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Going Solo: The Sound Of 2012?

Amongst all the commentary on this year’s BBC 'Sound Of...' poll, there seems to be one line of comment missing...

Posted 7th January 2012, 12:41pm in Blogs by Luke Morgan Britton
Luke Morgan Britton

Luke Morgan Britton

Writer

Going Solo: The Sound Of 2012? Amongst all the commentary on this year’s BBC 'Sound Of...' poll, there seems to be one line of comment missing. It’s not about how many are on major labels, or who should or shouldn’t be in it due to how many records they’ve already sold, or how much more media exposure they need. No, when looking through the individual candidates, it becomes immediately apparent how many of them are just that: individuals.

Of this year’s 15 long-listed candidates (A$AP Rocky, Azealia Banks, Dot Rotten, Dry The River, Flux Pavilion, Frank Ocean, Friends, Jamie N Commons, Lianne La Havas, Michael Kiwanuka, Niki & The Dove, Ren Harvieu, Skrillex, Spector and Stooshe), only five were groups. The percentage is even more grim in the shortlist, with only 20% (or one of the five) being a non-solo act.

If we take a step back further and browse (get Wikipedia loaded up, everybody!) the past winners of the prize (50 Cent, Keane, The Bravery, Corinne Bailey Rae, Mika, Adele, Little Boots, Ellie Goulding and Jessie J), you notice that only two of these are bands - and in terms of The Bravery, they shouldn’t really count because, well, they’re The Bravery.

It seems like this modern thirst for stardom has meant that we are constantly looking for the next big popstar; a headline-making showman personality. Four equally weighed quite-well-dressed indie boys don’t capture our attention anymore, which of course is only logical when you think about it. Instead we would prefer to buy “collabs” between different artists and superstars. Over the first 46 weeks of the 2011 Official UK Chart, exactly half of the tracks occupying the top spot were a collaboration - compared to just a quarter in 2010, and a fifth in 2009. The top five of these collaborations included Jessie J ft BOB, LMFAO ft Lauren Bennett and GoonRock, Pitbull ft Afrojack, and Jennifer Lopez ft Pitbull - the only band in there is Maroon 5, accompanied on ‘Moves Like Jagger’ by Christina ‘Xtina’ Aguilera.

But not just this, as music journalist Neil McCormick asserts to us: “The solo artist is, perhaps, an inherently more marketable and creatively more flexible commodity, since it is very easy for them to work with different producers / writers / musicians, which helps maintain the level of output demanded in this ever more instant and voracious pop climate (Rihanna, for example, can put out an album every year because she doesn’t really have to be in the studio for most of the writing or recording process).”

He continues: “And, of course, success breeds success: the more solo artists dominate, the more major record companies will prioritise and push them. It is a trend that is only going to get more pronounced, and it will take a hell of a great band to come along and turn that around. But therein lies the challenge and the opportunity.”

Mike Doherty of Canada’s The National Post is right, in theory at least, in his article 'The Decline & Fall Of Bands’ when he says that “The idea of the band is also becoming looser, what with Web-based collaboration and different business models: the ideal of the closed gang is giving way to “projects,” collectives and management-driven posses.” He goes on to cite Lil’ Wayne’s crew, Young Money Entertainment as an example of this, and Odd Future could be seen as another - a collective of musicians, MCs and producers who varyingly make music with one another in numerous side-projects.

“Technology,” Doherty also deems “is another factor.” He writes: “The DIY studio era was off to the races. In days of yore, if you wanted people to hear your songs, you’d find friends who played instruments to flesh out the sound, and everyone would pool their talents, time and resources to record demos and play live. Now, computers make actual bands less of a necessity, even though their naming conventions remain.”

McCormick tells us that in his opinion this technology has not only helped solo musicians but conversely hindered the progress of bands as well. “It has never been easier for one person to do it themselves; economically (with the commercial decline of recorded music) it has never been harder for a band to survive,” he reflects. “More than that, the guitar based rock format on which the most successful live-oriented bands have been based for fifty years is at a creative and commercial dead end. Young consumers just aren’t interested. The very texture of music has changed, and it favours the electronic and synthetic forms that don’t necessarily demand multiple musicians.”

But is this a new trend? Mike Diver, Album Reviews Editor at BBC.co.uk, doesn’t seem to think so. “Solo artists have always been easier to market; unless of course you dress your band the exact same way (such as with The Beatles).”

On the subject of a possible decline in the traditional “band outfit,” he adds: “Regarding the marketability of guitar bands – I think it’s fair to say that originality has been at a premium for the last 18 months. Last year’s LPs from Wild Beasts and The Horrors were consolidating efforts rather than sets that pushed their makers into new territories; The Vaccines were the big hopes at the start of 2011 and did well enough commercially, but nobody would say they were inventive sorts. More a case of playing up to characteristics established many years before them.”

“If ‘guitar’ music is to be seen to be progressing,” he concludes. “It’s vital that the acts with a little spark to them are rewarded with the spotlight.”

Jen Long, presenter of BBC Introducing Wales on Radio 1, is of the opinion that it’s all a matter of current trends and fashions. “I think that everything goes in circles,” she begins. “Mainstream indie was huge a few years ago, and it became too much and we bitched about the bands incessantly. Now that the focus is on a different genre of music and the indie underground is being left to flourish alone, we complain that indie bands aren't getting enough attention. There are more solo acts as that's what genres like rap/RnB lend themselves to more naturally.”

Jen doesn’t see this as necessarily a bad thing though, adding: “Let's give the new sounds a chance, otherwise we'll be listening to The View and The Twang for the rest of our lives, and quite frankly, we'd be better off dead”.

But is this the complete story? Of course not. Despite the sell-ability of solo artists, popstars and mainstream idols, there are obviously going to be several anomalies to trends - that’s why trends are just trends, lines of best fit to which results scatter either side in general correlation. “Didn’t a group just win the X Factor?” Mike Diver rightly notes. Yeah, they did and in doing so became the first group to win the reality TV show after a dire few years of several throwaway singer-(non)songwriters (and Leona Lewis). So Little Mix could perhaps be seen in years to come as representative of a pivotal moment in time where the musical world progressed back to a group-based fore. But probably not.
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