Dylan Jones charts the peaks, pitfalls and Pitbulls of music’s weirdest decade, from 2010 to now.
The teenies or “The twenty-tens” as we’re apparently supposed to call them, have been a bizarre time for popular music. 2010 got things off to a mind-numbingly horrible start. The now pretty much irrelevant X Factor was at the height of its popularity – forgettably two-dimensional offerings from people called Matt Cardle and Joe McElderry dominated the charts, and Diana Vickers warbled away with no shoes on.
There was also a trend for trashy, head-fillingly, drink-spillingly dense club tracks, including such seminal oeuvres as “Club Can’t Handle Me” by Flo Rida and “The Club Is Alive” by JLS. June 19th 2010 marks possibly the worst moment ever recorded in modern music history, when James Corden & Shout For England reached number one with their football anthem “Shout”.
The one glimmer of hope came in the form of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, arguably her best, most career-defining work to date. There was also Tinie Tempah’s “Pass Out” which – despite containing the lyrics “got so many clothes I keep ‘em in my aunt’s house” – was actually a really snappy, fun, instantly appealing track.
But most of it was just awful, and this trend of horribly overproduced dance and horribly underproduced pop seemed to set the tone for the next few years. Things got a bit better when Ke$ha turned up, then much worse when Pitbull turned up. The fact that Pixie Lott got a number one but Shakira didn’t, tells you all you need to know about this period of music. A world where Cher Lloyd’s “Swagger Jagger” was played at every house party, and Dappy had the cheek to go around as if he were a real person. Nicola Roberts almost saved the day with her brilliant, unique, Diplo produced album “Cinderella’s Eyes”, but it slipped under the radar fairly quickly, existing only the pre-drinks playlists of the more discerning homosexual.
Things started to improve a bit in 2012. Carly Rae Jepsen picked pop music up out of the gutter, sprayed it with glitter and threw it into the clouds with sensational breathy banger “Call Me Maybe”. Kylie Minogue released what is in my opinion the best pop song ever made, the stompingly stunning “Timebomb”. Little Mix got their first number one with “Wings”. Dappy fucked off back to obscurity, JLS finally realized v-neck t-shirts were crap, and Diana Vickers remembered she’d left the iron on.
From 2012 to 2016, basically nothing happened. Faceless summery synthy bands took over, called things like Jungle Grammar or London Bicycle Collective, or Bombay Bandit Beach Bareback Babylon Club feat. Ella Eyre.
It was a soulless slog of random trop pop synths, blindly beachy sounds and indecipherable lyrics, maybe with a half-arsed slide of violin or plink of a piano thrown in here and there. Most of the band went to private school in Tunbridge Wells, except maybe the lead singer, who was edgy and had backcombed hair and was called Clara.
We thought that was it. We thought popular music was over, forever doomed to dancefloor obscurity, like Booty Luv. That’s it. That’s yer lot. Time to go home. Even Britney failed us, with the terrible Britney Jean which, let’s be honest, was barely even music. (DISCLAIMER: there were of course some notable exceptions over those years, Ariana’s “Into You” to name but one – but it was mostly shit).
THEN 2018 HAPPENED. Music went from crap to amazing faster than Fergie’s rap in Fergalicious(AllthetimeIturnaroundbrothasgatherroundalwayslookingatmeupanddownlookinatmyUH). No-one’s sure why the turnaround was so sudden. Maybe because 2016 and 2017 were such a living hell, both in music and in general, that some artists thought ENOUGH. WE NEED SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR.
Mainstream music got GOOD. The shockwave started in hip-hop and R&B; Cardi B ran up to the industry in a powder blue Disney Princess dress and gave it a wild-eyed and fabulous kick up the arse, while Azealia Banks logged off Twitter for long enough to release effortlessly cool “Anna Wintour” and Cupcakke emerged grinning into the limelight with the insanely brilliant (and brilliantly insane) album “Ephorize”.
Then, in pop, Charli XCX defied genres and put her middle finger up at convention with her shockingly advanced mixtape, “Pop2”. Wonderfully assured and weird, it melded rap, electroclash and the formidably popular new genre, PC Music; a plinky techno/happy hardcore, tongue-in-cheek sound, originating from the London label of the same name, home to producers like AG Cook and disruptive artists like Hannah Diamond and GFOTY. It’s spawned a fashion and nightlife movement, mostly involving young queer kids and 90s/garage fashion. Expect to see and hear much more of it in the coming months.
A formidable lineup of young LGBTQ artists stepped into prominence in 2018 too – Ollie Alexander returned with Years & Years and their brilliantly brooding Britney-infused song “Sanctify”. MNEK struck out properly on his own for the first time, with sexy and slurry banger “Tongue”. Trans pop star Kim Petras exploded onto Spotify, with millions of listens on her unapologetically bubblegum pop projects like “Heart To Break” and “I Don’t Want It At All” – both original, fun and bursting with life and love. Troye Sivan showed up too, as well as pink-haired feminist babe GIRLI, who gained a cult following with her shouty bratpack songs about Snapchat and Tesco Sprite.
But it was, specifically, in April 2018 that music truly peaked. If June 19th 2010 (feat. James Corden and his football song) represents the trough of popular music, April 19th 2018 represents its peak – Dua Lipa and Ariana Grande head-to-head, battling it out for a spot at the top of the UK charts. Dua with a characteristically cool Calvin Harris collab “One Kiss” and Ariana with her sparklingly ethereal new hit “No Years To Cry.” And as if THAT weren’t enough, Janelle Monae dropped one of the best and most original albums ever created, “Dirty Computer”, stuffed with gorgeous production, genius lyrics and confident sexuality.
Music is, categorically, unarguably, the best it’s ever been. We can’t go on about how mainstream music is crap now, because it isn’t. Let’s face it, we all LOVED doing that, because it’s cool to hate mainstream stuff isn’t it. We all like to think we don’t fall victim to that hipsterish contrarianism, but we’ve all sat on someone’s fold-up futon at a flat party, waving a mug of warm gin and cloudy lemonade around, going on about how once we were at a club and when they played Ed Sheeran, we actually left. Like, we ACTUALLY did.
We sneer at people who shop at Primark, or watch I’m A Celeb, or have a well-thumbed copy of Twilight. It’s because liking things that aren’t mainstream, represents imagination and independent thought. We don’t just like the music we’re told to like, GODAMMIT. No, we like music because we discovered it on someone’s iPod shuffle in an illegal warehouse rave in Tottenham Hale in 2013.
But now, we need moan no longer. Mainstream is back. But it won’t be forever. Pitbull’s still got a dangerous amount of money and resources, and Meghan Trainor keeps threatening to release another album. So crack open a Red Stripe and enjoy it while you can, because we’ve heard Dappy’s saving up to buy a recording studio.
