Do The Kids Still Listen to Radiohead?

I’ve been thinking about music and it’s role in my life and others a lot lately. I started by musing over this question: “Do the kids still listen to Radiohead these days”, which was posed to my class jokingly by a TA last year. He assumed that in a room full of media students the answer would be overwhelmingly yes. Much to his dismay, and my own, only three people in the room responded as Radiohead fans.

I was more recently struck by an event that occurred while I was enjoying dinner last week. As I was discussing the question about the popularity of Radiohead with a friend of mine, a Ke$ha (yes I will humor her spelling) song came in the dining hall. Immediately there was reaction in the room, girls at the nearby tables song along, absentmindedly bobbing their head to the tune, others made half-hearted attempts at dancing. But overall it was clear that these people were more than familiar with the song, and that they enjoyed it.

I think I died a little bit at that moment. I was struck - bombarded with questions, as I still am, is this what my generation reveres? Ke$ha? Why does it matter? What makes artists like Radiohead so important to me? Why do I seem to have this assumed superiority of musical taste of Ke$ha fans? Is there any validity to that?

I suppose I do have some assumed superiority. I think music should convey emotion and provoke thought, much like a good film or book. It should have meaning and depth. It should be more than what you play in you’re dorm room while you pregame to go grind on someone, or while you’re out grinding on someone.

I imagine a sort of hierarchy of emotion. Much of today’s pop music is themed around fulfillment of bodily pleasures i.e. sex, drinking, drugs, etc. This strikes me a sort of lower class of emotion; it requires nothing from the listener aside from the ability to recognize the occasional double entendre or euphemism.

The ability to stimulate the intellect, emotion, serious reflection and thought, takes a superior craft. This is something distinctly lacking in pop music. When was the last time you felt challenged by a Lady Gaga song? Did you have to think about what point Rihanna was trying on her last album? In a time when music is so easy to attain - with such variety available, the idea that people would accept such mediocrity so regularly is appalling.