Author: Alexander De Koning

The early 2000s was a ripe time for the music industry, with physical record sales plummeting and piracy and trading websites like Napster on the rise, it was an unprecedented time for music. One where no one really had an answer to, forcing record companies to scramble and close up any loopholes they could find. However, the joke was on them, because soon enough those file sharing and streaming services would eventually become the preeminent way of consuming music.

It’s easy to judge something by its cover. It’s easy to merely see something on the surface and just write it off or dismiss it, such as the fate of a lot of non-mainstream music. It’s as if there’s only a small window for music that people will tolerate, and not force them to stretch beyond their means or step out of their comfort zone, now thanks to suggestive streaming services like Pandora that recommend you music you might like. They tend to pigeonholed you in a musical box that caters to your niche genre, which sounds like a great idea for a streaming service, but actually could be debilitating to one’s music taste. Only the curious and patient dare to listen to new types of music they’re not usually exposed to. However, fans of one particular genre have been caught up in this struggle for decades.

It’s easy to say that the past year has introduced a plethora of knowledgeable and self-aware records – Kendrick’s hidden double album that’s meant to play in reverse, Father John Misty’s one hour and seventeen minute lecture of a record, and Sufjan’s exploration of cosmic poetry – we have more music than we need to digest for self-reflection, music that takes the term “concept album” another step forward. (But seriously, what album released nowadays doesn’t have some kind of concept behind it?) It’s something we shouldn’t take for granted, however. With today’s mainstream music overlooking this social commentary and self-reflection, concept albums and mixtapes have started to fill in that gap for self-evaluation and discovery. 2017 has come to show that records are more aware of themselves as tools for change, expressing thoughts and ideas that come across clearer than through any other medium nowadays.