There are plenty of music videos that show a simple life, the life of love, loss and finding yourself. There are videos that show adventure and discovery and videos that simply have the rocker playing in front of a crowd with a few cut-scenes. 2010 was a pretty unique year. My 10 year old sister wanted to play a song for me while we were driving around town. She plugged her iPod into dad’s stereo and played a song that was basically techno music. I said, “who is this?” and she responded,” David Guetta, DUH!”
Wait. David Guetta, the guy who I was listening to in the 90s and have seen life a few times in DANCE CLUBS!?!?!
It’s clear to me that Dance, house, techno, trance and other genres of “dance music” have really gone mainstream. Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas (a long time DJ), David Guetta who has been making music since the 80s for clubs and albums from Deadmau5 and Tiesto are swapping hands at schools as kids fall in love with “dance” at a far younger age than in the past. Top 40 radio is full of dance music and pop music of my generation has changed so much that I can actually listen to some Top 40 music without throwing up in my mouth.
What I see more and more is that the “party life” displayed in music videos are now mainstream. Gone are the days of Backstreet Boys nearly crying on camera or rappers throwing cash into the air. Instead, it’s cut-scenes that show clubs full of people with smoke shooting into the air as people “pop bottles” and “dance the night away”
Dance music has gone mainstream so the party life has gone mainstream.
What I often forget is how much of America and the world doesn’t party. Sure, there’s the occasional night out with the girls but now that I live in rural america, I don’t see partying as much as I see casual drinking and chilling with friends while songs about going from “Miami to Ibiza” and “riding in G6” airplanes are going across the airwaves. Usher saying “the DJ got us falling in love again” is a pretty rocking track but how many of my fellow Americans have been to a club lately where a DJ was playing? Yet, millions of us are rocking to the song while driving to our 9-4 in rural America. “Only Girl” by Rihanna has a nearly identical sound to tracks made by Swedish House Mafia and some popular house artists.
What I’m curious about is the club life and all that it holds really “mainstream” or has the music just gone mainstream? Sure, I see more and more people attending events like Ultra Music Festival in Miami and album sales for guys like BT going up each year. What I don’t see is the people who listen to music that’s on your local top 40 station rushing out, throwing on their tight leather skirts and dancing in clubs drinking Patron’.
Is Dance music of 2010/2011 just like rap in the early 2000s? Will we talk about our Rolls-Royce and “smacking bitches” but never actually adopt that lifestyle or will it just pass as another trend and we’ll be back to boy bands and the next Britney Spears sometime around the middle of this year?
It doesn’t really matter that anyone answer that question. It’s just interesting to me that some of my favorite producers are being played on Top 40 stations. It’s kind of freaking me out a bit.