Post-Cubid
We entered 2021 when the world was in shambles, which had a severe impact on the music industry. In terms of spending, January and February were in a coma that would not embarrass bears in the winter. The clubs, halls and record stores closed. The festivals planned for the summer were canceled, the tour was postponed and apps and radio continued to play songs from 2020 and even back. During all this time, there was, more or less, only one hit in the world: a melancholy ballad called Disney Driver’s License by 17-year-old Olivia Rodrigo.
When March came and the world began to break free from the closures, the music scene also began to awaken. Justin Bieber and Lena Del Rey released new albums that month, and the music world seemed to be starting to get back to normal, but with an asterisk. Although the amount of recorded material accumulated by artists and record companies in the last two years is enormous, but without backing up the release of these recorded materials on tour, the profitability of their release is very limited.
Due to the restrictions created by the corona in movement from country to country, tour appearances by artists such as Doa Lipa, The Weekend, Harry Styles and more – have been postponed to 2022. Artists who did try to perform this year, faced last-minute cancellations which caused them damage. For example, Thomas Anders from “Modern Talking” canceled his upcoming appearance in Tel Aviv due to the closing of the sky. The eighties Human League were already on the ferry from the UK to perform in Belgium, when they were informed that in Belgium the crowd limit had been returned. The show, of course, was postponed.
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To be optimistic, in terms of performances, the schedule for 2022 seems pretty crowded at the moment, even though everything is very hesitant; Artists do not set up tours around the globe, and this is mostly limited to performances in the same country, or a maximum of two or three locations or physically close countries. Until the travel restrictions are lifted, or at least die down, the music world will probably continue to operate on a kind of neutral.
The Young Revolution
While the biggest stars in the world put their careers on hold, those who took advantage of the vacuum were very young artists, some even minors. Olivia Rodrigo, for example, released in May 2021 her debut album, Sour, which became one of the big hits of the year. The second hit out of it, Good 4 U, won, like Driver’s License, the first place in all the major charts in the world. In addition, Rodrigo is nominated for eight Grammy Awards at the upcoming ceremony.
Australian pop singer The Kid Laroi, just 16 years old, reached number one on the US charts with his duet with Justin Bieber, Stay. 17-year-old Canadian Tate McRae has released her debut album, Too Young to Be Sad. These days, the debut hit ABCDEFU by 17-year-old American singer Gayle threatens to occupy the first places in the charts in early 2022. Compared to these artists, 19-year-old Billy Aylish, who released a successful new album this year, is already considered almost old.
Olivia Rodrigo (Photo: Mike Coppola.GettyImages)Unlike the giant artists whose entire publication goes through a battery of publicists, the success of the young artists is experienced as wild and real, with no filters of producers and activists. You should enjoy this authenticity as long as it lasts.
Revenge of the Elders
Not only did the youngsters take advantage of the momentum to stand out, but also some veteran stars, some in their 70s, 80s and even 90s. When the 74-year-old Elton John’s Cold Heart duet with young British singer Dua Lipa came out last summer, John said he really hoped the song would make it to the top 20 of the charts. Half a year later, he already has three hits topped the UK charts: in addition to Cold Heart, Merry Christmas, his duet with Ed Sheeran for Christmas, also won the status; And Sausage Rolls for Everyone, a humorous rendition of the song
Merry Christmas together with Sheeran and the British network phenomenon LadBaby.
The Swedish band Abba also made a comeback this year with the release of the album Voyage, their first album in 40 years, which became one of the bestsellers in the world in 2021, and also released the hit Don’t Shut Me Down. The album topped the charts in the first week of the year was McCartney III, Paul McCartney’s first album to reach the top since 1989. Later that year we also won successful albums by Duran Duran, Paul Waller, Tom Jones, Manic Street Teachers and Coldplay.
Coldplay (Photo: REUTERS / Steve Marcus)All of these comebacks are dwarfed by the story of Love for Sale, 95-year-old Tony Bennett’s duet album recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, with Lady Gaga released last September. This album brought them no less than seven nominations at the upcoming Grammy Awards.
Globalization, baby
In September 2020, the Billboard, which collects data for all the charts in the United States, announced a new parade – Global 200, a global parade that centers on digital streaming and sales of songs from around the world. This is in contrast to the past, so we got data by countries. Because almost all the music in the world is streamed in three apps (Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube), centralizing this data today is a pretty simple thing. With the help of the new parade, you can examine what the biggest hits on the planet are.
On the face of it, this parade seemed to represent a new approach: instead of American artists, came first place the Korean artists like BTS and Blackpink and Maluma and Budd Bunny the Latins. To many it seems like the end of American hegemony, but the truth is probably the opposite. Once companies based in the United States became the ones through which people heard music all over the world, local centers of power weakened. The octopus arms of music corporations from Los Angeles are now reaching everywhere, and the share of American music is rising and not falling.
In Israel, for example, a country where about 80% of the music consumed is local, the change is seen on a daily level. Of the 20 most played songs on Spotify in the country in early December, for example, ten were by artists from abroad. This is a trend that is expected to strengthen further.
Roll UK
Those who may have succeeded in breaking American hegemony this year, as expressed in both the Global Parade and the American Parade itself, were the British artists. In one week last October, five of the top ten songs in the world were British: songs by Adele, Doa Lipa and Elton John, Coldplay, Glass Animals and Ed Sheeran. Doa Lipa’s Levitating song was even voted Song of the Year (first place in the annual parade) in the United States and the Global Parade. I mean, it was the most streamed song of the year in the world.
Wonderful Crazy Night, Elton John (Photo: None)After years of declining British music, by 2021 it seemed that long-term investment in artists in the kingdom was finally bearing fruit. Not only UK-based artists have been successful this year, but also lots of young and new names in a variety of styles.
Let’s Get Physical
It’s hard to sum up a year in which Adele’s album came out – without talking about it. As expected, her fourth album, “30,” became a huge success worldwide and became the only album this year to sell over a million copies in the United States.
While the world of performances has been shut down, Adele, as well as other artists who are mostly turning to older age cuts, have taken advantage of the target audience’s interest in purchasing physical formats of their albums. The sale of records, CDs and tapes has been popular for almost a decade, but in 2021 the phenomenon reached extraordinary heights. From Adele’s album, Sony Music, the record company she signed, created half a million vinyl records. All the record factories in the world were hired for this purpose, and for a few weeks “30” was the only album produced on Earth.
Adele (Photo: Reuters)The huge amount caused Ed Sheeran, who also sells quite a few vinyl records, to bring forward the release of his latest album “=”. Pretty much at the same time came out Abba’s albums and a remake of Taylor Swift’s Red album, which also has a black plastic amateur audience. Thanks to such expenses, record sales reached an unprecedented high this year since the 1980s, but all of this came with a price: for years it was precisely the fringe genres that kept the format alive, including indie guitars or electronic music artists destined for di- Jim. But because of the current demand from the giant companies and mainstream artists for vinyls, there is suddenly no place in the manufacturing plants for the indie and electronics artists. They are pushed to the end of the queue and have to wait a long time for their prints. Some artists even said that the date they received from the factory for the production of their album is 2023.
Manskin Band (Photo: Dean Mouhtaropoulos.GettyImages)And thanks to Tiktok
In 2021, the phenomenon of independent artists succeeding through ticketing intensified. The hits coming out of Tiktok are almost always surprising. The Italian band Monskin, for example, which won the Eurovision Song Contest this year, has built a career through the app, which has, among other things, brought rock back to the charts. Glass Animals, a cute band from Oxford, also suddenly had huge success thanks to a challenge that began with its song from Heat Wave two years ago. Singer Ckay became one of the first international stars to leave Nigeria thanks to his hit Love Nwantiti. And there’s Arcaze from Orlando, whose remix of the Cherish band’s forgotten Do It to Me segment has become one of the hysterics of the year. The big corporations have not yet managed to beat Tiktok’s crazy algorithm, and the hope is that by 2022 they will fail to do so as well.
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