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It was a pseudo-revival of mid-century folk music. It didn’t last because much of it didn’t have genuine proletarian roots like real folk music. It mimicked the aesthetic and sounds of folk music but none of the content. It never will when it’s just wealthy urbanites cosplaying as poor country bumpkins.
Folk music and related genres (like soul and country and blues) have all suffered for the same reason. Their class character is fake and purely aesthetic today. At least, for the super mainstream bands that make it on the Starbucks Spotify playlist.
There was a megathread a while back about Woody Guthrie. His music lasted because it captured a genuine aspect of working class America in a way that stomp clap hey never can. This Land Is Your Land was a political song. We don’t do that enough anymore, in the name of mass appeal and profit and merchandising. Even Bill Withers, who was merely center-left as far as I know, made music that mattered with lyrics opposing racism and war.
This pattern occurs with leftist/populist expression all the time. It’s heard by many for what it is, but for others it’s merely a catchy tune or a nice painting. I’ve mentioned the Surrealist art movement a few times here, but that’s another example. Salvador Dalí is ostensibly the face of the movement in the average person’s mind, but the Surrealists and he didn’t get along; he ultimately rejected their political message, believing that he could drop the political baggage and just focus on the abstract aesthetics of the movement. While I wouldn’t say his work was necessarily bad (he still applied his paranoiac critical method inspired by Freud) it didn’t have the same significance as Surrealists imo.
Damn all of history really is the history of class struggle or something like that
Dalí only dropped the leftist politics. He was at least a fascist sympathiser and painted hitler a couple of times. The whole ‘apolitical’ thing was on a spectrum of politically unaware liberalism to cryptofascism to overt fascism in denial.
It mimicked the aesthetic and sounds of folk music but none of the content.
The whole hipster subculture was a grotesque imitation of working class americana, is it a coincidence that it emerged shortly after the subprime mortgage crisis? no it isn’t, shopping from goodwill became popular out of necessity and then the aesthetics of thrifting emerged as a response because rich people felt alienated from the moment (the moment being the 2008 financial crisis). the saddest thing are fascists today trying to co-opt hipster aesthetics, a coarse imitation of an imitation that only vaguely retains its working class signifiers. a trend so passé that even having hipsters as the butt of the joke feels completely out-of-touch.
I used to/still do listen to a lot of folk and folk punk, and people would always be “oh you would like this band!” and it was always this, to quote Futurama, “Vaguely folkish alterna-rock”. I never wanted to be mean and be like “look just because there’s a banjo doesn’t mean I would like it”. but it was always really frustrating.
Yes, Mumford & Sons does not a This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb make, or whatever
AHHHHH A WILD THIS BIKE REFERENCE!
I totally forgot about them til scrolling yhrough this post. Mouseteeth is such a banger
Grouplove is another shitty rich kid band from this era that im glad is no longer relevant
Literally their genesis was WE MET ON A GREEK ISLAND AND DECIDED TO FORM A ROCK BAND AND IT SOMEHOW WORKED OUT
I’d rather rich kids make music than actively become ghouls
imagine dragons survived and it’s doing worse shit than that
And why is their lead singer always so angry?
He’s Mormon
ah, the religious wing of the
