the song called The Inside Mix. In the newsletter, he went on to explain how this was a Dolby Atmos mix and the work that went into creating a song that made full use of this new technology. And it's the best mix of the song yet!!
I have an appreciation for Atmos mixes, but I've never heard one that made me think, This is the future of music. Most of them seem cobbled together, and though some are good, they still sound like a regular song with some neat bells and whistles that make it Atmos. But to me, Gabriel and his producers (whom he cites in the email) have crafted something that really makes the technology sing. I finally said, This is what it's all about!
And Gabriel promised another song next week, even though he hasn't said when the actual album is coming out. This is a brilliant ploy on his part, because now I want to listen to the album!!
Sure, there are all kinds of caveats to this email. I doubt there's one person under the age of 45 that is subscribed to the Peter Gabriel newsletter, and I doubt you could get one person under the age of 45 to give him a chance. But I'm the target market for this man and he had lost me over the years. Somehow, he's managed to reel me back in after seemingly sliding into irrelevance. And the way he's releasing this album could be the future of how the marketing of music works in the future.
Perhaps this is another example of what I refer to as The Great Retraction from technology. The simplicity of the email replaces liner notes. A slowed down release of singles to allow people to absorb new sounds, to get a feel for how artists should engage their audiences. This is the future of it all.
Maybe...maybe not.
But the bottom line with all of this is that I’m starting to appreciate what it means to be an artist lately. Some of you might listen to the songs above and say, That’s crap, Randall. Please don’t waste my precious newsletter reading on this. Write more about your cat. But what I want you to do is appreciate the song for what it is. It’s an artist who is interested in engaging with the world at a deeper level, who wants his music to be textured and thoughtful, to tell a story with what he is writing. He wants you to respect the aural wonder that someone can create with modern technology and he wants you to take time to understand why he created it. Whether you like the song or not, you have to appreciate that he’s trying to do something more than engage with pop culture at a superficial level, where songs, movies, and TV shows come and go and we forget about them the day after we see/hear them.
Let’s all try to be more artistic, shall we?
