Three observations:
1. it’s 2022. make it better.
The CD could become a collector’s item again. Because music as it is recorded on CD can no longer be changed. On the streaming services, however, music can be updated like a website. Ever since THE LIFE OF PABLO (2016), Ye West has regularly changed albums after release. Beyoncé and Lizzo now changed their albums at the request of the public. Because both Beyoncé and Lizzo used the word “spaz” in their songs, which can be read as ableistic – i.e. belittling people with disabilities. As a verb, it means to turn off or go crazy, but etymologically it is obviously borrowed from spastics, i.e. spasticity, uncontrollable muscle twitching. Spaz as a noun means: Idiot.
“It’s 2022. Make it better,” Lizzo tweeted, and the word disappeared from “Grrrls.” Beyoncé replaced it with “blast” in “Heated.” “Blastin on that ass,” she now sings, while the “La la la” of Kelis’ “Milkshake” also disappeared from the streamed “Energy” because the sample wasn’t paid for. The purchased RENAISSANCE sound carrier is now a relic. Something that is both whole and broken at the same time. A shard that can hurt you.
2. be real
On Twitter there are indications that words like “freak” and “crazy” could soon be evaluated differently. Language and its perception change. On the Internet, some update themselves quickly and correct those who are slower, who then often react with resistance because, according to their perception, it is not the intention that is corrected, but “only” the expression. “Maybe You’re The Problem” is the name of Ava Max’s very current radio hit, in which – as in Kendrick Lamar’s “The Heart Part 5” – perspective is sung: “Your point of view, got it all backwards / You should take your little finger and just point it in the mirror”.
The Point Of View is also trending on TikTok. POV means the first person perspective. It is often misunderstood. A TikTok with the title “POV: Du bist Bademeisterin”, for example, should not show a lifeguard, but an elevated view of the pool. Now there is also the crossed out POV to post the lifeguard whose perspective is not so easy to take. On “BeReal”, the app of the hour, you always post two pictures: yourself and your own POV. Without filters, and only when the app asks you to. A randomization to experience less staging, “more realness” in social media.
3. Bird view
Meanwhile, PR managers are increasingly advising their clients from public life against realness. Because if you don’t reflect sufficiently on your POV, you can be criticized: for your perspective. Can be made public aware of ignorance and blind spots. Songwriter Diane Warren – who once wrote “I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing” for Aerosmith – recently got into a Twitter dispute when she tweeted, accompanied by an eye-roll emoji: “How can there be 24 on a song songwriters involved?”, alluding to Beyoncé’s Alien Superstar. Beyoncé’s producer, The Dream, explained to Warren that sampling in hip-hop came about because you couldn’t afford studio musicians. Virtue became necessity. Sampling is known to have long been an art form in its own right.
So the greatest flexibility these days is not that you “can do everything on your own”, such as flying in your own jet, as Kim Kardashian proudly presented a few weeks ago in her Hulu show, but that you can take your own POV so far leave than to speak and act prudently. Some got it, some didn’t: After a list of the top private jet polluters was released, Kardashian sister Kourtney was spotted on a commercial airliner. But Taylor Swift – number 1 on the jet sinners list – hid under an umbrella as she – again – exited her own private jet.
This column first appeared in the Musikexpress issue 10/2022.