W. David Marx writes on his blog Culture about 10,000 Maniacs and the earnest progressivism of the early alternative music culture.
Certainly 10,000 Maniacs were a bit over-the-top, but they fit seamlessly in the general aesthetic of “alternative” culture. Progressivism was cool in the 1980s. Merchant worked at a health food store, and before joining the band, considered a career in special-needs education. She was the one who pushed REM’s Michael Stipe to lurch towards more political content. These were the Reagan-Bush years, and artists resisted by drawing attention to the social ills that conservatives didn’t care about.
He contrasts that sort of authentic hope for change with today’s music, which has a very cynical live for the moment ethos. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
Despite society still considering child abuse, adult illiteracy, and alcoholism to be bad things, the 10,000 Maniacs' songs now feel quite incongruent with the last three decades of pop music. In an age of “Turn Down for What” and “California Gurls [sic],” 10,000 Maniacs’ lyrics are definitely not “fun,” which has become the singular criteria for valuing culture.
Of course, the 10,000 Maniacs were successful for what they were and the niche they occupied, but they shouldn’t be compared with mass market music, which was certainly present in the late 80s and early nineties. Still, even among the mainstream artists of that period, it was an insult to your craft to be called out for the single-minded pursuit of money or market success. That has changed in the last couple of decades (and is particularly correlated with the rise in hip hop and poptimism).
Capital accumulation is somehow the most transgressive act possible. “I just might be a Black Bill Gates in the making,” proclaims Beyoncé in her political anthem “Formation.”
We’ve reached a point where even the snobbiest of music critics won’t chastise an artist for crass commercialism. Have you ever read a negative review of a Beyoncé record in a mainstream publication?
