The Hitocracy Is Dead!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 03:11PM THE HITOCRACY IS DEAD
Long Live the Rule of the Webiscite
by Bill Burnett
For nearly a century we have all been living under the intoxicating yet oppressive rule of the Hitocracy. Since the birth of great technologies like the phonograph, the radio, the moving picture, and the television we have lived in a world where The Hit was King. Everything and everyone bowed down to The Hit. Even eccentric weirdos like us loved The Hit. The whole world accepted the idea that the only things of real artistic value were those movies, songs, books, and records that found a broad common denominator, making a lot of money and forming the core of our culture. Each of us can think of many "hits" that we love and hold dear.
But that core of our culture has vanished, or is in the process of vanishing. In music, the hitmaking triumvirate of the Record Company, Radio Station, and Record Store are gone. Have you noticed that the record stores in your area have all disappeared? Have you read about the desperation of the Record Companies, who haven't had a hit record (other than with established artists) in close to a decade? Can you name or hum any hit songs of recent vintage, the way, a few years ago, you could have sung along with "The Macarena"--even if you hated it? The Hitocracy has lost its grip on our culture, replaced by the vast, sprawling, anarchic cultural blob known as The World Wide Web. In the future the culture will be goverened by Webiscite. And the future has already begun.
In some ways this is sad. It was nice to have a cultural "town square" where we all got our shared experiences and everybody knew what was hot and what was not. But in another respect the death of the Hitocracy and the birth of Webiscite Culture is a blessing. It more accurately represents the truth about us, for one thing. Sure, you loved "Chain Of Fools" and "Get Down Tonight" and at least one of the songs by Duran Duran, but didn't you also privately also love some obscure celtic group? Some totally tripped out Asian thing? Some atonal electronic freak music? Or maybe Gilbert and Sullivan? Or all of the above? Don't you count some song or group or style that nobody but you and a few other oddiites like you even knew about among your greatest loves? Isn't your own private cultural "collection" far more eclectic than the Hitocracy would ever allow?
Now, with the benevolent but non-interventionist rule of The Webiscite, we are all cut free, allowed to float through cyberspace and find the things that bring us joy. The Hitocracy is dead. I came to realize that, and as I did I felt a great liberation. It was at the Hitocracy's funeral that I conceived of The SongMine. A place where I could put my humble offerings out to the world and commune with whatever community I find. I've been writing songs all my life, and now at last I can bring them all out into the light of the Webiscite. I urge you to join me, here, and at the infinite number of other town squares that already exist or will exist in the years ahead.
Hitocracy, Hits, Pop Culture, Songs, Webiscite
Reader Comments (9)
I would quibble about Hitocracy being all that dead. Certainly there are still hit songs played on the radio and youtube, that many people hear and learn and that form a common backdrop to their lives. Just as there are still the latest jokes, successful TV shows, popular films and electable political candidates. Popularity will always be with us. Whatever hits the zeitgeist with the feeling of just-right right-now-ness.
So I wouldn’t say the Hitocracy is exactly dead, it's just changed into something less centralized, less top-down, more open-channel. It has morphed into Multi-Hitocracies, some big, some small. I guess you would call that the Webiscite, but the key is it all still operates on the same old Hitocratic impulse of "current-ness."
Hitocracy's even more insidious counterpart, of course, is the Tyranny of the Oldie. Its job is to squelch the new. The Tyranny of the Oldie (not to be confused with love of the classics) operates on the frequently correct assumption that people only assimilate new music into their lives for a brief period from their mid-teens to the mid-twenties. Thus the T of the O not only squelches new art but perpetuates the musical retardation of our culture.
Hitocracy's dead. Long Live Hitocracy.
I hear what you're saying Brian, but it is a fact that everybody involved with the music biz says they don't know how to make a hit anymore, as that was once defined. That's why it was such a big deal when Li'l Wayne, the rapper, actually sold 1.7 million records last year with "Da Carter 3' . (I think I have that title and facts more or less right.) That event, of a new CD coming out and selling big, had not happened in several years. In the old paradigm it used to happen several times a month! So if "Hit" meant one thing when we were all growing up, it means something entirely different now. Try this experiment: Excluding songs that are part of TV shows like Hannah Montana and High School Musical, name three of today's hit songs. I bet you can't. I bet your teenage daughter can't. Or any of your music savvy friends. Or try this: What is the name of the dominant STYLE of music today? Is there one? Or is it just an endless recycling of variations on the same style we've had for three decades or more. That was never true before. The 20s had a style. The 30s had a different style. The 40s had a style. The 50s had Rock n Roll and the 60s had a plethora of styles, but you could name them clearly. The 70s had a couple of dominant styles and they were distinct from what had gone before. The 80s had identifiable styles. The 90s--well except for Grunge and the final ascendance of Hip Hop, the styles were pretty much recycled. And now...? What is the style or styles now that define this era. I say there is none.
Here's a few from the last 6 months: Feel that Fire, Paper Planes (atrocious), Viva la Vida (yuck), She's Country, Love Story, Circus, I'm Yours, So What, Just Got Started Lovin' You,She's So California, No Air, Tattoo, Please Read the Letter that I Wrote, You Found Me, Watching Airplanes, All-American Girl,Small Town USA, etc. etc. Admittedly I had to hunt around the web to find the names of these songs because they don't tell you the names of the songs and artists on the radio. But these are all songs I had heard more than once, and many other people had downloaded and so I would call them hits.
There is definitely a modern sound: those new kind of R&B hyper ballads are from just the last two years, bubble gum country is a very new sounding genre, so is today's kind of pop country, also the neo-bluegrass of the last 4 years. Anybody who listens carefully to any of this stuff could tell you from the sound what year it was from. Pop music is a constantly evolving thing.
So they're not selling records like they used to. There are still hits.
Good points, Brian! I would only respond that none of the songs you mentioned would be recognizable to the culture as a whole, only to those who, as you say, are listening carefully to this or that type of music. Whereas "The Macarena" was a culture wide hit circa i998. And most things that used to be hits were culture wide. You couldn't escape them. I also don't think the styles you mention define this era at all. I think it's a bunch of disparate splinter groups of music. But I fully admit to not being steeped, and I'm in need of education. Thank you for helping me get educated!
I guess I'm one of those rarities who isn't much of a Bob Dylan fan. Yes I grooved in High School to the counterculture anthem "Like A Rolling Stone" and "Blowin In The Wind", "Tambourine Man" and "Just Like A Woman" are jewels (best covered by others). But, honestly, he's better judged as an influence rather than an enormous talent. He's somewhat like Aristotle; he's significant not because of his ideas, but because he was first.
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