Lady Gaga’s Official cover for the song “Poker Face” Photo Credit: PIgolden via Flickr
By Aleah Cole
Mainstream Music does not seem to be “main” anymore and listeners, like myself, are going back to listen to the early 1990s, 2000s- 2012 hits. Nostalgia is hitting us hard.
Remember when we were kids and our parents would listen to 80s, 90s or Caribbean hits on the radio at home? I bet you said yes. Then they would say, “they don’t make music like this anymore?” and shake their heads. Well, we all feel this way because we wish we could go back to turn back time to the good old days – when we were young and innocent.
I have long felt this way since 2017 because music just doesn’t feel the same anymore. The message in the music we listen to is what is important to us as listeners. As somebody who grew up listening to the early 2000s -2012 timeless classics, I realized that hip hop music and pop music is getting worse every year.
Do you remember the time when Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face“ and Far East Movement “Like a G6?” released in 2009? How did you feel? To be honest, I used to dance in my parents room in my pink glitter jeans and dance my heart out because of how carefree I felt just listening to it.
Getting back to the point, mainstream music has become “cheesy”; it allows listeners catch up with trends and its so-called relevance to play it safe for their audience. It’s not “main” anymore!
The hip hop music I have been listening to these days can’t even compare to the ones back in the early and mid 2000s. That is because rappers are rhyming word after word, talking about money and drugs and etcetera as opposed to talking about where they come from, the struggles they have faced and how they become successful, i.e, Not rubbing their wealth in people’s faces.
B.o.B’s verse in his song, Airplanes sums up to what has happened to hip hop today, “somebody take me back to the days.Before this was a job before I got paid.
Before it ever mattered what I had in my bank Yeah back when I was trying to get a tip at subway.And back then I was rapping for the hell of it. But nowadays we rapping to stay relevant.”
Pop music in the mid 2000s to 2012 are timeless classics and I think we can relate. Back then, pop singers like Cascada, DHT, and DJ Sammy to name a few, have made hits that blew my mind away and it still does because it makes me feel young, wild, and free.
Experiencing the new era of pop music in 2009 to 2012 became the second best in my opinion because new pop singers such as Taio Cruz, Jay Sean, Cobra Starship, Laroux and so much more still carried the same message of positivity, fun, love, and feeling wild.
But that all changed in 2015 when pop music focused on only cool electro beats and autotune which makes my ears “bleed” to this day.
Don’t we all wish we could turn back time or do we all wish that music in the 2000s to 2012 still carried on?
YouTube is the only place where I can listen to these hit wonders whenever the nostalgia hits me very hard.
So what do you think? Is mainstream music “yay or nay”? I for one, can say that it is a big N.O. to me. My music playlist on my phone consists of songs that ranges from 1998 to 2014.
So, thanks Mom and Dad. I’m growing up saying the same thing too. “They just don’t make music like this anymore!”
