Music of the Teenies

I always keep up to date with current music, and I find myself looking at the Australian charts and the trends of music. I always find it really interesting.

Every decade has "its music". In the nineties we saw a lot of pop, europop, dance, and other party songs like that. And the noughties were filled with a lot of pop as well, but with the inclusion of auto-tune and other special effects and synthesized sounds.

A lot of people don't seem to realise that this decade's music already has a theme. Acoustic. Over the last year or two, acoustic music has been on a dramatic rise in the charts. Artists like Adele and Ed Sheeran destroyed the pop stereotype that we previously saw dominating the charts.

And it wasn't just those two, Mumford and Sons became extraordinarily popular this year with nothing but acoustic songs. Even One Direction got on the band wagon with Little Things. A surprising song from an unlikely band that appeals to more than just screaming fangirls.

But why has out culture suddenly become so interested in acoustic music and not pop? Don't get me wrong, pop will be big for some time I imagine, and acoustic music hasn't completely taken over yet, but it will in the next few years.

I attribute this to our culture's changing focus on moral, ethical and environmental problems, specifically the youth of these years. People are talking about global warming, human trafficking, fair-trade products, and more, in the hope of changing the world in a good way.

I often find that the people most interested in acoustic music like the artists I mentioned, are the ones who are interested in saving the world. And the people who like pop, punk, rap, and metal, are often apathetic to even their own community, let alone the rest of the world.

As people come to care more and more about other people, about their planet, about justice and their moral and ethical responsibilities, we will see acoustic music become the genre of the teenies.