Let Music Set the Trends

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Text: Chris Wiles
Photography: Caroline Hargreaves


When I listen to a record, I want something. I do not want to be swayed by perfect pitch and rhythm. I also don’t want to be faced with a plethora of different instruments contributing to the piece. These things all add to a great track, but are not what makes the song great. I want a record to speak straight into my life and move me in a way that no track before it has. This, in the modern sense of music, with its popularity contests and buffoons with guitars trying to follow what is current and “in”, is something of a pipe dream. We need to get back to a stage where music was recorded just for the pleasure of seeing it speak to people. With the high stakes involved in music at this juncture, it seems people are more concerned with image and how they appear in magazines than about the records themselves. There is no denying that music has always set trends and set the tone for the fashion that the listener follows, be it the music of the 60’s defining the hippie fashion and lifestyle, to the 70’s punk rock revolution, where people were lead to the style of the time by the anger of such groups as The Clash and, of course, the Sex Pistols.

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However, this was in direct reaction to the moving times. In a century that saw the human being as imperfect as ever, where the malevolent acts of many went unhindered for a long time, we were left with little in the world that was good – little that would stand up against systems which oppressed people on a social and political level. Music was one of the few ways in which this happened. When Jimi Hendrix took to the stage at Woodstock on August 1969, few could predict the statement he would make, on behalf of all those against the war in Vietnam. His improvised version of “Star Spangled Banner” leaves you with chills as using his guitar, Hendrix turns the song into war, as you hear the gunfire, the bombs falling and the screams of millions. It is a piece of music that speaks as much today about the occupation of Middle Eastern territories by the West, as it did then.

If we fast forward to the 70’s, when the government had reined in the free-love, less consequences attitude of the 60’s to reflect the general mood of a world where people with ideas of freedom, and art, had been banished to the waste of society as “hippies”, a natural reaction occurred, again in music. The punk movement began hitting back at the establishment. It was anger directed at the people who made it impossible for men and women to find jobs, or go to certain places, because of the way they looked or the ideas they had about life. The movement is best summed up by the Clash in the song “Lost in the Supermarket”: ‘I can no longer shop happily, I came in here for the special offer, a guaranteed personality’ here commenting that people’s identity has been lost in a world where everyone is the same, to the point that you could probably pick up the personality of everyone else at the supermarket.

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However, today we see a worrying trend where music, far from being the catalyst for changes, follows the world of fashion and media into what is “cool” or “current” as any one in brightly coloured sunglasses, a trilby and some small amount of talent on a musical instrument can be a superstar. The image has replaced the auteur in this sense, as we see the biggest acts on our shores coming from reality TV. Shows such as the X Factor may find popstars, but what does it take to be a popstar these days? You need to have a good look, have “likeability” and some talent. Then all you need to do is recycle any old song that will sound inspirational, forgetting any meaning the song may have, as long as you get to the coveted Christmas number one slot. It has become a real challenge to find music that might speak to you on a level beyond just hearing a track, into moving you to be different, to find yourself moved on an almost spiritual level.

This is not meant as a discouragement to finding the music that you can properly love, but more a warning to those who follow the modern trend and are influenced by bands that are the latest off the production line. Bands such as The Arctic monkeys and Kasabian, bands that believe in their music and its ability to be timeless, encourage me, in that these bands haven’t sold their souls to corporations for a few extra pounds on a record deal. Music is life and it cannot be put better than Richard Ashcroft of the Verve, “ It’s a Bittersweet Symphony, That’s life”.


Chris Wiles is British and studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.