Emotions were fed through Auto-Tune, and downloading wrecked the industry. But things appear to be changing for the better.
Click here for Ann Powers' best of 2009.
Recently asked what the word "authenticity" meant to her, Lady Gaga -- the last
major pop star to emerge during the decade we're now departing -- tried her
best, at first. "Integrity, intention," she said, furrowing her neatly plucked
brow. Then she gave up the pretense. "I can say this . . . to you all day," she
harrumphed. "It's not gonna reap anything."
She's right. Of all the aspects of
pop that went into fatal mutation mode in recent years, the cult of authenticity
was hit perhaps the hardest. The advent of downloading wrecked the music
industry as we've known it, and along with many jobs and old-fashioned rock star
dreams, core assumptions about what makes music meaningful have been changing,
too.
One major one has to do with what we think is most real, most able
to embody sincere and powerful emotions. We have come a long way from the '90s,
a period that saw the commercial triumph of credibility-obsessed subcultures
like indie rock and hip-hop, and the rise of artists like Kurt Cobain and Tupac
Shakur, who were undone, partly, by inner conflicts about crossing over and
selling out.
Other important figures, including Lilith Fair leader Sarah
McLachlan, R&B-hip-hop fusion pioneer Lauryn Hill and country maverick Garth
Brooks, also sought to change the mainstream in the 1990s but were ambivalent --
and retreated artistically once they did so.
