What music from today will stand the test of time?

The consumer market is much more splintered these days. The result is consensus and fewer mainstream, breakthrough great performers and musicians.
The result is also more access to great performers and musicians who don't find breakthrough, mainstream success.

 

Maybe some of the older posters can help me out with this. Thinking about Cosmo bringing up Wilco, I was trying to think of a band that now, decades later, is still considered great and influential and whose music is still listened to by high school kids but was not in the elite category of their peers (at least as far as mainstream success, records sold, etc.) during their prime. I was thinking the Doors. From what I've read, they were popular to an extent, but not to the level of the Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, etc. They were my favorite band as a kid because of my older brothers' influence and I still catch young kids listening to them today. Perhaps Wilco, despite not fitting the mainstream mold, is the the Doors of today -- an influential band that will actually grow in overall popularity through the years. Just a thought.

 

No one has mentioned Tom Waits?

 

Seems like a good one. Although comparing Black Sabbath and Wilco, even in such a roundabout way, makes me laugh.

 

And that reason is because Brian Wilson was no longer a part of the band. It was a collection of dipshits cashing checks by playing "Surfing USA."

The "what did they do after 'Pet Sounds'?" argument is largely rendered moot by the fact that Brian was crazy and playing in a sandbox for most of the 70s and 80s.

 

Or maybe he'll design his name so that if you hold it up backwards, it spells DEVIL!!!!!

 

I have to lash out at Hinder in this thread. Hinder wishes it could be half as good as Nickelback, which wishes it could be half as good as Kajagoogoo. Barf.

 

Which also proves that the "band" was nothing without its leader and creative force. It would be kinda like Denny Laine and some guys and a terrible female keyboardist/singer going on tour and calling themselves Wings -- who are you kidding and what's the point, other than soaking gullible fans?

 

Naw, I know Hinder sucks. I like 'em in spite of that.

 

Flag, I love you, buddy.
But I can't sit here and read you bad-mouthing Kajagoogoo.

 

Just like all the bands we you loved in the '80s right?

 

Exactly. . . except for Def Leppard. Def Leppard was good, dammit!