The Decline of Dancemusic

I´d like to share a few thoughts about the recent decline in quality of dancemusic. More is not better as I have come to realise.

A little about my background as a music listener: I can trace my musical awakening to the year 1993 when I started to listen eurodance music like Haddaway, Dj Bobo etc. Around 2000 I started to enjoy trance music, and after that I have integrated several other electronic and not so electronic music to my CD-collection. Where I am musically today is a mix of two decades of music listening. Its a mix of synthpop, disco, techno, rock, indie, trance, pop... So I have a pretty good idea what I´m talking about :-)

Electronic music has been an underdog during the last decades. Ok, there was  a couple of artists like The Prodigy who  managed to break through to the mainstream market, but you really couldn´t call it a dance music phenomena. But the year 2005 was a turning point. Madonna made an ode to disco with her great album Confessions on a dancefloor. It was a definite pinnacle of her career and after that everything in her went downhill (but thats another story).After Madonnas reinvention came Lady Gaga with 80´s influenced dancepop songs and over the top performances which enhanced dance musics image.  Soon many artists started to  experiment with dance sounds and nowadays you dont even get surprised if Linkin Park releases a synthpop song. (!!!) Madonna opened the gates and everyone came rushing in.

2006-2011 were WOW after another: Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, Korn, all making electronic music. Then came David Guetta with his ultracatchy (but ultra cheaply made) party anthems and every artist wanted a piece of this French dj/producer. Right behing Guettas heels came Calvin Harris, Benny Benassi and many others. In 2012 biggest producers of are these dj´s. 

Electronic music has always interested me, but in recent months I´ve started to see blandness and repetition where I once saw inspiration and great melodies:  

-Beats have started to slow down and become lighter
-Melodies are all the same or there are no melody to speak of
-Lyrics are more about sex
-Artists who used to make their own kind of music, have changed their style to sound more trendy
- Todays dance music trends are more artificial than ever; you have to have a dubstep part in every song OR the song is like a copy of Avicii/Swedish house mafia
- Songs live only a couple of months, or in best cases a couple of weeks, which makes them sounds cheap, fast produced and utterly uninnovative. They have no history, no tomorrow, they are meant to consume fast and then forget it, after the media loses interest.

All of the above applies to mainstream electronic music. My concern is that artists who previously were not in the mainstream (like Armin Van Buuren and Markus Schulz) are sucking up the new listeners of electronic music, who have no deeper retrospective interest to EDM. Dj´s and artists who used to have their own sound sound today like cheap copies of Avicii or other "dj-star" whos on top now. For example Tiesto is one example of these coat turners.

It´s no wonder that I´ve started to take interest in electronic music which resides outside the mainstream. There are a great number of artists who dont love to dwell in fame, instead they make the music I love. And you can hear it that it comes straight from the heart.

So all in all, I hope that this dance music trend soon fades and EDM starts to sound once again more like music and not like a product.