It's a subject that California punk band The Offspring touched upon with its 1998 hit single, " Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)":įrom its saccharine synth melody to frontman Dexter Holland's awkward and emotionless rapping, everything about "Cruising California" feels slopped together without much care.
When the conversations about a musician's work often focuses on authenticity-which is an awkward and ineffective method of measuring one's ability to craft sincere and stirring songs-and persona, keeping a tab on the latest sonic trends can be downright shameful. Trend chasing is a fairly taboo act in any creative field, where having a distinct and unique vision is the key element to creating affecting and effective art, and it can be a death wish in pop music. Some artists decide to do their best to keep up with the Joneses. Others find new ways of expressing themselves through a variety of new musical and aesthetic languages. Namely, how does one continue to create new work in a creative field that's also fallen on hard economic times? Some stay the course of their creative path. It's a natural process of life, and one which many pop musicians haven't quite factored into their careers. The people behind the music (those on the way up the charts and those fading out) are not only susceptible to the anguish caused by a fickle mass audience but also the kind of change everyone experiences-aging. It's disruptive innovation in the sense that new sounds bubble up to become cultural behemoths while displacing musical styles that have reigned supreme for years (or perhaps months). Pop music has always been in a consistent state of flux, to the point where one of the few constants in the art form has been-oddly enough-change.
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