I've been meaning to start a thread on commodified London, a glossy repackaged version of London street culture with the poverty and desperation airbrushed out. A Shoreditch box park vision of creatives in box fresh Nike Airs, smiling, multiracial, good looking and cool exemplified in my mind by an addidas advert that was inescapable on youtube a few months back and soundtracked by Ms Banks-Chat to Mi Gyal.
I was thinking about this (not deeply, as I was pissed) the other day cos I went into the office for someone's leaving do. I rarely go in. The team is mostly people younger than me, mid to late 20s. They had a playlist on in the office and it was SO BLAND. And then we went to this pub and inside the pub they were playing music which was also SO BLAND.
I'd say much of it was faintly disco derived, generic funky basslines, possibly post bruno mars background music.
And because I'd heard both those things on the same day I thought maybe this is what music 'is' for a lot of people now, it's something 'chilled' in the background that you have on when you're working or out drinking. It's very much tied in with Spotify and those services, a spotify playlist called 'Chilled to the max' or whatever.
Perhaps ever was it thus. But I sort of feel the same draining of actual meaning and significance from a lot of the less poppy, more 'urban' music too. As usual could just be that i'm almost 40 now so naturally Central Cee is going to appeal to me less than to an 18 year old.
But 'airbrushed' is good here, too. The rough edges removed. I was thinking in that other thread where dilbert was saying he likes that band that sounds like 90s shoegaze, maybe if 'da kids' really are into that stuff then it's a sort of reaction to the unbearable smoothness of so much of the music that's now so mainstream. Not a particularly great reaction, and maybe it's all of a piece with it, cos it's close to ambient, it's lacking a genuine pulse.