Author | Ding Qianwen Editor | Fan Zhihui
Looking back on the global music scene in 2023, a "sense of loss" seems to be present throughout.
breaks down the highly praised or popular singles and albums this year. Many of them revolve around gray emotional themes such as death, sadness, and pain.
For example, even the hit song "Flowers", which encourages listeners to love themselves, conveys "i can love me better than you can" through the lyrics, is based on Miley Cyrus's narration of the pain of the past. Similarly, the song "Cruel Summer" from Taylor Swift's past album "Lover", which became popular this year, is also in a cheerful style, surrounding the frustrated and sentimental summer, commemorating the fleeting romance.
and so on do not only exist in the creation of the head diva. In 2023, with the impact of supply and demand among musicians and listeners, this atmosphere of loss will also permeate the global music scene.
kill 2023
Except for miley cyrus and taylor swift, most of the hot songs on major music lists in the global music scene in 2023 are more obviously focused on the transmission of gray emotions, and reveal two characteristics:
On the one hand, musicians are more It directly expresses the cry of sadness, pain and emotional struggle. The creators of the Z generation themselves are confused about growth and youth, and they also integrate more intense catharsis and resonance into the emotions of loss.
For example, this is the case with the hit single "Vampire" released by Olivia Rodrigo in 2023, which swept the Billboard and was nominated for the Grammy Awards. She once said that this song is full of negative emotions of "regret, anger, and heartache." It was once speculated by netizens that it was about a feud with Taylor Swift and a work to denounce her ex-boyfriend Zack Bia.
The prelude song "ditto" of the album "omg" released by new jeans in early 2023 collides with fast lo-fi drum beats and a rhythm that favors R&B chord progressions, creating a sense of loss that surrounds the "gray-toned sadness of East Asian youth". , has also become a hit song that resonated with K-pop listeners this year. It not only set the record of No. 1 on the Korean Melon Annual Chart and No. 9 on the Apple Music Annual Chart, but it also entered the Spotify Annual Chart in many countries.
On the other hand, some singles are in-depth analysis of the self-world, releasing emotions such as death and fragility of oneself and others from a perceptual perspective, with a certain sense of nostalgia, and are also well received by listeners.
For example, the song "Kill Bill", which showed the contradictory and darkened singer SZA's heart, continued to become popular in 2023. It was on the Billboard chart for 19 issues and ranked second in the top ten hottest songs in Spotify in 2023; at the end of November last year , "to.
Of course, many musicians have also integrated these emotions with a certain gray tone into the theme of album creation, constructing a corresponding emotional world and arousing resonance from a large number of listeners. For example, the album "sos", which contains "kill bill", explores themes such as pain, confusion, and reflection, and interprets sza's own spiritual world through concrete pop music.
is more direct, like anohni and the johnsons, who reflected on the suicide of their friends in "my back was a bridge for you to cross" released in 2023, and suggested from a pessimistic perspective that "we are torn apart by war and In a world facing climate catastrophe, death is preferable to life." The album also received an 8.7 rating on Pitchfork, which was rated as "providing a safe place to grieve the destruction of the planet".
Not only that, this craze is also significant in the Chinese music scene. For example, the album "After the Splendid Withered" released in December by mainland singer Zheng Runze, who has become popular in recent years, is also created around the loss and memories caused by love and family affection; while the "Hua and Romance" released by Taiwanese singer Chen Hua is based on With the theme of "Keeping Sadness", the included song "Want to Watch the Sunset in May with You" also ranked first in Taiwan's spotify streaming listening list in 2023 and ranked eighth in the most played singles on kkbox.
This "sense of loss" phenomenon throughout the pop music scene in 2023 not only reflects a certain creative orientation of musicians under a specific historical background, but also echoes the public's emotional appeal for healing, forming a global trend.
Why will the music scene be even more "lost" in 2023?
The music of every era must bear the imprint of that era.
In the post-epidemic era, the physical and psychological wounds left on musicians and listeners have not been fully repaired. With the rapid changes in social life, survival crises have also become a focus of public attention. In addition, the wave of fragmented information brought by short video platforms also makes people passively receive the spiritual life of borderless narratives in the algorithm, which also affects the creative direction of musicians.
The squeezing and pervasiveness of these emotions has also prompted a large number of gray emotional aspects to become sources of inspiration, boosting the popularity of the musical theme expression of "sense of loss". For example, the most typical example is that since the epidemic, the craze for K-pop idol worldviews that emphasizes gorgeousness and non-marginality has gradually become less and less popular. Instead, idols who focus on people-oriented emotional resonance have gained public attention.
Like New Jeans' "Ditto", which won the first place on the 2023 Korean melon annual list, the same is true for the newcomer group h1-key's "Rose Between Buildings", which made a counterattack and entered the list 40th in the annual list. It is worth noting that "Spring Day", which ranks 46th on the annual list and misses old friends, is a single released by bts in 2017. It also returned to the list on January 12 this year on the singing program "Music Bank" Alternate.
The popularity and revival of these musical works, which are relatively full of a sense of loss, also reflect the growing demand of the public for emotional sustenance and solace. When people fall into a state of loss of interpersonal relationships such as family, friendship, and love, emotional substitutes also fill the gap to a certain extent and become an outlet for the public to vent their emotions.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why musicians choose to create with themes such as death, sadness, and pain. Relatively speaking, this is also due to changes in audience demand, which has a negative impact on more and more musicians chasing the trend.
With the re-popularity of confessional pop under the retro wave of tiktok and generation Z users, this creative style that exposes private emotions and the fragile side of the soul has once again returned to the field of popular aesthetics. Many musicians also reveal their own experiences in song creation, such as lovelorn, the loss of friendship, the loss of family ties, etc., which further increases the intimacy between them and the audience.
New singer Jade Lemac, who has gained millions of fans on TikTok, said, "Although it is a bit scary to release such a fragile and heartbreaking song, I hope other people can understand this emotion, because there are some very sad and fragile songs. People, they can relate to these songs." In addition, popular sub-genres such as mudrerdrill and dark plugg also emphasize and amplify the perception of death and pain.
In a certain sense, music works that are mixed with discussions of death, pain and other "sense of loss" also have a certain redemptive function, diluting every personal love and hate. For example, Zheng Xing's album "Basin" released in 2023 repeatedly questions himself around the theme of "loss and separation", but it is also regarded by the audience as an outline of the obscure life situation and facing difficulties. It is "the dark redemption after dawn".
As Jacques Attali said, "Music has a close and intricate interactive relationship with the manipulation, mastery, and expected behavior of social order." The global music scene's excessive focus on the output of negative emotions also reflects the collective healing that the public seeks through music consumption after experiencing social trauma.
Conclusion
Looking back at the commercialization, routine and modelization of the music industry, although the quality of pop music has its own differences, there is no doubt that human beings, as emotional animals, interact with nature, society and species. During dialogue and reconciliation, emotional states are constantly fluctuating and affecting music consumption.
Just like now, the music healing economy is growing into a new trend.
It can be said that with the changes in the world that cannot return to the original trajectory, negative emotions full of dark colors can become the most frequently chosen theme by popular musicians in 2023, and become a popular trend, which is also a trend for musicians and listeners. A way of expression that finds self-consistency in pain.
Perhaps music cannot solve people's life difficulties, but the utopian moment of peace constructed by melody, lyrics, etc. is also precious.
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