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Ongoing History of New Music
The 100 Greatest Rock Moments of the Millennium So Far - Part 2: (90-81)
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- [00:00]
Alan Cross
Hey, it's Alan. And I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing history of new music. Early and ad free on Amazon Music included with Prime.
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Alan Cross
So much can happen in 25 years. It's a long time. Things can evolve. Let me give you just one example. Let's go back to how the 20th century began in just a quarter century. From 1900 to 1925. We got radio airplanes, the Great War, the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union and the rise of communism. The Titanic sank, women were empowered to vote. Einstein came up with a theory of relativity. Henry Ford changed manufacturing forever with the use of the assembly line, not to mention the introduction of cars that were mass produced. We also got stainless steel, the first X ray machine, the zipper, neon lighting and instant coffee. And that's just for starters. Now let's look at the first 25 years of the 21st century. 9, 11 and the wars that followed. The rise of China as a global power, the Arab Spring, an awareness of climate change, LGBT rights and social movements, Covid trump, the incorporation of the Internet into everything. Now that the century is one quarter done, it's a good time to look back on what happened in music. The short answer is a lot. But because change happened so consistently and was adopted by so many people, and because there was so much turnover in news and information, it's very easy to lose perspective of how much things have changed since the clocks ticked over to January 1, 2000. Let's take stock of things. This is part two of the greatest Rock Moments of the Millennium so far. This is the ongoing History of New Music podcast with Alan Cross. Hi again, I'm Alan Cross and this is the second episode in a ten part series that looks back on the greatest moments in rock during the first 25 years of the 21st century. Actually, it's more than that. Yes, we'll look at moments, but also technology and events and things and people who in retrospect, change the course of musical history. And by looking at where we've been, there's a slight chance that we can maybe begin to predict where we're going. On episode one, we covered moments 191. Episode two involves moments 90 to 81. Let's get started. Number 90 is a big fat failure. Something that most people have completely forgotten. Once the legalities over MP3 players were settled in the late 90s, there was a rush by multiple companies to get into the market. Apple was an early adopter, jumping in with the iPod. On October 23, 2001, when Bill Gates, then still in charge of Microsoft, had a look at an ipod, his reaction to the news that it only worked with Macs said, oh, what a shame. His reaction must have been different a year later, October 1, 2002, when iPods became Windows compatible. However, Microsoft still didn't leap into the fray. After all, it was a software company, not one that made complicated pieces of hardware. But by 2006, that all changed. And on November 14th of that year, Microsoft released its own MP3 player, sorry, digital music player. They called it the Zune. The first edition had a 30 gigabyte hard drive, a 3 inch LCD screen, Wi Fi connectivity, and very interestingly, an FM radio. There were some cool features too. Zune users could share songs wirelessly with other Zune users, although that was hobbled by the fact that the receiving user could listen to the shared song just three times over three days. There was a Zune desktop app similar to itunes. There was a Zune store for downloads called the Marketplace. But you had to use a point system to buy music, which was very confusing. And then there was Microsoft's WMA audio file format that could be very restrictive when moving from platform to platform. The unit itself was kinda bulky, wasn't nearly as slick as an ipod. Holding a Zune in one hand and an ipod in the other showed the differences in manufacturing quality. And for some reason, Microsoft offered Zunes in brown, which did not look good. This was a prototype for failure. Zunes stuck around for a few years. The Zune 2.0 had more memory and better battery life. It had a touch sensitive navigation pad, which was pretty cool. You could sync your Zune with your computer via Wi Fi, which was nice. And the user interface improved. Then in 2009 there was the Zune HD. Very slick. An OLED screen, an FM radio, an HD radio tuner, and limited capabilities with HD video. The app ecosystem got bigger too. But none of this mattered. Everybody wanted an ipod, which had a bigger market share, app support and more. Most importantly though, all ipod features were now part of the iPhone. People immediately began questioning why they needed two devices. They got rid of their ipods and just stuck with their iPhones. There were other problems too. Poor marketing campaigns. Zunes were only available in select countries. And when it came right down to it, the Zune was seen as a bad imitation of the iPod. By 2011, the Zune was dead. Well, almost. They stopped producing the hardware, but the technology was integrated into other products like the Xbox and that's been extremely successful. But the Zune itself, it has been reduced to a cultural touchstone from a time when Microsoft tried to take on Apple and lost. I have a Zune. Microsoft gave me one to try out and it is currently displayed on my shelf of dead devices. And if I were to charge it up, I think that this song is on the hard drive. It came preloaded with Myzune. It's a band on Sub Pop called the Thermals.
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Unknown Artist
Yeah, here's your future. God reached his hands out from the sky God asked Noah if he wanted to die he said no, sir, oh no S.
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Alan Cross
Item 89 on our list of the 100 greatest moments of the millennium so far is the death of Amy Winehouse. The first of many notable deaths that we'll encounter on this list. This was tragic. She was a once in a generation voice. She had the image, the look, the feel, the commercial success, the critical praise. She was an activist, she was a philanthropist. She was a decent business person too, amassing a fortune of at least 10 million pounds, making her one of the richest people under 30 in all of Britain. There was no one like Amy out there in the aughts. But it wasn't just her music that made her famous. It was the drinking and the drugs and the bad boyfriends and the dysfunctional family relationships and the self destructive behavior. Amy was always followed by the paparazzi. Her moves were reported in the British media. The strange public behavior that sometimes got her arrested. And after a while, it all took its toll. Drug addiction, alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, emphysema from too much smoking, and most likely some mental health issues. Amy was found dead by a bodyguard in her London flat on July 23, 2011. The verdict was alcohol poisoning. Her blood alcohol content was.416, more than four times what would get you busted for drunk driving. Combined with her other health problems, it was just too much for her body. She was too weak and everything gave out. At the age of 27, Amy released just two albums. What might she have been able to do had she lived?
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Unknown Artist
I Ain't Got the Time and if.
- [08:27]
Alan Cross
My Daddy Thinks I'm fine. Our 88th moment of the millennium so far is the final breakup of REM they came together in Athens, Georgia in the spring of 1980 and lasted 31 years, a good 14 after Bill Barry, their original drummer, quit to become a hay farmer. Now, to be honest, R.E.M. was never the same as a three piece. Their success was mixed. After Barry left, there were albums and tours and some decent sales. But by 2010, they'd fulfilled their contractual obligations to Warner Bros. And became free agents. They started recording material with the idea of striking out independently. But everybody was just out of gas. So on September 21, 2011, they officially announced that they were calling it a day. They struggled with that decision, but in the end, they wanted to leave the music business on their terms. Since then, they've resisted all offers to reunite in 2024. Mike Mills said it would take an impending destruction of Earth by a comet to get the band back together. The end of REM Was also important because in the beginning, they were such trailblazers. They started as an indie alternative band, a college rock band. But then, because they were tired of the recording and touring treadmill, they made the decision to jump to a major label. After a bidding war, Warner signed them in 1988 for $6 million, an insanely huge number for an indie band at that time. Eight years later, they signed another deal for $80 million. A lot of people screamed that they'd sold out. But because REM Was able to continue as they always had without corporate interference, they showed other indie bands that they could make the jump to a major without compromising their art. Groups like Husker Do, Sonic Youth, and crucially, Nirvana would all make similar decisions. The very last REM album was released on March 7, 2011. It was called Collapse Into Now. And this was one of the singles. It's called Mind Smells Like Honey. From the breakup of REM at number 88, I'm going to move to radio in the number 87 spot on our list of the greatest rock moments of the millennium so far. And here's what I mean. Radio is the cockroach of all media. From the time it emerged as a commercial mass broadcast thing in the early 1920s, people have predicted its death and demise. It was supposed to have been killed off by television in the 1950s. And then music video was supposed to have killed off radio at the start of the 1980s, and then streaming was predicted to be the final nail in the coffin in the 2000s. Well, no, radio continues to survive. It's profitable, powerful and popular, with over 80% of most populations around the world tuning in to listen every week. Radio now has expanded to online streaming, websites with text and video, and podcasts. What hasn't changed yet is the reliance on AM&FM transmitters for distribution. In some parts of the world, digital audio broadcasting, DAB for short, has taken over with quite a bit of success. That'll never happen in North America because the US roundly rejected DAB earlier this century in favor of HD radio. But that has been something of a bust. Satellite radio is doing okay, but there's no competition in that space, and satellite radio can be very expensive because it requires a subscription. There are challenges, but radio people and radio companies are excellent at creating great audio. And just like the 1950s and 1980s, big adjustments are required, but I have confidence that my people in this industry will figure things out. Revenue projections remain positive. It's still the number one form of listening in the car, and new technologies are on the horizon. It's been bumpy in some cases, but radio not going anywhere anytime soon. The challenges and changes in radio number 87 on our list of the 100 greatest rock moments of the millennium so far. Number 86 is next, obviously, and it was a hard one to tame. You'll see what I mean in just a second.
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American Express Voiceover
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Metro Voiceover
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Alan Cross
No way.
- [13:15]
Metro Voiceover
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- [13:19]
Alan Cross
That's wild. Join Metro and get four free Samsung.
- [13:23]
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- [13:26]
Alan Cross
Bring four numbers and an ID and sign up for any Metro Flex plan not available currently AT T Mobile or available with Metro in the past 180 days. This is episode two of a 10 part series looking at the greatest moments in rock in the 21st century so far. And in the 86th spot, I'm going to put the explosion in genres that we've seen in the last 25 years. Rock began to segment, stratify and separate from the moment it was born in the 1950s. Nothing stays the same when you have so many people working on it. And for a while things were fairly easy to navigate. You had rock, you had pop, there was R and B and country. But as time went by, each of those genres evolved and subdivided into new sounds that were related to the root sound, but definitely different. 1977 seems to be a pivotal year. Rock had already grown in a multitude of different directions. Metal, Prague, Psych, and the so called corporate rock. Bands like Boston and Kansas, R and B Began to begat things like funk and various forms of soul and dance music. But then in 77, there were some big splits that resulted in a lot of polarization. On the R and B side, we got disco. On the rock side, we got punk. The legacy of each of those genres has been incredible. After that, the segmentation of all popular music went into overdrive. Added new technologies like the synthesizer, the drum machine, the sampler and digital recording technology, and entirely new vistas of unimagined sound and creativity opened up. And since then, we've just been getting more and more genres and subgenres and sub subgenres and sub, sub, sub, sub, sub, sub, sub, sub, sub subgenres and you get what I mean. In my view, the thing that really turbocharged the explosion in new genre classifications was streaming. Let me explain. Streaming lives and dies by algorithms. To give music some kind of order within the algorithms and to make recommendations to users, it has to be classified and put into neat piles for constant reference. The people in charge of this at the streaming companies have had to invent names for all the new styles of music that come out, not just every year, but every week. The last time I checked with Spotify, the platform has something like, wait for it, 2,500 different and separate genre tags on the songs in their systems. If you want to see what I'm talking about, go to a website called Every noise at Once and marvel at the interactive scatter plot of musical genres. They have names like Squee, Indonesian Idol, Pop Future, Funk, Post Screamo, Arab Trap, Neo Trad, Metal, Degent, and Argentine Telepath. No idea what that is. The varieties of genres available to us on our smartphones is absolutely overwhelming. And it gets more overwhelming by the day. Once upon a time, it was really easy to define rock music. And now in the 21st century, rock music is just a starting point. To make my point, I just pointed my mouse at Every Noise at Once, the map that we've got there. And I landed on this. And the genre is Pop Gaze. This is a mixture of pop and shoegaze, and an example is a Canadian man called Women and this song entitled Eyesore. Moving on from new genres, let's talk about older ones for item number 85 of the 100 Greatest Rock Moments of the millennium so far. Once you've been around long enough, you begin to notice cycles in musical styles. A genre appears, gets big, goes into decline, and then disappears for a bit. After a while, though, it's rediscovered and enjoys a resurrection and a renaissance. Then the process Repeats. The cycle runs between, well, probably between 12 and 15 years. The 2000s had several revival periods in its first 25 years. The first happened right around 2000 and 2001, when indie rock, which really was a refurbished version of the old school early alt rock of the late 80s, which itself was a repeat of the garage rock of the late 60s, baited with the punk of the mid-1970s. We called this the indie rock revival or post punk revival. It gave us new, sharp, clever bands like the Strokes and the Hives, the Yay Yeahs, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol and the Arctic Monkeys. About a decade later, there was another revival. Straight ahead, punk came back into fashion, as did emo, shoegaze and various flavors of psychedelic music. And if you want to follow this line, around the same time, which would be the mid 2010s, we started seeing more synth based music that definitely had an 80s techno pop vibe. So what's that, four, five revival periods in the last 25 years? Does this speak to something larger about the need to recycle songs and styles in rock? Maybe, I guess we'll find out as the century progresses and we'll continue to monitor the evolution and stratification and segmentation of rock.
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Unknown Artist
Tick tick tick tick tick.
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Alan Cross
From Sweden, the Hives. Part of the garage rock slash indie rock revival of the early 2000s. That's called tick tick boom moment. Number 84 in our list is the death of the 24 hour music video channel. When MTV signed on in 1981 and much music followed in 1984, the world said this was the death of radio. We just talked about that. The whole video killed the radio star thing. Artists and labels gladly paid to have expensive videos made, which they then gave to the music channels free of charge because they knew that a hot music video would sell CDs and more than make up for the cost, all MTV and MuchMusic and all the other channels really had to do was run this free content for much of the broadcast day. Artists did make money on video plays through performance rights organizations, but that almost never covered the cost of making the video in the first place. And besides, the cost of making a video was charged to the artist by the label and that money was recouped through record sales. Still, it was a really good business for a while. There was MTV, MTV2, VH1, VH1 classic, VH1 country, VH1 megahits. Anyone remember the box? That was a Dutch based music channel. Meanwhile, MuchMusic expanded into the US for a while. Eventually though, that division was sold and turned into a service called Fuse. The shift away from music videos began earlier than you might think. MTV was the first moving to lifestyle and reality programming in 1992, with shows like the Real World in order to broaden appeal and increase advertising revenues. By the late 1990s, all video channels were seeing pressure from other media, especially this thing called the Internet. By the time YouTube got going in the mid 2000s and the labels figured things out with their service called Vevo, the music video channels on television, on cable, were in Trouble. By the early 2010s, MTV was pretty much out of the business of showing music videos in rotation. Much music followed suit, with endless repeats of shows like Ridiculousness. MTV Canada, which officially launched in 2006, shut down forever at the end of 2024. The music video, however, does live on as an art form and a promotional tool. But we'll get to that in just a sec. Right now, though, it seems like a good time to play this song by the Presidents of the United States of America. Since we're on the subject of the death of the music video channel, let's look at the new life of music videos themselves. Their ever evolving existence is number 83 on our list. Budgets are much smaller than they used to be. They no longer help sell CDs, or at least barely, but they're still an art form and they're still important to the overall music ecosystem. Music videos remain crucial for promoting new songs and albums, just not necessarily on TVs anymore. It's all about smartphones and tablets and social media. Think TikTok and Instagram. The roots of the music video are still the same. Showing off performances, telling stories, expressing themes and feelings, and visuals. Instead of waiting in front of a TV for your favorite music video to come on, they're available on demand, and they can be shared endlessly and immediately. Unlike when artists and labels gave videos to the music channels for free. In this new era, videos can be monetized in a new way. YouTube doesn't pay a lot for a video view, but it is something. And music videos still set trends in culture and fashion. Plus, there are still awards for the best music videos. MTV still insists on staging their video music awards, while in Canada, there's something called the Prism Prize, which acknowledges excellence in music video production every year. So yeah, the tv, the cable music video channel is pretty much extinct in the 21st century. But music videos themselves continue to evolve with technology and the ever changing demands of music consumers. Here's an example of a contemporary artist who understands the assignment of Music videos in the 21st century. It's 21 pilots. Here's Heathens. Take it slow. Wait for them to ask you who you. Please don't make any sadden moves. Two more moments for this episode. And the next one is a sneaky attempt by a major record label to hobble your personal computer. This is part two of a ten part series of programs looking at the 100 greatest moments in rock and alt rock so far this century. And like I said at the beginning, we're looking at more than individual moments. We're also talking about events, important people, things and technology. And at number 82 on the list is in fact, some technology, some malevolent technology. It has gone down in history as the Sony rootkit controversy. If we go back to 2005, music piracy was rampant. CD sales were in free fall. People were trading songs by the billions through illegal file sharing programs. All you had to do was rip a CD to your computer, fire a blime wire or Kazaa or Audio Galaxy Satellite or Bearshare or whatever, and you could distribute the music from that CD to the rest of the planet. Illegally, of course. Record labels were at an absolute loss at what to do. Sure, they were pursuing lawsuits and other legal means, and digital rights management was being used to stop copying. But once the music public realized that they could get all the music they wanted for free, it turned into one big game of whack. A mole. Then somebody came up with an idea. Look, if people are sharing music from compact discs that they rip to their computers, why not make it difficult to do that ripping in the first place? And so the Sony BMG rootkit concept was born. Sony BMG was one of the biggest major labels at the time. They hired a couple of software companies to come up with some sneaky code. There was xcp, short for Extended Copy Protection, developed by first for Internet and Mediamax. That came from a company called Suncom. Both were supposed to stop music fans from ripping CDs to their hard drives. Well, how? Well, basically, if you put one of these XCP CDs in your CD ROM drive to copy it, something called a rootkit was automatically installed surreptitiously on your machine. It happened without the user noticing or being told. And the installation happened deep in the Windows code, making it very hard to detect and remove. The XCP malware came on albums ranging from Neil diamond to Frank Sinatra to Celine Dion to Cyndi Lauper. And there's no way to sugarcoat this. This was the unauthorized installation of malicious code. A malicious software program on private computers that granted unauthorized access to that system by an outside party without your consent. This was a legal and ethical and moral breach never before seen in the music industry. Not only that, but this software created vulnerabilities on your computer that could be exploited by hackers for other reasons. It compromised the security of personal computers. A security researcher named Mark Russinovich discovered the rootkit ploy and published his findings in October 2006. The outrage and the blowback was intense. There were lawsuits, governments launched inquiries, and there were accusations of Sony BMG being one big pusher of viruses. In the end, Sony BMG lost several class action lawsuits and paid out millions in damages. Not only did this not stop music piracy, but the rootkit fiasco made people trust record labels even less. Here's a song from an album that was originally released with the Sony BMG rootkit. It's from Our Lady Peace, and the album is called How Appropriate. Healthy and Paranoid Times. Our final moment on this list for this program, number 81 on our top 100, also involved something unwanted being placed on a hard drive. This time, though, it was done with the best of intentions, I think. After a dalliance with BlackBerry for their 360 tour, U2 was back working with Apple. In 2014, the band entered a partnership for the launch of the iPhone 6 and the first Apple Watch. That September. Both Apple and the band thought it would be really cool if they gifted U2's new album, songs of Innocence, to everyone with an Apple iTunes account. So they did. With the push of a button at the Apple event, 500 million copies of the album were pushed out to every itunes user's devices. There was no opt out. It was like, yeah, screw you, here's a U2 album. At that moment, it was promoted as the biggest single release of an album that the world had ever seen. Okay, nice. But the backlash was bad. See, the problem was many users did not like learning that Apple could get into their itunes libraries without their consent. The stunt was seen as a massive invasion of privacy and disregard for the autonomy of music fans. Even some U2 fans were not happy with this gift. Okay, so just delete it, right? Well, it wasn't that simple. Many users reported problems getting rid of the album, which made things even worse. Social media was flooded with complaints. It was a complete and utter PR fiasco. Apple had to release a special tool that allowed users to remove Songs of Innocence from their libraries with one click. But by then, the damage had been done. Apple and U2 had to apologize for misjudging their act of generosity. Like the Sony rootkit controversy, the unwanted U2 record brought attention to the fact that users wanted 100% control over what went on their devices. This was a personal space thing, a privacy thing. They want transparency and respect even when the intentions are supposedly good. If you had an iPhone in 2014, check whatever iPhone you've got now, and it's possible that your itunes library still contains this song, whether you know it or not. Let's review part two of our ten part look back of the 100 greatest moments in rock in the 21st century so far. At number 90, Microsoft's doomed attempt to take on the ipod with the Zune. Number 89 was the tragic death of Amy Winehouse. Then we talked about the final breakup of REM at number 88. Radio's challenges in the digital age was 87. 86 was all about the explosion in new genres that we've seen over the past 25 years. Then we backtrack a bit for number 85 and we talked about all the music revivals we saw. MTV and MuchMusic's bailing on music videos was at 84, while the continued evolution of the music video itself was at 83. At number 82 we discussed the heinous Sony BMG rootkit scandal, and at 81 it was U2's grand gesture of a free album that no one wanted. On part three, we'll look at the rise in copyright infringement cases, the struggling concept of the album, a broken leg that turned into a concert triumph, and live aid part two, among other things. If you missed part one, which detailed moments 191, it's available as a podcast. Just download and go. In fact, there are hundreds of ongoing history podcasts available and they are all free. If you want to meet up, I'm on most of the social media platforms. There's my website ajournalofmusicalthings.com, which is updated every day. And you should get the free daily newsletter And I have my other podcast Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. It's all about what happens when true crime meets music. And should you have any questions, comments, complaints, critiques or whatever, just drop me a line through allenncross ca. Technical production for all this is by Rob Johnston. We'll see you next time for part three of the 100 Greatest Rock Moments of the Millennium so Far by Melan.
- [31:33]
Home Network Voiceover
Cross Home Network is here. I love it. Discover the best shows and your favorite trusted experts all under one roof.
- [31:41]
Alan Cross
Are you kidding me?
- [31:42]
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Every Thursday, watch heartwarming programs like an all new extreme makeover home edition at 8.
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Alan Cross
We are so lucky to be a part of this.
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And honest renovations starring Jessica Alba and Lizzie Mathis at 9. Changing these homes, we we can change families. There's no place like it. Home network stream on statv.