Rehearsal of the Pasdeloup Orchestra at the Cirque d'Hiver
I was on my way to work, walking my usual twenty minutes to make it to Bermondsey station in the freezing cold, trying to choose a song to help me make this exhausting Monday morning journey to work enjoyable, or at least bearable. When, for a second, while waiting at the red light and scrolling through my “liked” songs on Spotify, I froze. I was looking at my songs, and I felt like my songs (or the artists of the songs) were looking back at me in confusion. Although I had put them all there, I didn’t know what to choose. I wasn’t in the mood to listen to any of those songs, and I know what you’re thinking – that happens to all of us. You like songs, listen to them too much, get tired of them, and move on. But this didn’t feel like my usual ‘song boredom’. I kept looking at my phone while the red light became green, yet I remained still, wondering why I put those songs in there in the first place. I asked myself if I even liked them or ever did. The simple thought of playing MILLION DOLLAR BABY made me feel nauseous as if that’s not all I had been listening to for the past few days. I even recommended it to friends, as if it wasn’t all over social media. So why was I so repelled by it now? Why couldn’t I just make up my mind, play a song, and continue walking to, preferably, not be late to work? I couldn’t stay at that intersection forever, so eventually, I just gave up, played a song (not MILLION DOLLAR BABY, don’t worry) and started walking again. A few songs played, from Emilia Mernes to Billie Eilish to Gracie Abrams – all artists that I like and admire – and yet I found myself skipping song after song, finally arriving at Bermondsey station, bothered by my sudden change of taste and my dislike of songs I thought were great. As I waited for the overpacked Jubilee line to arrive, accompanied by the noise of the howling wind in the tunnel and the fast-approaching train, I started wondering why I preferred these sounds to my songs. And I started doing what I do best: analysing the list, dissecting it, and overthinking. I thought of them as I would think of past crushes, grouping all their common denominators and questioning why I was attracted to them in the first place, as these tended to be questionable (to say the least). That’s when I realised the songs were all very different; the only thing they had in common was that virality factor. They were all songs I got accustomed to listening to lately as a result of social media (my favourite oppressor). And don’t just take it from me: if you stop and have a look at the Billboard Top 100 songs of the past year (2024), you will notice that the majority of them have been all over your feeds – and I don’t think they were there because of how much we listened to them, but on the contrary, we listened to them because of how much they were in our feeds. Although we are all aware of the great marketing power social media has, I don’t think I actively recognised the effect it was having on my taste – until now, when I was standing in an overpacked train on my way to work being more annoyed by my passive decision-making process than by the people pushing me to squeeze onto a train that passes every two minutes. But putting my annoyance aside, are we living in times where, for music to be considered any good, it has to become viral? And be part of a TikTok trend? Because if that’s the case, I think we are doomed.
Artists have spoken about this in the past. For example, Olivia O’Brien has shared (on her finsta) that one of the reasons behind her decision to separate from her record label and become an independent artist was the fact she wasn’t free to make music that she actually enjoyed – that her label, like many others I would assume, preferred the music that would ensure the social media stamp of approval. Those were the songs that would be prioritised with set release dates. The ones she enjoyed writing more would just remain there, waiting to be considered. I know that this may sound extreme, and I’m not trying to discredit the work of the artists that are making it to Billboard’s top songs; I’m simply wondering if we, as a society, started to become desensitised to the music we listen to – and if in turn, artists are becoming desensitised to the music they produce. As much as one loves art, art takes form when others recognise it, so if it needs to hit a “virality checklist” for it to be recognised, how authentic is the art? In this case, how authentic is the music that is being produced and that we’re listening to?
Plenty of studies prove that our attention span keeps shortening, that we increasingly struggle to concentrate and dedicate our focus to long forms of media or in-depth content that requires more than surface-level absorption, and I’m starting to think that this is not only true to films and books, but to music too. For a song to be worthy of our attention, it doesn’t have to be as complex and maybe “authentic” as it used to be, and that’s why these fast-paced, repetitive pop songs are the ones infesting our Spotify playlists (or Apple Music if you’re one of those). That’s why artists keep making more of the same, and maybe that’s why I feel so desensitised to music I thought I liked. My train of thought was suddenly interrupted by my arrival at Stratford; shockingly (at least for me), I managed to survive that train journey without listening to music but instead dissecting my music choices and pondering the questions I now present to you. As I walked to my next train, I started to look around and try to grasp what music others were listening to. I only managed to look at the screens of the people right next to me – one was listening to Sabrina Carpenter, and the other to an old-school French song. But let’s focus on the one listening to Sabrina Carpenter since it proves my point. It’s another song that’s been all over our feeds, whether we like it or not. I know I’m just a spectator and a listener who doesn’t know anything about the music industry, but out of nowhere, the desensitisation we have for music seems obvious to me. I know it’s nothing new for songs to go viral and for everyone to listen to them on one platform or another, but I think the fact that not many of us will be going back to these songs in a few years, months, or in my case, days, highlights the idea that music just isn’t what it used to be. I will always go back and listen to Prince, Erykah Badu, or Maná, and as diverse as these artists might be, I ended up listening to them not because they were overplayed on the radio or trending when I discovered them. But they passed the test of time, and when I was lucky enough to be exposed to them, I actually listened – over and over again, without waiting for the next song to play or using them as a background on my work commute.
You’re probably wondering where this article is going and what I want to prove.
My point, and what I think this ‘indecision about music’ that struck me this morning has made me realise, is that we need to be more present in our lives and in choosing what songs to listen to, or if you are an artist, in creating music. Even if we listen to or are exposed to the same song over and over again, that doesn’t necessarily mean we like it or have to keep listening to it – not if we’re not truly interested in what we are listening to. If we start being a little bit more intentional and really listen to the songs, process the words, understand the rhythm, and think more about how they make us feel and why – maybe we would help improve this cycle and consequently help the artists create music that truly reflects their talent rather than their ‘virality’. Because at this rate, many of these songs feel more like short, addictive stimuli, like a distraction that leads us to compulsively engage with them, and I don’t think music should be that way. Or that artists would ever want to create music with that intention.
This is not to say that you should stop listening to Gracie Abrams or whatever other artist is on your FYP at the moment, but I beg you, stop for a second before you hit ‘add’ and consciously decide whether or not you like the song. In the end, all I want to do is help you not to get to where I am and find yourself stuck in front of a traffic light because you don’t know what to listen to, frustrated by ‘desensitised’ music choices. I have arrived at the office, so I have to leave you now – but luckily, reflecting on this has helped me figure out what I want to listen to. ‘Didn’t Cha Know’ by Erykah Badu, and off I go.