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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   23893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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Culturally EU is dead. In the past there were at least some italian spaghetti westerns, some interesting French movies and music. This is now completely overwhelmed by USA. There is basically nothing produced in EU, the culture is thoroughly US based.

I will point out that Europe is still a major force in music. Particularly in the realm of electronic dance music; DJs and producers like David Guetta (French), Martin Garrix (Dutch), Armin Van Buuren (Dutch), R3HAB (Dutch of Moroccan ancestry), Alesso (Swedish), Tiësto (Dutch), Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish), Ofenbach (French), the recently disbanded Daft Punk (French) and the late Avicii (Swedish) have all been massive figures in dance-pop music for decades, including composing and producing mega-hits with famous artists from America, the UK, Australia, etc.

Yes, this is not a cultural achievement on the level of the great European orchestral music tradition, nor even of the intellectually-stimulating European high cinema of the 20th century, but I think it’s at least as respectable as Spaghetti Westerns, and certainly considerably more popular and lucrative.

EU also holds its own relatively well in one of the largest and culturally (including politically) most relevant forms of youth culture today - vidya. There just was a big discussion here on Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. And who here - or, I would guess, among the DOGE zoomers - hasn't played hours and hours of Paradox map games?

I wonder if Rockstar North also counts.

Music is dead as a cultural touchcpoint.

I think this is a delusional take, and that major music artists are still an extremely important part of the cultural zeitgeist. I don’t know what it would take to convince you otherwise.

It's far more fragmented bc of online archives.

People have way more options now.

Really? Dylan, Hendrix, The Beatles, etc all touched culture. They molded it and it molded them and what was spit out changed the world. You can’t help when you think of Vietnam thinking of the soundtrack to Vietnam.

Today? There is some small commercial stuff. You see people trying to make statements but it comes off less organic and more “we are supposed to stand for something.”

Who is the soundtrack of the 2020s?

Who is the soundtrack of the 2020s?

HEALTH? bbno$? Post Malone?

I only know who one of those even is. I don't know if online life is to blame like someone else said - it seems to me to slightly predate modern social media - but whatever the reason, music is so fragmented now that it's almost inconceivable someone could get the whole culture following them the way the Beatles did. Taylor Swift is probably the closest thing currently possible but it's not that close.

That's fair, I think once rock music was finally out of the spotlight by the end of the 2000's and streaming took hold, the music landscape became massive and manifold.

I think I saw those words..once or twice?

You can’t help when you think of Vietnam thinking of the soundtrack to Vietnam.

In my filter bubble ‘Vietnam’ brings up thoughts of lily-livered anti-American pinkos in the media and the soundtrack is understood to be Okie from Muskogee.

Today? There is some small commercial stuff.

To be clear, are you claiming that there are no massively-commercially-successful musical artists today? Thats just demonstrably and profoundly false.

As for your claims about how musicians in the 2020s don’t have the power to mold young people’s entire brains and ethos the way the big 60’s and 70’s acts did, that’s partially a result of those acts’ legacies being inflated retroactively by the use of their music in media created by the very Boomers who grew up listening to them. Yeah, we associate Creedence Clearwater Revival and Buffalo Springfield with the Vietnam War now because Boomer liberal filmmakers intentionally cultivated that association.

There’s nothing going on in America today which unites a cross-section of the young people in opposition to the government quite the way that the Vietnam War did. We haven’t had military conscription in this country in two generations. Whatever you want to say about all the bad things the government is doing, none of them are as viscerally threatening as forcibly shipping you across the world to get shot at. If the next Big War pops off in the 2020’s — and it’s not exactly looking unlikely that it will — and it results in a reintroduction of the draft, it’s going to forge a shared culture among young people that’s only nebulous today. It’s amusing to imagine films (or whatever the next step in media content will be) about World War III, with montages of mass drone strikes set to the music of Olivia Rodrigo and The Weeknd, and for those to be the retroactive associations future generations perceive when they think about our time period.

In the meantime, the soundtrack of the 2020s is not difficult to identify if you just look at what artists are selling the most albums, having their music streamed the most often on Spotify and other similar services, whose concert tours are the most successful, who appear the most on TV, etc. Taylor Swift still dominates, plus the aforementioned Olivia Rodrigo and The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, Doja Cat, BTS, Chappell Roan… and that’s not even getting into the resurgence of country music as mass culture, with Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At A Time being the longest-running #1 album of the decade so far.

I think this is a delusional take

No, U.

To be clear, are you claiming that there are no massively-commercially-successful musical artists today?

No, he's claiming there's none that have the cultural impact of those in the past, and he's right. Your explanations only confirm this, though they are wrong in the sense that were the causes of past artists' status that you identified reproduced, it would not inflate them to the level of the people he mentioned. That is: you can put Taylor Swift's music in every movie, and none of it will matter because movies lost their cultural impact as well.

In the meantime, the soundtrack of the 2020s is not difficult to identify if you just look at what artists are selling the most albums, having their music streamed the most often on Spotify and other similar services, whose concert tours are the most successful, who appear the most on TV, etc. Taylor Swift still dominates, plus the aforementioned Olivia Rodrigo and The Weeknd, Ariana Grande, Sabrina Carpenter, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, Doja Cat, BTS, Chappell Roan

Taylor Swift is the only one that's remotely close to what he's talking about, and that's by the skin of her teeth.

Yeah, we associate Creedence Clearwater Revival and Buffalo Springfield with the Vietnam War now because Boomer liberal filmmakers intentionally cultivated that association.

That’s the point Kubrick was making in Full Metal Jacket when he set the Battle of Hue scene to Surfin’ Bird ie the forgotten, low artistic value bubblegum crap that was actually at the top of the charts in 1968. Not the historical hindsight classics like CCR and the Doors.

Who?

I mean I have some idea but that's more like 2010s.

A fairly niche band and not even its most recognizable song?

If you think people at large know any other MGMT song better than Little Dark Age, you're not paying attention to zoomer culture.

It's a meme song at this point, has specific (if unintended) political salience and enough cultural impact that a whole genre of musical videos is named after it.

You want the equivalent of Dylan's boomer hymns, this is it.

Zoomers know Little Dark Age, sure, but Millennials will at least instantly recognize Kids.

If you think people at large know any other MGMT song better than Little Dark Age, you're not paying attention to zoomer culture.

I doubt I qualify as such. Having heard this song before and refreshing on it today, it is resoundingly below mediocre. I mean, Dylan is also generally bad so I guess it appeals to a similar sort of person maybe. I've always heard boomers call Dylan a "poet" or something similar. This seems to be popular, to the extent it is, because it conveys a sort of sense of ennui.

I give it a mildly resounding "meh"

The subjective musical merits are, as you rightfully point out, totally irrelevant to our discussion of cultural impact.

You can say the Matrix is a mediocre blend of Neuromancer, GITS and John Woo movies all you want, it's still a cultural touchstone.

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How old are you? This song is instantly recognizable to a huge portion of Millennials, zoomers and gen alpha across cultures.

Was the song used in some sort of video game or extremely online meme? I think I’m at least in the 95th percentile for this site’s user base in terms of knowledge of popular music, and I was not familiar with this song, despite having been a big fan of MGMT’s debut album Oracular Spectacular when it came out. I’d be surprised if this is the sort of ubiquitously-recognizable song you’re saying it is.

Yeah it had / has a huge presence on social media. It’s extremely popular and well known in online culture, which as we both know tends to leak copiously into the mainstream at this point.

People used to use it all the time in video edits to the point of cliche.

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Old enough to know Kids is a far better MGMT song.

Maybe so, but Little Dark Age came out in 2018 has been streamed 700+ Million times on Spotify.

Considering Kids is a decade older and only has like 15% more streams, I’d hardly call it “niche”.

The song has been used a bazillion times on YouTube / instagram / TikTok / Reddit. It has a massive presence in online culture, and not just in weird spaces.

I believe the user you’re responding to is saying that the 2020’s are, in some important sense, a “Little Dark Age”, which is why that song would be an apropos soundtrack.

I think you’re right but European dance music has little cultural relevancy.

Nobody cares what Armin van Buren or Afrojack has to say the way they did about the Beatles, Bob Dylan, or hell, even Taylor Swift.

As an art form, EDM is sterile, mere decoration. It has nothing to say about the cultural moment except as a monument to escapism and hedonism. Its closest historical parallel is disco.

I think you’re right but European dance music has little cultural relevancy.

All of the artists I named have major followings, and perform at festivals that attract tens of thousands of attendees. David Guetta has sold over 10 million albums and 65 millions singles globally, and has over 30 billion streams on Spotify. These artists’ music is played ubiquitously on the radio, and again, they collaborate with some of the most famous singers in the world.

Yes, you’re correct that nobody cares what Armin Van Buuren has to say about philosophy or geopolitics or whatever. This is a good thing! It’s actually a terrible thing for our culture that young people started taking the political opinions of drug-addicted twentysomething musicians seriously! Disco kicks ass! Hedonistic pop music is infinitely preferable to supposedly “deep and counter-cultural” music by midwit pseudo-intellectuals like Bob Dylan seeking to poison relationships between the generations.

Worth also noting that "luminary" artists like Dylan also seem to tend to lose favor and popularity, as people realize that these artists stop being/never were what people thought they were (as what happened to Dylan post-50's/60's) and/or these artists disappear up their own ass later in life.

I like disco music and EDM for what it is, but it's not high art.

In some ways it really is the perfect European music. It's trans-national. Much like the disconnected global elite, it is not from a place. It is from anyplace. It is generic, bland, almost always in English, etc... Swedish, Dutch, Irish, who cares? It's all the same. Performance consists of a DJ pressing play and then bopping his head around.

supposedly “deep and counter-cultural” music by midwit pseudo-intellectuals like Bob Dylan

Fair enough. Most artists are firmly midwits, and I'd put Dylan in that category, though he's smart enough to let his music stand on its own. But the music of Dylan, The Beatles, or Taylor Swift exists as an art form in a way that EDM music, which is inherently disposable, does not.

As an art form, American music is vastly superior to European music.

But the music of Dylan, The Beatles, or Taylor Swift exists as an art form in a way that EDM music, which is inherently disposable, does not.

I'm sorry, did you really say Taylor Swift exists as an art form in way that EDM music cannot? Corporate Taylor Swift? Basic white girl Taylor Swift? The most generic music of the decade, Taylor Swift?

Also The Beatles were British. And if you retort that they don't really count because of their still Anglophone, there's Rammstein, Stromae, Bladee, for your none EDM music consideration.

I’m not a huge fan of Taylor Swift, but all your criticisms of her are ones that could be and were made about the Beatles when they were popular. The Beatles are only artistic giants now because of fifty years of Boomer propaganda.

I'm sorry, did you really say Taylor Swift exists as an art form in way that EDM music cannot?

Yes. She's a talented songwriter. Maybe you're under the false impression that her music is ghostwritten like other pop artists. 🤷

I think Rammstein and Stromae are good and listen to them. It's not that good European music doesn't exist, it's just that there's less of it.

Acts like Tiesto and Purple Disco Machine are also good. But they are a fundamentally a different category of music that doesn't reflect on society, but exists outside of it.

You haven't really answered the question; in what way does Taylor Swift exist as an art form that EDM cannot? Whether she writes her songs herself or they're ghost-written has no bearing on their quality.

Earlier in this thread you said:

As an art form, EDM is sterile, mere decoration. It has nothing to say about the cultural moment except as a monument to escapism and hedonism. Its closest historical parallel is disco.

I'd argue that Taylor Swift is similarly sterile, whether ghost written or not, and I think most people who aren't part of her rabid fanbase would agree with that assessment. Yes, most EDM doesn't even attempt to have a message, but to me there really isn't much of a difference between a vapid and a non-existent message.

Acts like Tiesto and Purple Disco Machine are also good. But they are a fundamentally a different category of music that doesn't reflect on society, but exists outside of it.

I'd also argue that any piece of music inherently reflects the society in it. EDM, as hedonistic as you may perceive it as, still has its rhythms and undercurrents.

I also think you are straight up wrong when it comes to how you describe EDM. You assume that EDM is different or lesser than other genres due it not saying anything about or reflecting on society or humanity, and that as a consequence people don't care about what EDM artists say or do. I think your just wrong about this. I know, personally, an individual who did a memorial post for Avicii when they died. Daft Punk was huge, and was sampled extensively by the 2010's biggest musician, Kanye. I can't see how you can say people don't care about EDM artists; clearly, America's biggest artists do care about them.

Obviously there's less European music, but I think you are engaging in a motte-and-bailey. The motte being that there is less good European music (true by definition). But the bailey you argued was that "As an art form, American music is vastly superior to European music". Is American music inherently better than European music, or is there still comparable music, just not as much?

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In some ways it really is the perfect European music. It's trans-national. Much like the disconnected global elite, it is not from a place. It is from anyplace. It is generic, bland, almost always in English, etc... Swedish, Dutch, Irish, who cares? It's all the same.

Based. The greatest European music has always been transnational. Classical music was very intentionally cosmopolitan, and even the more nationalist composers were still working within a template that was extremely recognizably Pan-European. Even when it came to opera, which requires the use of a specific language and thus presents some thorny questions of national specificity, composers would set their operas in languages other than their native tongues.

The development of a shared culture transcending borders is an extremely positive development in European history, and I’m happy to see it recapitulated in European pop music. It’s not true that these musicians could be “from anywhere”; I don’t see them taking much influence from Southeast Asian music, or Amerindian folk music, or anything like that. Their music is clearly descended from a European tradition.

Europe is still a major force in music.

Also various metal subgenres. Not that most people in the US care, but it matters to me.

Right, as soon as I posted my comment I thought, “I forgot to mention the metal scene!” Obviously metal has dramatically declined from a commercial standpoint, but artistically it’s still going strong and Europe is at the forefront of it. (Particularly in genres I love, like symphonic power metal, gothic metal, etc. I presume the black metal scene is still chugging along, although I haven’t personally been paying attention to it for a long time now.)

For the out of touch among us, what's the next phase after Children of Bodom and Tarja Turunen?

Tuomas Holopainen's Scrooge McDuck concept album?

I was about to voice the same objection. There are dozens of us!

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