Big Wheels Keep on Turning

Are We Back?

A popular music commentator reported recently on a company that provides deep analysis of Billboard and other music industry charts to understand shifts and trends. The 2023 results are astonishing. 

This is what people are listening to:

• Hip Hop and Pop tied at 27%
• Country 20%
• Rock 19%
• R&B 9%
• Latin 6%
• Dance 3%

The real story, however, is looking at the trend line since 2019 and the dramatic cliff the trend was rushing toward in 2023. 

While Pop has remained relatively constant at about 30% for years, in 2019 Hip Hop was at 53% and would peak at a whopping 58% during 2020’s full blossoming of Anarcho Clown World (Covid, Biden, George Floyd, BLM, statue murders, attacks on Confederate symbols).

In 2019, Country was only at 5% but then exploded in 2022 from 8% to its current share of 20% (and still rising).

Rock saw the same 2022 spike as well, ascending from a single digit to its neck and neck race with Country right now (also still rising). 

The final nail in the Hip Hop coffin is that 61% Billboard charting songs today had no profanity, effectively blocking most Hip Hop artists with 500-word vocabularies most of which being synonyms for whores. 

The Boomer commentator said it was because people are simply becoming bored of Hip Hop’s canned drumbeats and thematic repetitiveness. He offered no guesses as to why there was a sudden and inexplicable preference for guitar-based music which is now at the highest it’s been in over a decade.  

The obvious answer to all this is that the black spell cast on White America is breaking. 

Now, it’s fair to ask if I’m making too much out of this report. 

I don’t think so. Music, above all other art forms, is unquestionably the most powerful cultural force. This shift is a big deal. 

Shut It Down

Here’s how the big three in the entertainment industry breaks down in the United States for 2023:

• Movies just breaking $9 billion
• Music just over $8 billion  
• Gaming just under $8 billion

While this appears like there is near parity, unlike the other two, music is a critical component in movies and gaming used to establish mood and emotion. And unlike movies and gaming, pairing with bands and artists is part of the cross-marketing strategy to lure loyal music audiences. It doesn’t work the other way around. (The Iron Man 2 and AC/DC collaboration featured 15 songs and sold an estimated 100,000 copies.) 

The point is, music is the single most powerful and defining cultural force. It is the shared expression for how generations define themselves and are able to unite around the artists and genres that “speak to them.” Your go-to music is almost guaranteed to be the music of your mid and late teens, the time when you came of age. Music and the packaging of it influences how entire generations dress, speak, and think. Genres and the superstars in them have the capacity to project enormous soft power. 

This is not lost on those that rule. 

As Plato observed in The Republic, “Musical innovation is full of danger to the State, for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them.” He went on to argue that the State should effectively regulate the art. 

If politics really is downstream from culture and music is the soul of the cohorts that make up a culture, there is zero chance that popular music, like the media, is not a controlled tool of the State.

Marc Antony Hates Widows

Mass propaganda is hardly new. We know of bogus inscriptions made during the Bronze Age chronicling the inflated victories and prowess of Persian and Egyptian rulers. During the Roman Civil Wars (44-30 BC) surprisingly sophisticated efforts were used when agents of Marc Antony and Octavian were using tactics that seem entirely modern: planting stories, witnesses claiming atrocities, writing official but widely differing historical accounts of events, and spreading rumors of each other’s debauchery and (mostly) fabricated character flaws designed to embarrass and undermine local support. Things would be written, bards would sing, whispers at markets would spread, spies would misdirect with pillow talk.  

Soviet satellite states and Mao’s China elevated internally and externally focused propaganda to a masterful level. The canon of patriotic song and art is extraordinary. In the West, we were of course paying attention and used the same albeit more nuanced techniques. For large scale social engineering, it turns out music for us too was and remains a primary tool. 

During the Cold War, the CIA was using subversive modern classical music and artists like Jackson Pollack as cultural subversions of the Soviet Union. There are, in fact, so many examples of American state sponsored musicians and film stars being used for propaganda that several books have been written chronicling the effort. 

Recently, old school rapper Ice Cube revealed that he has evidence proving that Gangsta Rap was a CIA psyop designed to undermine the black community.

Taylor Swift is obviously a weaponized phenomenon with her intended use still playing out. Maybe she will explode at the Grammys so we can blame Putin.  

For truly next level social engineering theories, follow the breadcrumbs about the Tavistock Institute and what they are alleged to have been up to. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, The Doors…all of them and more, carefully crafted projects to guide the then emerging Boomer generation in a direction that best suited the agenda of those in control. 

As outlandish as it may seem, there is little chance any government would let anyone have extraordinary fame and influence over millions of citizens without having the ability to control what comes out of their mouths and instruments. Any organic rise to success would have to be approached and made an offer they couldn’t refuse. For this reason, it makes sense to be suspicious of those that appear out of nowhere. 

Which brings us back full circle to the sudden collapse of Hip Hop and the rise of Country and Rock. Is this too part of the script or finally a natural reaction to the contrived black cultural propaganda foisted on us over the last decade? I believe the latter.

I Won’t Do What You Tell Me

A fuse was lit in 2020 when the full-frontal black chaos collided with the wall-to-wall darkening of movies, commercials, half-time spectacles, politics, demands of white repentance, and, yes, music. Too much, too soon.

White America took a tentative first step in its detox program and rediscovered vestigial memories of their not-so-distant youth when things felt a little better and a little more normal. A defining piece of that memory was the accompanying Country and Rock soundtrack, the music and period of a happier White America.  

While I’m not a fan of most contemporary Country, its comeback has made it possible for sub genres to ascend as well, specifically a robust Southern Rock scene that looks and sounds like vintage Southern Rock if you squint the right way. Not perfect, but glad to see. We should throw some support their way. 

Whether he’s the real deal or not, Oliver Anthony struck a chord with people beyond just his message. When fans pursued the rabbit trail it seems many discovered a whole world of raw acoustic Country artists that have benefitted from Anthony’s sudden fame. Again, check them out and give them some love. 

It’s all good. The State/Corporate creation of Hip Hop, and the cancerous urban cultural aesthetics that it promotes and rewards, may have run its course. And there is little chance the same people importing millions from the Third World are pleased White America is finding its voice again. 

I hope and pray that Plato was right, “Musical innovation is full of danger to the State.”