On the way home tonight I heard the song "End of the Road" by Boyz II Men. I recalled how that song stayed at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 13 straight weeks. This was later outdone by the group themselves on a collaboration with Mariah Carey titled "One Sweet Day". That song stayed at number one for 16 weeks. Imagine almost 4 months with the same song as the most popular song in the country.
16 years later I take a look at the current pop culture landscape or our great nation and am 100% confident that could never happen again. The cycle of anything pop culture related is so sped up now that hardly anything has a chance to really catch on before it is old news. If a song hits number one, it is there for a couple weeks, then another song replaces is. Movies open to a huge weekend box office, then fade the next week as people consume the next movie. It is a never ending cycle of out with the (not so old) and in with the new.
Why is this? Certainly our current go go go society feeds into this attitude. With all of us having such busy lives we are moving from one activity to the next, paying only limited attention to all things on the periphery of our immediate doings. Nobody sits and listens to the radio anymore. It is only something that is on in the background in the car. TV is watched while doing homework, or working from home. With Netflix, even movies are mainly watched in the home and sent right back out. There are just too many options and too little time to enjoy them all. We no longer have a few radio stations, 3 TV channels and a 4 screen movie theater in town. Now we have 50 radio stations (over 100 if you have XM or Sirius), hundreds of channels on DirecTV and 30 screen multiplex theaters.
We no longer have the patience to consume slowly and completely anymore. True classics aren't heard or seen by nearly as many people as even a moderate hit was fifteen years ago. The internet has allowed us to target information quickly and precisely, allowing us to live in our own bubbles, consuming only what we deem necessary and not leaving us time to enjoy again and again. We should all slow things way down from time to time, fully enjoy what we are taking in, and spread the word and get outside our bubbles so others may also enjoy.
It is interesting how the more we have to enjoy, the less we enjoy it.
16 years later I take a look at the current pop culture landscape or our great nation and am 100% confident that could never happen again. The cycle of anything pop culture related is so sped up now that hardly anything has a chance to really catch on before it is old news. If a song hits number one, it is there for a couple weeks, then another song replaces is. Movies open to a huge weekend box office, then fade the next week as people consume the next movie. It is a never ending cycle of out with the (not so old) and in with the new.
Why is this? Certainly our current go go go society feeds into this attitude. With all of us having such busy lives we are moving from one activity to the next, paying only limited attention to all things on the periphery of our immediate doings. Nobody sits and listens to the radio anymore. It is only something that is on in the background in the car. TV is watched while doing homework, or working from home. With Netflix, even movies are mainly watched in the home and sent right back out. There are just too many options and too little time to enjoy them all. We no longer have a few radio stations, 3 TV channels and a 4 screen movie theater in town. Now we have 50 radio stations (over 100 if you have XM or Sirius), hundreds of channels on DirecTV and 30 screen multiplex theaters.
We no longer have the patience to consume slowly and completely anymore. True classics aren't heard or seen by nearly as many people as even a moderate hit was fifteen years ago. The internet has allowed us to target information quickly and precisely, allowing us to live in our own bubbles, consuming only what we deem necessary and not leaving us time to enjoy again and again. We should all slow things way down from time to time, fully enjoy what we are taking in, and spread the word and get outside our bubbles so others may also enjoy.
It is interesting how the more we have to enjoy, the less we enjoy it.
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