Song Writing

The Rise of Underground and Independent Music

That's kind of an oxymoron now. Bands can simply record on a home studio, post the recording on the Internet, and there they are, just as famous as 99,000 other bands.

In fact, you could argue that there are more people listening to today's top YouTube video than there are listening to any given radio station. After all, a radio station only has the reach of a large city, on average. The most populous cities on Earth top out in the 13 million range. The current most popular video on YouTube right now? "Charlie bit my finger - again !" - at 148 million views! There, two kids with a camera at home just outdid every radio station that's ever existed. For another example, the rapper Pitbull's "I Know You Want Me" has 92 million views (about 7 times the population of Mumbai, India) - but he doesn't have a #1 Billboard Hot 100 single!

Anyway, it goes to show that there's a huge drop-off between old media and new media. Independent artists are taking over.

The Return of Garage Rock

As a result of all this new freedom, bands are more free to experiment and play around, making what they like to play and letting the fans decide what's marketable - without some pushy record executive getting in the way.

The next big music genre will come from the garage. There is no question about it. Bands like The White Stripes and The Von Bondies have already started a scene in Detroit, Michigan of all places. Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have embraced indie distribution. Dozens of bands are slipping away from the traditional music genres and categories to simply play whatever they feel like and let the audience figure out what to call it. New bands start out this way, and old bands have gotten more so as they have more room to experiment. Quick, what genre of music does Primus or The Pixies play?

Digital Distribution

BitTorrent, iPod, Grooveshark, streaming video, podcasting, peer-to-peer, eDonkey, Pirate Bay, the "darknet"... We had none of this a decade ago – at least not developed. When will we see the very last "album" stamped on a disc, be it vinyl or plastic? The day is coming, although to judge from the hobbyist collector scene, there will always be some market for physical/ analog media.

MP3: The Gamechanger

The digital age gave us more access to singles, more channels to discover new artists, and a chance to broaden our horizons. More freedom and a wider reach means that we can throw off the yoke of oppression from big industry.

The electronic format that made this possible was the MP3 – a tidy little file that plays on just about anything, and thanks to a consumer backlash, is almost always free of any restrictions. And for most of the decade, you could get them for less than a buck.

And by the way: We've all heard that auto-tune, synthesizers, dynamic range compression, Guitar Hero games, and all the other modern developments are ruining music, blah blah blah. That could be correct - you'll find lots of support for that point of view. But it's also true that every single music technology development since the Victrola has been the target of the exact same criticism. Every new music-producing gizmo suffers from overuse and plain bad-taste use when it first comes out, and bad use of auto-tune and synthesizers can sound just as horrible as bad use of electric guitars and organs can. But we'd like to put a friendly reminder here that automatically complaining about every new invention makes you sound like a senile, grouchy, old grump who needs a nap. If it sounds good... (and we mean good) who cares how it was made? Let them make music with a cast of robots and a set of wooden spoons if they want to!

Great Music Came Out of the 2000s

Here's what the majority of our Forum dwellers agree are the best bands to come out of the 2000s. Note that if an artist got their "official" start by the late 1990s, we'll toss them in as long as their success came in the 2000s:

The White Stripes - Without a doubt, The White Stripes have started something big. They've come out of Detroit, with a seamless fusion of blues and punk, and then turned it into their own authentic home-made style. What Nirvana did for grunge, this eccentric rock duo might just have done for garage rock.

Gorillaz - This is what we mean when we say something came out of the 2000s. A "virtual band" created by a fusion of pop artists and the guy who did Tank Girl (wait, what?), the Guinness Book of World Records now lists them as the Most Successful Virtual Band. They've been buried in awards and recognition, especially in the UK, and all this while being the kind of thing that couldn't have existed 15 years ago.

Queens of the Stone Age - Hugely successful, with a hard rock sound that's not quite classic, but not quite all-new either. True to their mission statement, they create a heavy sound based on a solid jam, and just pound it into your head. Great! At last, a good band that anybody can understand!

Franz Ferdinand - Every now and then, somebody from Scotland comes along and knocks the music world on its can. "Where did that come from?" everybody says, but all they know is that they can't get enough. Like Simple Minds and Nazareth, Franz Ferdinand has jumped on the current prevailing winds and ridden them right back across the Atlantic. Only with a kind of glam-rock/ new-wave/ synth-pop sound.

The Decemberists - Imagine if Green Day cheered up, learned more chords and a diversified set of instruments, and Billie Joe Armstrong quit inhaling helium and putting a clothespin on his nose before every take. That's the Decemberists, almost more bards than singers, with the colorful story-lines of their songs. But it's all set to the hookiest, catchiest, most toe-tapping tunes you could ask for - and yet, they're serious about their art!

Goldfrapp - Well, OK, we'll let a British electronic trip-pop act in. Go ahead, crank up the synthesizers and lets get on the dance floor. After all, as Goldfrapp reminds us, it is fun to do.

Arctic Monkeys - Silly name or not, they've impressed! They've set fast-selling album sales, won awards, and topped charts all over Europe. They've taken alternative rock and slapped their own unique secret sauce on it. Maybe with a side of cheese, but hey, cheese is nice sometimes.

TV on the Radio - We wanted to send word from Brooklyn, New York, that in the future, music critics will look back on TV on the Radio and say things like "They were so far ahead of their time, what a shame they didn't get more popular. That was another Velvet Underground right there!" Buy one of their albums and start your own band today!

The Von Bondies - We opened this list with White Stripes; we'll now close it with the other hot garage band from Detroit, Michigan. They're a little more polished, but still have that authentic Detroit sound, that raw power that wants to rush up from the gutter to punch the stars. C'mon, c'mon, Detroit, you're on the edge of greatness!

Honorable mention: Fleet Foxes is so new, this is probably the first time you've heard of them; they're a time-warped '60s folk band - but they are the best one of those you're heard this decade, and if you listen to one of their songs twice it will haunt you 'til bedtime. Macy Gray had her day, now there's nothing left to say; but she kissed the blues goodnight for us. We can't tell if LCD Soundsystem is genius, or we just haven't heard enough "dance punk" yet to know better. The Libertines had something interesting there for a moment. We admit that there are still days when we think a nice thought about Eminem. Disturbed, Animal Collective, Scar Symmetry, The Strokes, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs are all kind of nice.

Artists That Started Before the Decade, But Kept On Rocking Through the 2000s

Radiohead owned the decade so hard, it's almost not worth mentioning anybody else. They get their own paragraph. They should get their own article. Perhaps their own statue, amusement park, and knighthood. They single-handedly carried alternative rock through a minefield of a decade, all with the most unidentifiable and unique sound, remarkably composed for the whole group's participating in creating every song. Thom Yorke's mellow vocals and gloomy lyrics, plus the most diverse instrumentation since Queen (which they cite as an influence), give them an inimitable sound. Their 1997 album OK Computer by itself has been called the single most important alternative album ever. The Radiohead experience is a rich one - although their fans have been so vocal lately that it's starting to create a hype backlash, and some fans are divided whether they've reinvented themselves right out of their core audience.

And then there's The Streets, The Flaming Lips, Jay-Z, Weezer, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, System Of A Down, Sonic Youth, Snoop Dogg, Gwen Stefani, They Might Be Giants, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Marilyn Manson, and Death Cab for Cutie. Thank you, thank you, for at least staying good, and in most cases even getting better, throughout the decade of the 2000s, a time when we really, really needed it!

One more thing we have to mention about 2000s music. Leave a note for the historians: "Still Alive" was the closing theme to a video game called Portal. No, we have no idea why it got so popular even with people who don't play video games. Boyfriends would request that girlfriends sing it for them on karaoke night. Yeah, it's been that kind of decade!