"How We’ll Forget John Lennon. Our culture has two types of forgetting." - thought provoking article

Drake is the biggest musical artist on the planet right now. He is the Beatles of this young generation. If I told a group of college or grad students that I knew some older people who don't know who Drake is, they would all start laughing and say things like:

"Oh come on, don't be silly!"

"You have a weird sense of humor, telling us s**t like that!"

"Oh no, that is totally impossible!"

"Not cool, dude! Don't lie to us!"

 

As I posted above, he is the biggest musical artist on the planet right now, the musical artist that all younger people know and love. He is their Beatles. It is exactly like a 50 year old in 1966 not really knowing who the Beatles are.

 

The average ear has not atrophied and regressed at all since the 1960s and 1970s. The young people I regularly come in contact with do not listen to the music of the 1960s and 1970s, but they listen to a much broader musical range than I did in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

As an aside, the original programming on Netflix and Amazon Prime in the past five years blows HBO and cable bundles so far out of the water that HBO is in the middle of the Sahara desert when it lands. If you are not watching the original programming on Netflix and Amazon Prime, you are missing extremely high quality, extremely entertaining programs.

 

I agree. I work with quite a large group of youngsters and they listen to all kinds of stuff besides contemporary music. One girl is a huge fan of Motown, another lad is into Wire and Gang of Four, and so many of them absolutely love Queen. None of them are into The Beatles. I played them some of the Mono Masters compilation and they weren’t feeling it.

 

Agreed - he's huge. Not knowing much about him or not liking him is pretty much the same as parents not liking or knowing about the Rolling Stones or Beatles in the '60s.

 

I get the parallel, but back in 1966 I think I would have seen The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, or any number of the other venues where one could have seen them on TV -- admittedly VASTLY fewer in number.

Now if you aren't on-line, and "following" people, they might as well not exist.

I've never done Facebook, and I really don't do twitter (other than seeing tweets referred to in news articles on-line, and blog-posts -- mostly all Politics related). Not on Instagram, or anything else like that either.

I'm very active here, and on the Organissimo boards, and quite a lot on Reddit. I really like interaction on-line in threaded discussions that evolve over time, like this one. Reddit is sort of like that too, though the half-life of threads is much, MUCH shorter.

I also GREATLY prefer text-based on-line discussion, over sharing endless clips and memes and such.

As a result, there is a vast portion of on-line culture that I only seen where it surfaces on Reddit mostly -- and even then, I don't "follow" any of it really -- I just observe a tiny portion of it.

You could make the argument that I'm as out of touch as a 50 year old in 1966 who had no idea who The Beatles were -- but I'm certain I would have had at least a somewhat greater awareness of them back then. Or maybe not, who knows.

The world is moving at a vastly different pace, and in vastly different (and many) directions than I'm interested in. My biggest obsession these days is late 60's and 1970's era Japanese jazz, and 60's-era German jazz. Statistically speaking, I have a couple niche interests within what is already a niche interest, within a medium (music) which has diminishing interest generally speaking to the wider public. I might as well be interested in South American pottery of the lesser known tribes of indigenous people from Peru in the 1500's. Not quite, but I might as well be.

 

Pop culture has not only expanded in its scope and breadth, but technology has spread it into the cultural hinterlands. The old adage about 15 minutes of fame has literally become a universal truth. With some exceptions of course. The spike that comes with fame is becoming more and more intense - and briefer. TV and movie & music celebrities of the first decade of this century are already largely 'forgotten' amongst todays teenagers. Internet & youtube "stars" of only 7-8 years ago are already the subject of 'whatever happened to them' mini-docs. There are so many things competing for the human minds attention in modern society now.

 

I'm sure if you asked my dad, who would have been 50 in 1966, he wouldn't have known the Rolling Stones for sure. Maybe, outside chance that he would have know who The Beatles were but if I had to bet, I'd bet no.

 

No he is not. He maybe the biggest among young people but he is not the biggest on the planet. It is actually a pet peeve of mine that people always call the hottest star among young people the biggest.

He is selling more than Led Zeppelin for example because Zeppelin fans have already bought their Zeppelin music. If Zeppelin music that people owned disappeared tonight and people had to go out and but their music again they would easily outsell Drake. If Zeppelin toured their tour would dwarf a drake tour. Zeppelin is one example.

 

I don't recall the Beatles being very popular or culturally significant in my 80's high school unless you were the nerdy music type. Sure they knew songs because mainly because of rock radio but those under 25 in the theater to see the Imagine documentary when it came out was very low when me and my one friend went. It was a lot of people who looked like my teachers in high school.

And it sure did not impress the ladies if you asked them to go see 'Give My Regards to Broad Street'.

 

In terms of music sales and concert attendance, Drake is simply huge today. There is no obscurity about him.

 

By that logic, Guy Lombardo was the biggest music star of the 1960s, because he had sold so much before the 1960s.

 

The Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. I can't imagine that your dad wouldn't have known who The Beatles were then. Seventy-three million people tuned in.

 

The post said Drake was the biggest musical artist period. In 1964 were the Stones a bigger artist than Sinatra for example. Nope. They were hotter among the young crowd.

 

By music sales. radio airplay and concert attendance in the past few years, Drake is the biggest. What other criteria are there? If some senior citizens hold 1960s acts more dear in their hearts, that does not make those 1960s acts bigger.

The real point is that each generation has its heroes and well known people, not shared by generations before them or after them in the same way. John Lennon is immense to me, and to other 62 year olds (my age). Drake is that kind of figure to young people today.

I suppose that in 2069, those now 20 will be saying, "those flash in the pan sensations from 2069 can't hold a candle to our great Drake--but then again everyone still loves Drake in 2069, don't they? don't they?"

 

There is no 'Beatles of the young generation.' Its one of the most over wrought phrases of the last several decades. There is not even a cohesive 'young generation' today. There is an ever rotating kaleidoscope of top selling, momentarily 'in vogue' artists, who appeal to different demographics. Despite the inevitable numerical stats linearity, the consumer realm is more like parallel groups, each with their most-current superstars. Even Michael Jackson, huge as he was was in the 80's, was not the Beatles of a generation. The last 20 years alone have seen Eminem, Lady Gaga, 50 Cent , Ariana Grand, Taylor Swift to (*name the boy band*) pegged as something akin to the artist of a generation. The pop star realm also has its class and regional variations. Mention Drake here and younger people (at least the ones I know) will roll their eyes as if you were mentioning Liberace of yore. Glitzy, commercial.....not that relevant.

 

I literally said, perhaps too boldly and broadly, that the only people who care about Jordan are basketball fans and trivia fans. I would presume that anyone, kid or not, who enjoys debating about Jordan vs. Lebron is some kind of basketball fan. How could one debate that, unless one was a basketball fan?

 

I already put out the criteria. I have not seen anyone deny that Zeppelin would outsell drake if Zeppelin fans had to rebut their music and I have not seen anyone deny that a Zeppelin tour would been much bigger than a Drake tour. Zeppelin is the bigger artists. They have more fans and it is really not even close.

 

I would say that in terms of name recognition and fame, some of those names mean as much to a huge number of younger people as the Beatles did to me in the 1960s. I do not have that experience with the many young people I regularly come into contact with. They roll their eyes at Taylor Swift but love Drake. We all know a small sample of the people in the world.

 

What all of these discussions seem to show is that each generation does not know what the other generations are really like. We all have limited interaction with a small sample size of young people. I go back to the Original Poster's first post and the statistical study. It rings true to my experience.

 

Certainly. And you take someone like Bob Dylan. Certainly a well known entity to boomers and generation X, maybe even so to Y and so on. Recognized as hugely influential on popular music, he was never a perennial chart topper, arena packing, album of the moment, heavily-rotated-on-radio kind of artist. I rarely saw any of his albums in my friends collections back in the day. Yet everyone knew quite well who he was.

 

Let's put it this way. There are a lot of big music artists on the planet. In my experience, the young people I come into contact with have the characteristics described in the original poster's statistical study. They do not remember the heroes of my youth the way that I do. Whether Drake is the biggest or tenth biggest music artist on the planet today, he is very well known and popular among youth, and people my age (62) do not share this feeling about him. The statistical study and its conclusions ring true to me.

 

I'm not saying Drake is in any way obscure. Just that my own actual interests are.

 

I don't know anybody here in Japan who has even heard of Drake. On the other hand the Beatles were massive here and are still well known amongst the younger generation. And Japan is the 2nd biggest music market in the world outside the US .... Taylor Swift, on the other hand, is big here.