In case you didn’t hear, the riff is dying. So is rap music. In fact, maybe it’s just new music altogether. No matter where you turn, someone is prognosticating the death of music, with the exception of whatever the robots are churning out and, uh, hyper-partisan country.
We can explore the reasons for these trends for the umpteenth time (TL;DR: There’s too much static for anyone to cut through), or we can acknowledge the actual truth: There’s plenty of very good music out there, just very few albums that unify us in 2023. Reality is, unless you’re Taylor Swift—whom you won’t find below—your album is probably a niche concern. (If 2023 proved anything, it’s that that’s the case even for the likes of Travis Scott and Drake, whose albums had monthslong rollouts and very little staying power.)
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