Unless you’ve been blissfully unaware of any and all current events, this country is fucked. I’m not trying to sound defeatist but we’re looking at at least two or three plausible doomsday scenarios. It’s time to stop thinking about reverting to some comforting normalcy, to look ahead and reevaluate what our roles are going to be in order to keep humanity’s survival viable for future generations.
Which is why I would like to point out that no matter what happens, we definitely will still need snarky music critics to judge shitty music after the apocalypse.
With any luck, music will play a central role in self expression and building community beyond our current existence. And within that community a few gatekeepers will inform the masses as to which songs are cool and which ones are bland, homogenized drivel. We owe to our progeny the means for preventing the next Maroon 5 from happening.
Once anarchy reigns, we will need to be able to grow our own crops, procure access to clean water, and likely revert back to some kind of bartering system of commerce. But central to each remote settlement there needs to be at least one person with the skillset to refer to corny new music as a wet gorilla fart or something in order to make people feel better about their own musical shortcomings and/or superior tastes.
Look at Mad Max: Fury Road. You think they just automatically settled on guitars, Marshall stacks, and flamethrowers to play while tearing across the wasteland? No, there was probably some asshole who wanted cellos or something way less metal until a heroic blogger from the “before time” stepped in and pointed out how the 1800’s called and wanted their instruments back.
Think about it! As we rebuild society from the ashes of our own mutual destruction, we’re also going to have to do a cultural reset. Imagine 100 years from now, a research team will dig through the rubble and find some dipshit’s collection of Trapt albums. They’ll need a trusty music critic (or “oracle” as I assume we’ll be called) on hand to point out they fucking suck.
While we cannot truly predict what the next version of civilization (if there is one) has in store for us, hopefully, it’s a more egalitarian one where a pantheon of smug music critics like the ones at Pitchfork in the 2000s can sit side by side with the leaders of tomorrow.