No, not BTP's k3nt, but a guy who's been one of the leading music critics for longer than I can remember. I found this and his analysis struck me as being interesting/accurate enough to warrant exhumation for BTP music lovers:

Nick Kent
Friday December 19, 2003

"The best thing you can say about 2003 is that it's almost over. Wherever you looked, the same ugly scenario played itself out: the world is still mostly at the mercy of right-wing spivs who control our so-called culture by publicly tarnishing the names of anyone daring to voice an intelligent alternative viewpoint, and privately supporting any oaf whose fame-seeking agenda doesn't force his or her potential audience into thinking too deeply about anything.

The new heroes of today's youth aren't the heirs to John Lennon and Bob Dylan's existentialist angst; they are more likely to be the clueless barbarians who turn up on MTV goon shows such as Jackass and Dirty Sanchez, boasting about giving their best mate a hernia and then braying like donkeys when a video of the incident is played. Rock music, previously a key form of expression for youthful discontent, has become diminished by this state of affairs. After all, what's the point of spending all that time learning to play a musical instrument when you could just as easily nail down your 15 minutes of global infamy by diving naked into a septic tank, on film?

Pop still mesmerises the callow tastes of the young, but rock seems to have been sidelined into a form that reflects the thought processes and last-gasp ambitions of the middle-aged. "The one positive aspect of all this," David Bowie informed a French journalist this summer, "is that suddenly that hoary old question - how can a person of your advanced age group still be making rock music? - has been made completely obsolete. Because today's conflict of generations isn't played out in music any more but in other areas - like how we might feel about skateboarding [laughs]. Paul McCartney has never sounded better as a live performer as he did when I saw him this year. Same for Lou Reed, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. Between you and me, I don't see anyone from this new generation coming up who's capable of giving concert performances of that high a quality."

Bowie is being too kind to his peers, perhaps. Neil Young's concerts in Europe this year were perplexing snooze-fests, and his album Greendale was the dullest piece of work he has ever recorded. But Bowie's basic point - that old guys do rock better - was dramatically demonstrated this summer at the Coachella festival just outside Los Angeles, when the reformed Stooges stole the show and completely obliterated the performances of younger stars such as the White Stripes, the Strokes and the Hives. This was quite a feat when you consider that the three Stooges were all in their mid-50s and their singer, Iggy Pop, exhibited a pronounced limp throughout the performance.

Don't get me wrong - the year had its share of fine records made by "new" artists. Rufus Wainwright's Want More proved once again that he is the most gifted musical talent of his generation. There's a Scandinavian guy called Teitur who has just released a fascinating debut album. Blur and Radiohead both made invigorating new music. Lucinda Williams performed some particularly soul-baring songs on World Without Tears. Still, Lucinda Williams is 50 years old, for Christ's sake.

Maybe the new acts lack championship-level bravado because the music industry they are working in is sinking into quicksand. Venues are shutting down, while pubs and bars are more interested in staging karaoke nights. Worst of all, the major record companies are in a state of meltdown, sacking their A&R staff and turning the jobs over to their accountants, who try to keep the product as cheap and cheerful as possible.

It's a cold world out there for the professional musician right now, so it's little wonder the smarter ones are moving into the tour bus to perform almost nightly and conserve what's left of their fan base. Everyone knows that the music industry as we once knew it is crumbling around us. The internet may provide a viable alternative but for the moment, everyone seems lost, wondering what's going to happen next.

Still, what bugs me the most is the lack of any coherent musical "underground" scene beginning to emerge under the repressive rubble of contemporary culture. I'm not talking about a bunch of groups ranting anti-Bush/Blair diatribes over thug-lite techno rhythms. I'm just looking around, wondering when and from where the next wave of disaffected but creative and ambitious young people are going to emerge in order to make an exciting, genuinely "alternative" new music. Maybe a new drug has to be invented - that's worked before.

There's this defeatist theory going around that the best music was laid out in the 1960s and 70s, like some grand banquet, and these days we're just nibbling on the crumbs that have been left over since then. But maybe that grand banquet was merely the hors d'oeuvre for a further renaissance in popular music. You've always got to be optimistic about art. A new musical messiah surely awaits us. Unless he kills himself first, skateboarding off the roof of his parents' house stark naked in a snowstorm.

Nice article.

Maybe we expect too much from rock & roll, maybe we romanticize its history too much. What was it originally? Entertainment for teenagers. Music about sex. Kids wanted to have sex and they couldn't so rock & roll gave them an outlet to "express their discontent". Sure, it ended up becoming an outlet for much more than sexual frustration, but that's what it started as, right?

In the 60's and 70's, it became something much greater with the Beatles, Hendrix, Dylan, etc. It was no longer just entertainment. People turned to these artists to understand the world. These artists came at a time when rock & roll was still being defined and their impression on the art form was so strong that 40 years later we're asking "when is it going to be like that again?"

Anyway, my point is that maybe the 50's were the standard, and the 60's and 70's were the exception. Maybe now it is has returned to being entertainment for the young. Emo songs about how tough it is living in the suburbs, hiphop songs about luxurious living, etc...

So the Jackass comparison might actually be a decent, if depressing one. It is entertainment for kids that allows them to express what they are not supposed to do. Then is was watching Elvis shaking his hips, not it's watching someone almost getting eaten by an alligator. (Note: by reducing rock & roll to "entertainment for kids" I realize I am being a bit too broad, but I hope for the purpose of the post that it works.)

I'm not sure if that counts as analysis - it just seems to be a simple observation that this particular critic wasn't especially moved by the pop music of 2003. There aren't a lot of new bands that I'm that keen on either but that would be the same in any year in history. If this guy doesn't like any of the "younger" genres of popular music and simply sticks with mainstream pop and rock, it stands to reason that the overall scene is going to be less vital and interesting than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and that the better older artists in that scene will be musically superior to less experienced acts.

His only explanation for the assertion that "I don't like any recent music" is some nebulous notion that the music industry is dying. Well, just because large record labels aren't making as much money, I don't think you can draw that conclusion at all. As far as I can see, there are more opportunities for young artists than ever before and far more bands on the periphery can make a living out of music than, say, 20 or 30 years ago, because of cheaper recording opportunities, greater responsibility shown by the music industry, and the ability to cheaply record and distribute their material by mail-order over the internet. For people who actually want to have a recording career in a marginalised genre I'd say their prospects are currently better than ever before; I know of lots of small bands that would previously have struggled but which today maintain a strong fanbase by regularly playing live and selling their music at their gigs and cheaply over the internet, cutting out the middle man. The future of music is surely a more decentralised, democratic industry in which the big label pop and rock bands will continue (but become less and less profitable) in time and whereby smaller acts can become more numerous and survive with a smaller fanbase, without recording companies taking a large chunk of the profits from their music. In terms of the ability of supply and demand to encourage new artists, I'd say the future's never been brighter for the world of popular music.

We've had rock and pop music in more or less the same form for 50-odd years now. With such a simple artform it's inevitable it's going to stagnate to some extent and there's really only so much you can do using the same palette of sounds and forms. Perhaps if this guy is really interested in new music, his horizons are too narrow. I think his views are a bit depressing, really.