Why is new music trash?
The Carl Eric Scott of YouTube, Rick Beato, is singlehandedly the most “conservative” figure talking intelligently & appreciatively about his industry, popular music, mostly with guitars. It was called rock when it was a going concern. Rock’n’roll when it got its start. Before that, it was black & white music, from the blues to country&Western. He’s somewhat given to complaints, as we all are on the right side of politics, & now he’s complaining about rich kids.
Rick knows better than me, so I’ll take his word for it, rich people have bought the indie market as well as the mass market. I’m not sure that’s bad. But the music is trash. I’m pretty sure that’s bad.
Rich people today might be a lot worse than rich people were before. That’s generally the complaint when it comes to the psychopathic activism of the rich, or their bad taste as patrons of the fine arts, & their ugly lives—houses &c. Americans are agreed that Mt. Vernon is beautiful; or the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. Or a million other houses, mostly in the South. Whereas people still build, but all the money seems to be wasted on making people miserable. But if this is true, it suggests, above all, that rich people are an image of the society, but especially of the elite education by which America is led or managed. Liberalism, especially at elite level, has reduced taste to trash with woke characteristic. Rich Americans should be punching themselves in the face for slavishly imitating liberal tastelessness—but they should also be slapping themselves red for being slavish in the first place. America used to afford people visions of greatness & an opportunity to deserve well of their communities. Look around now: Where do you see this happening anymore?
The rich aren’t the cause of the problem, therefore. So why is music reduced to trash? Is it your expenses in Manhattan or Brooklyn, like Rick says? I don’t think so, although I agree with Rick that you need a scene. You could have a great college music scene instead, if that were true, since the place to waste your life today is college, not Brooklyn or SF. The problem must be in the tyranny perpetrated by colleges.
Is the problem the absence of working class experience? Rick says so, but I disagree. Since Rick is a celebrity & I’m not, I feel I can speak with aristocratic confidence: When in the history of the world did the “working class” somehow provide the morality or inspiration for art? What Rick secretly means is that escaping the working class was a great spur to “artistic creativity”—I agree with that. The problem is that people aren’t struggling to escape, whether because they’re too comfortable in decadence or because they no longer see something to which to aspire.
Rick begins to get closer to the truth when he notes, the death of music coincides with the rise of digital technology. The problem may escape him—he’s old, the tech is new—but he’s aware of it, at least. A musical renaissance would have to make the best of digital tech, but who knows how to do that? Rick proves beyond doubt that it’s not going to be Spotify, or the music industry itself. Who else? The truth, plainly put, is that the musical industry was ruined because men were driven out of it. Horrible as it may seem to liberals, white men were important, almost the soul of popular music. Only overcoming liberal attacks on white men by appealing to young white men has any chance of fixing it. But of course, it would also help to notice how many Asian kids love the music made mostly by white men. The only intolerable thing is the slavish attitude of liberals to rap. There, we must fight. I hope Rick will one day join us in that fight.
Meanwhile, prepare, read Carl’s songbook: