Facts that make you feel old

[Chest Rockwell]

3 hours ago, Merzbow said:

Shake It Off definitely was that, you couldn't move without hearing it somewhere.

For sure. There were a few big singles off that album.. I think the commentary in this thread is pretty revisionary. Blank space was massive as well. 

It does seem that since that big breakout she got from 1989 she used that as a platform to make music on her own terms going forward, rather than leaning into trying to be completely ubiquitous in pop culture. I feel like if she wanted to be in every advert going, with big endorsements, and try her hand at acting she could easily do that. (I know she did do some movie stuff, but she didn't seem to have the appetite to stick with it it seems).

I do agree that more broadly speaking there is just so much more media available to consume these days though. 

Edited July 18, 2024 by Chest Rockwell

[deathrey]

Bad Blood was pretty huge too but I can see that she isn't an icon in the way that say, Beyonce is an icon. Though personally I prefer Tay-Tay

[DavidB6937]

There's a fuck ton of Taylor Swift songs that I wouldn't know were hers unless you told me. But that's the same for Ed Sheeran and a lot of other acts too. Quite often there isn't a distinct sound that makes it obvious that it's them.

But then life is different now. I used to listen to a lot of radio. I'd have Now albums. I'd watch The Box and MTV and Kerrang. I'd go and try CDs in Virgin. There was so much music outside of my tastes that I'd be familiar with just because I consumed it in such a different way.

Now I rarely listen to the radio. All my Spotify is playlists of stuff I used to listen to. And if there is new stuff it doesn't stray too far from the core genres. I think I'm far more in control than I was back then and it ends up being more limiting. Which is mad because the access to music as a whole is far easier.

But then is it just that there's too much of it? I think someone mentioned TV before and that's very similar. There's too much of it. Where the fuck do I start? Usually with the familiar. But I also miss where everyone would watch the same thing at the same time and it was a massive shared experience. It's so difficult to replicate now because there's so much out there.

"Popular" culture, depending on how you view it, either doesn't really exist anymore or it's so difficult to break into because everyone and everything is spread so thin.