[Kiki]

The year is 2015. The month is July if you are inclined to ask. It's summertime (AGAIN!?), Sun is out, people are frying on the beach and someone somewhere is moaning about those people because they have no mates. So yeah, its mostly what was happening in 2014 and 2013. However... things are far different in the music world. Far far different from what they were. Let me explain...

By the time July 2015 comes around it is widely acknowledged that music is finished. It's broken beyond repair. What decent artists there are only have a morsel of creativity between each other and what is left is nothing more than a manufactured Billboard 100 hit parade. It's widely believed the realization came around April 2015 in an argument on the comment section of a 'Black Skinhead' video on youtube. A 16 year old user, who we shall name 'Clifton', pointed out how "artists" such as Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez (by using quotation marks around artists it is believed he was implying they weren't artists at all) had taken over the music industry, "indie" is isn't indie anymore and Kanye West, the only true artist left, sold out with Yeezus and lost all integrity as a music artist in an effort to orally gratify a music website known as 'Pitchfork'. Inevitably there was resistance and 7 hour long argument ensured. This young man named Clifton, who's favorite artists included Bach, The Beatles, Popul Vuh, Sleep and Joy Division and who was an avid enthusiast of "blazing it" (a term meaning to download vast quantities of music, possibly illegally) held firm, posted his points and put across an airtight argument to why there was no good music being released anymore. In the end everyone had to admit he was right about everything, even convincing man twice his age who once loved St Vincent and Mac DeMarco but now knows better.

The fallout was swift and devastating. Clifton's words were spread through social media and music communities throughout the internet. Within the week many bands had split up (TV on the Radio, Tame Impala, Real Estate to name a few) while Pitchfork initially rebuked Clifton in a snarky article before removing all traces of music from their website in favour of reviewing knitwear. It is highly unlikely they will release their 'Best Albums between September 2014 and November 2015' list at all now.

New music is prohibited from Rate Your Music, bandcamp has gone bankrupt and everyone has either moved onto chart music or music which was released before the year 2000. Everyone now knows music as an artistic venture has died and all that remains is a bunch of popstars pushing the latest car advert jiggle and soft core porn music videos.

One question remains though. What was the beginning of the end for music? Where did it all go wrong for music? This question has largely being ignored until now. Here I shall present 10 possible points which may have lead to this demise:

1. The Beatles

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Right off the bat lets get these chaps out of the way. Maybe popular music was doomed to fail from the begining. I mean we had Chuck Berry and Elvis then these lot came along and took over the world. One of these rascals, named Paul, could not even read music while their frontman named 'John' was hell bent on getting to the top of the charts and making as much money as possible. Were they forgotten? Ignored by those who believe money isn't everything? No, they were idolized! Every single band afterwards with 4 straight white guys could arguably called be a ripoff of them. If you're following people who can't even read music, let alone didn't write a single 60 minute long sympathy, you know everyone will run out of ideas somewhere down the line.

2. The Hippies

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A notoriously violent peace loving sect, the Hippies once had a stranglehold on the music world. Like a bad experience in a child's formative years leading a destructive lifestyle, the Hippies could have left a nasty memory in subconscious of popular music itself. You see, the Hippies were walking contradictions. All about mother earth yet completely trashing any field which held their festival, preaching love and tolerance yet constantly attacking other hippies and protesting an end to war while waging it against the senses of smell, sight and taste of everyone within a 3 metre radius. Ever since they left Music was unable to decide whether to embrace them or hate them. Sure the anti war messages stuck yet claiming love for "your fellow man" was always laughed at. Everyone pretended to forget them while at the same time bragging they could take as much drugs as them.

3. Emerson, Lake & Palmer

Largely remembered as being the epitome of excess in music, not much is known about Emerson, Lake & Palmer... well by that I mean the person writing this article doesn't know much about Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Didn't they one have insist on only playing on a thousand dollar Persian rug? Regardless it seems like a good idea to put them on this list. This is the moment music took itself too seriously. They are probably responsible for "indie" and the fame-o-phobic scruffy dudes who were playing in the end days of music. Emerson, Lake & Palmer called themselves a 'Super Group'. Let that sink in a moment, a Super Group. You're a peasant in the view of these Gods.

4. The Buggles - Video Killed The RadioStar

The moment MTV was born or something something regarding that. It was somehow related to MTV, like it was the first music video on the station. For this it is responsible for every other song MTV played (DON'T QUESTION MY LOGIC) and as a result an instrument of evil. Song did everything 'Radio Gaga' later did but worse. The song title contains the word 'Killed' and is sung ever so cheery. The music video is a little creepy too but the cherry on it was the ominous line "We can't rewind we've gone to far." They knew what was coming... and they smiled...

5. Drugs & Alchohol

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I was a little cautious of including this one as many... erm... works of art... were influenced by them. While you can argue drugs make someone this creative soul maaaan, they have been involved in a lot more ruined lives. For every Lemmy and Ozzy there have been the not so lucky ones. I mean what else is there to say? This should be funny not morbid. Listen to Grandmaster Flash kids, he knew what was up. Not even once.

6. Aneka - Japanese Boy

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Many years before 'Blurred Lines' and Tumblr this was released. Sure I first heard it playing Vice City and didn't think much about it then. It was a several years later when I saw the video. If this was released today it would be labelled so problematic it would practically be a maths text book. If you've got a problem with Katy Perry you would receive a brain aneurysm watching the music video to this song. Her voice? Don't sound Scottish. Yeah this is... who am I kidding this songs class! This song didn't take itself seriously at all, so much so what was called 'Pop' followed its example. If the arty farty musicians took a leaf from its grooves they may still be alive today.

7. Teenagers who don't know "Real Punk" bands

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im sick of all these teenagers who worship blink182 and green day. they dont know real punk like the clash ramones discharge and dead kenneys. if you go to a greenday concert its full of screaming 14 year old girls jumping up and down. they all think they are having a good time but they wouldn't know waht a good time was if it bit them on the backside. i hate todays generation. i don't like change. punk is not a fashion. i saw a girl wearing a ramones shirt yesterday and when i asked what her favorite song is she told me they were a football team and called me silly. music is dead.

8. Not standing up to Bob Dylan

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Well this isn't really an event as such. It's like... why are people allowed to carry on so long? Sure Chuck Berry has been going longer but Bob here sung a song about times changing and rivers and stuff. He knew what was going down yet he stuck around. People have been born, formed bands, split the bands and died since he first recorded that song. Like a clown passed out on the floor he just doesn't go away no matter how much I poke him. The Rolling Stones as well. If music wanted to survive the artists should have gone Logan's Run on these persistent scoundrels. You get 20 years max and you're gone. 30 years should be a crime.


9. The day Radiohead took album pricing into their own hands


This was a good day for music. It marked the day music went from being a past time for the bourgeois and dandys to something which the kids on the street could listen to. It helped music reach impoverished communities it had never been to before and taught them all about love, life and weird fishes. Like the wholesale erasure of the history of Hip Hop in this thread, that was one of the injustices in the world and now it had been overcome. However... was it a good thing? Like a working class revolution did this simply spear the status quo? Did it set the world of music into dire straits? Was it the kiss of death for quality now anyone had a viable method to get their music out there in a rush? Did it aerosmith the rainbow in the kids bachman turner overdrive the minds of their whitesnake?

10.The day everyone decided to be a music reviewer

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It's like the Tears for Fears song. Everyone wants to be a music reviewer. Except somehow this time it is portrayed as a bad thing. Could be argued that it is great so many people rate and review things yet now they are all out of work as music dead because of this or one of the above. Perhaps one person wrote one bad thing. In fact... how did this all begin I have actually forg... oh yeah Clifton...

[Skinny]

I liked this. A couple of hours well spent Kiki.
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2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.

[Goodsir]

Nice post I guess?

[joyofdivision]

Agreed, well done Kiki. One of the best things I've read on here for quite a while. Good work

[RepoMan]

Brilliant piece of satire. Everyone gets skewered with delicious wit.

Now that you've outed yourself what r u going to do with the Kiki/outlaw character? ( )

[sp4cetiger]

Great post, Kiki. I appreciate how carefully you've considered the possible villains here, but I think we all know what the correct answer is.

They seemed innocent enough at first, a band of swanky young brits jonesing to blend American rock and roll music with a British melodic sensibility that made the girls swoon. As their popularity continued to grow, however, they found the mersey beat formula insufficient for expressing the complex emotions that inevitably arose when four attractive young men spent exorbitant amounts of time in close confines with one another. Unfortunately, a devoted teenage fanbase mistook their homoerotic themes for musical maturation and by the time Sgt. Pepper rolled out, they had inadvertently brought "art" into the pop music mainstream.

By the early '70s, all popular music was made either to be listened to or to be sold, with little middle ground to speak of. Self expression was secondary to either pretension or commercialism, depending upon the ambitions of the artist. Sure, there were revolts. In the late '70s, several gangs of white men who were poor at maintaining eye contact were heard faintly over the din of soft rock and bell bottoms, but this "new wave" was soon to be absorbed into the very monster it was resisting.

Now we are all lost. Hipsters parade around, pitchforks in hand, and hold sham protests outside the walls of pop music factories, but there is nothing left to fight for. Music is become but a tool for the powerful and the affected. The Beatles have made sheep of all of us.

Baaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh

[Tap]

"It's so weird, the history of music is so long and reaches back thru centuries, but coincidentally it all stopped being good sometime during my 20's" - Basically Everyone

[Wombi]

Love it. And thank you for introducing Aneka into my life.

[Kool Keith Sweat]

I refuse to believe the same person that pondered if someone shooting a stray bullet into the air could shoot an alien wrote this post. Brilliant. Biggest laugh I've had on BEA in a long time.

[AlexZangari]

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kill yr idols