The Good & The Ugly: 2020

It’s been a long ass year, hasn’t it? Certainly, the last thing people could’ve expected from this year was a pandemic, halting the music industry in its tracks. More than anything, it forced a reset in the norm we had been accustomed for the last decade. Usually, we’re granted the gift of living with songs, watching them evolve as we interact with our loved ones, our friends, and the general public. Artists couldn’t tour to recoup money and gain profits. Albums and songs dissipated instantly without the ability to humanly interact. Tik Tok was the biggest factor in the consumption, creating a fascinating landscape for songs to surface on Billboard charts. It was gigantic but there was also an inherent disposability to these songs; without the ability to experience music, the internet can dispose of you in an instant. That’s the thing with the internet: it’s a never-ending revolving door of what’s new. It’s up to the artist and their music to get in the building without shuffling back into obscurity.

Radio had the hardest time adjusting because, again, there was no outside. Radio simply couldn’t dictate what people were actually listening to because there was no people to share it with. As a result, we watched them grasp for straws as to what the hell people actually cared about. The safe bet was to go for proven stars, for better or for worse. There was the bland “Memories” by Maroon 5, a tried…