I've been enjoying getting to know my mother's twin brother over the last few years. An urbane and witty gent, he was quizzing my recently on my music career. While he doesn't presume to know anything about pop music of the last few decades (he's more of a classical afficianado), he does have substantial experience in the business world. "Would you say your style of music is...current?" His doubtful tone was a reminder I'm not quite a teenager anymore, and I don't think he found my answer very reassuring. I might aspire to a timelessness in my approach to music writing and production, but the term 'timeless pop music' is an oxymoron to anyone who isn't immersed in the stuff.
I can't say I currently have a small number of favourite bands or artists (it's more like a few favourite features of various artists' approaches to music), most of my faves in my musically formative years were musicians who had no interest in current popular flavours of the day. No one in the Police embraced 70's glam or Zeppelin; Zeppelin themselves certainly never bought in to the soft-folk-rock plague of the early 70's; and proggers like Rush and Yes were obviously making no attempt to imitate anybody (at least not until the mid-80's). By coincidence, I've never been faintly interested in trying to match or commandeer the current Hot Sound. Firstly, it has always struck me as a fool's errand - by the time you've assimilated and recorded the Hot New Sound, it will usually be on its way out of fashion (and nothing is more out of fashion than something that has attained that status recently). More importantly, the effort that one expends in pouring one's music into the currently trendy moulds is effort that could have gone into writing better songs or crystalizing one's own distinct voice. In other words, you waste time and effort trying to speak through someone else's (currently popular) voice instead of finding your own.
In any case, these are strange times for musical trends. Some of the more current hits sound like they'd be quite at home in the top 100 of 1974 (albeit in a somewhat scrambled form, in some cases). Perhaps there are just certain sounds, certain timbres, melodies, lyrical ideas - that are much more enduring than others. As someone who also listens to his share of classical and jazz, and someone who has seen classrooms of elementary music students get fired up about Vivaldi and Mozart, it's hard to deny timelessness in music. Can it exist in pop? I believe it can, and it does...and that's what keeps me trying my hand at it. At my age, 'chicks and free beer' aren't the motivators they used to be...
I can't say I currently have a small number of favourite bands or artists (it's more like a few favourite features of various artists' approaches to music), most of my faves in my musically formative years were musicians who had no interest in current popular flavours of the day. No one in the Police embraced 70's glam or Zeppelin; Zeppelin themselves certainly never bought in to the soft-folk-rock plague of the early 70's; and proggers like Rush and Yes were obviously making no attempt to imitate anybody (at least not until the mid-80's). By coincidence, I've never been faintly interested in trying to match or commandeer the current Hot Sound. Firstly, it has always struck me as a fool's errand - by the time you've assimilated and recorded the Hot New Sound, it will usually be on its way out of fashion (and nothing is more out of fashion than something that has attained that status recently). More importantly, the effort that one expends in pouring one's music into the currently trendy moulds is effort that could have gone into writing better songs or crystalizing one's own distinct voice. In other words, you waste time and effort trying to speak through someone else's (currently popular) voice instead of finding your own.
In any case, these are strange times for musical trends. Some of the more current hits sound like they'd be quite at home in the top 100 of 1974 (albeit in a somewhat scrambled form, in some cases). Perhaps there are just certain sounds, certain timbres, melodies, lyrical ideas - that are much more enduring than others. As someone who also listens to his share of classical and jazz, and someone who has seen classrooms of elementary music students get fired up about Vivaldi and Mozart, it's hard to deny timelessness in music. Can it exist in pop? I believe it can, and it does...and that's what keeps me trying my hand at it. At my age, 'chicks and free beer' aren't the motivators they used to be...