Manic Street Preachers front-man James Dean Bradfield has bemoaned today’s quality of music – accusing young bands of playing it safe. In an interview with the Scottish paper Daily Record, Bradfield said:
“I don’t look at a band now and think that it is going to be amazing or a great band. I don’t see a story unfolding with bands because it is gap year music. It seems like somebody has said, ‘I think I’ll do an album then my dad will give me a job in the accountancy firm’.”
As well as accusing the new crop of rock bands for refusing to take risks with their careers, Bradfield went on to criticise the state of chart music:
“I was looking at the Top 40 and it’s like the indie wars never happened. It’s as if Manchester, Seattle and Britpop never existed. Britpop meant guitar bands were in the top five every week. For a guitar band to be in the Top 40 now is a rare thing. It’s all pop music. It is really depressing.”
While many may dismiss such remarks as the words of a middle aged rock star slowly losing touch, you can’t argue there is an element to truth to what Bradfield is saying. Looking at today’s new bands, which ones are we really expecting to develop into the next Clash? Or Manics? Or Radiohead? Let us know what you think…
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1 thought on “Manics’ James Dean Bradfield attacks young bands for making ‘gap year music’”
spacca
(2011-01-10 - 2:41 pm)hahahahahahahahaha granddad is pissed by the sounds of things.
I think the problem the Mr. Bradfield is suffering from is tunnel vision and rosetintedspectaclitis. Yeah, Brit pop is dead (duh) and Seattle is over but it’s not like music is dead or variety has vanished from the music world. The charts suck ass but they have always sucked more than not. Maybe they are sucking super hard at the moment but that’s not to say something surprising isn’t around the corner.
The problem he has is that he wants a specific type of music in the charts. Just because that music isn’t in the charts doesn’t mean it’s not out there. Yes, less people may be buying it to make one particular act stand out against the wall of mass produced, uber promoted pop brands but, and here may be the big but, perhaps the world has more indie than ever before and it’s just damn hard to stick to one or two indie bands when there’s so many to choose from. This makes it harder to become big enough to fight the pop tide but I think that since the digital revolution there are now more bands (esp indie) than ever before.
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