I think that the next big thing is not going to be a big thing. It’s going to be small groups performing for small audiences locally and live. People will appreciate the talents of locals who they can come to know personally and who they can be inspired by and learn from in person.
That sounds like a typical characteristic of ‘the next big thing’, rather than the next big thing itself. New waves in popular music have always started local, and then exploded out of bars, pubs, village halls… skiffle, beat groups and punk being prime examples...
With everything feeling fake and AI taking over, I think people will crave face-to-face, embodied, real, and tangible experiences Of art. Most art won't get out but I'm sure some things will break through.
I think the next big thing in music it’s already happening regional music it’s becoming international now. Bad bunny, peso pluma and C tangana are looking back to their cultures to create his art
At the risk of going off a side track, that same type of "creativity" takes place in the zone where the meadows meet the woodland and the resulting growth from cross fertilization so to speak.
Where food groups overlap such as Cambodia with the French influence, to name just one.
It's why the charges of "cultural appropriation" are nonsense as that's exactly where the creativity happens.
It's the borderlands outside of the mainstream where new life and forms arise; where creativity is incubated.
I'm an Aussie, so some of the Americans here may not realise that almost all of our entertainment and culture has been imported from the United States for the last few generations. I grew up watching American TV, listening to American music, watching American movies, and reading American books. Culturally, I was raised in America.
This is changing, however. Today, the United States' monopoly on culture is waning. In the last few years, in no small part thanks to streaming services, the people that I know have been watching shows that are more hetero-cultural. People are talking about Korean, Indian, German, Japanese, Chinese, and even Australian music, movies, and television.
This extends to literature. The rest of the world is developing, and their people are becoming educated. With it, they will begin to produce art, literature, and other media, likely with good English translations.
We are entering a different period in history, in which the cultural centre of the world is not the United States, and it likely will never be again.
Is there any reason that you, or anyone else, sees that “the next big thing” in music may not come from somewhere that has not already provided a previous “next big thing,” e.g. Liverpool, Cartagena, New Orleans, Kingston, Havana, Rio de Janeiro, just to name a few port cities in particular with strong musical traditions and significant global output? Not to sound too businesslike about it.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that the most important factor for the production of “next big things” is a vibrant local live scene of relatively young people. Given reports of young people stuck in their bedrooms on their phones obsessed with the internet, that seems a challenging proposition. Oth, perhaps Tik Tok was the “next big thing” and future “next big things” will be similarly distributed and not from one specific place. Perhaps the age of monoliths is over.
I also think it important not to see this through purely North America or European eyes, or hear it through those ears. I mean we’ve already had K-Pop, right?
I have some firsthand experience with the K-Pop industry. It is completely manufactured by major corporations. It's a top-down thing (rather than coming from bottom up). I wouldn't put it in the same category as other musical movements. I think Ted's point is that you've got to get away from corporate control in order for a new scene to develop. You may have a point about Havana and Kingston, then. Maybe also Dakar, Bamako, or other cities in the Sahel are in the running.
Thanks. I will admit to have paid close to zero attention to K-Pop, probably instinctively for the reason you mention.
I’ve been around “world” music for over forty years now - and will admit to being somewhat jaded by the fluctuations of the biz. Of course, besides giant corporations there have been all sorts of small to middling labels attempting to influence the market. And providing some outstanding music. I try to pay most attention to those run by enthusiasts, of which there have been many. Currently, I’d suggest we are in somewhat of a lull and many face the common and obvious struggles of the contemporary industry. There has certainly been a precipitous drop in really exciting releases over the past decade. But, cherrypicking will still result in some . . . cherries.
I haven't seen you comment on Oliver Anthony - his newest tune posted 10 days ago is up to 3,030,707 views on YouTube - and like you, in interviews he's very critical of the music business relying on formulas. If you haven't seen "Scornful Woman" would love for you to the check it out and comment if you have the time - and particularly what you think of the Billy Contreras fiddle solo, which seems like new territory to me. Anthony himself comes across as crafting his own version of speech/song with his Virginia country turns of phrase.
The thing to look for is 1) a sense of rebellion and 2) a "scene" to nurture the movement. The Big Thing in my generation was Punk. I was 16 in 1977. The movement began with a sense of rebellion against the 60's generation who were perceived as sell-outs. The Scene was first in New York and London and exploded in towns across the Anglophone world wherever the Ramones or the Sex Pistols performed.
Where is the sense of rebellion today? I see a lot of people content with corporate pop in all forms -- complete with bland monochromatic chord changes and auto-tune on all voices. People must unconsciously want something more authentic, but I'm not seeing it. Perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places.
Also, is it possible to nurture a new sound and new movement without a physical place for the music to be born in? Given the crisis of connection, is it even possible? Can social media alone create a scene that nurtures new music?
Having said that, I agree with Ted that human creativity will ultimately find a way to flourish.
I remember the rise of Punk. There was a CBC program in the early 1970s called "Here Come the '70s" that forecast its fashion, especially hairstyles. Musically, however, they were forecasting the rise of atonal chanting. Win some, lose some. :)
it will be from the heartland, because what the market is desperate for is something that has become prohibitively rare…honest without needing to portray it, real voices, real instruments, (real dropped timing)…real. with no stink of being fabricated at the boards.
The hopeful necessary optimist is up-voting your nod to 'the heartland.' The equally necessary pragmatist in me knows this is wishful thinking on my part and that what greets me wherever I tune in to terrestrial regional radio online, especially community radio, I am not finding or hearing much if any "real dropped timing" from recordings, and a diminution of the regionally flavored and blue collar struggler next door hosting\producing these broad and netcasts.....
Our host on this The Honest Broker Substack page, Ted Gioia seems to be an exceptional exception to the House Rules....
My wishful thinking has rarely prevailed in my 66th year on this dizzying spinning orb.
Wishing other individual makers of media greater traction in our land of the free and home of the brave (which the Marx Brothers sang as "Home of the knave\And land of the spree...") back in the late 1920's on Vo-De-Ville and Broadway stages and filmed for our new national moviehouse industry through the 1930's, 40's and so forth such as Cocoanuts, Duck Soup, Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera, Horse Feathers and A Night In Casablanca....
Now there's the kinda film festival my local theaters could book back when I was growing up in NYC in the 1960's, 70's and Trump-ian 80's & '90's with near full houses at the Carnegie Cinema and other underground revival movie houses and re-purposed store-front community centers in the outer boroughs....
Keep a sense of humor and some space for an occasional instrumental interlude filmed live such as a harp solo or piano contortionist like Harpo and Chick-o....Not to mention the bellowing cadences of WC Fields shouting down from the porch-hung swinging snoozer in 1934's rib-tickling and Vo-De-Ville shticking movie IT'S A Gift, matching the Paul Revere dashing through the apartment row-house lawn shouting out the shaggy dog punch line: "Are you Carl LaFong?! That's capital C small a small r small l capital L small a capital F small o small n and small g?! La-Fong, ARE YOU CARL LA-FONG?!?!?"
Boy howdy and how we could use some of this kind of Vo-De-Ville to Hollywood cinematic magical Special Effects (requiring only that above-referenced Porch Snoozer Swing on precariously hung chain, a stair-descending cocoanut and a crabby sleep-deprived put-out-of-the-domestic bliss bedroom indoors of this precarious porch swing by his cleaver-wielding wife with the demeanor of a 19th Century British battle ax, errr battleship....:
From " It's a Gift" Mr. 'Bissonay' is trying to sleep, but an insurence salesman wants to know if he knows a man by the name of La Fong, Carl LaFong ... "I hear he's interested in an Annuity Policy. Maybe you would be interested in such a policy?!"
Interesting, but I believe there will be no more big surprises, big new anything, since the (very poor) way the world of musical (not to mention most other) entertainment operates these days works against this. Certainly it won’t be at the level of the many major new genres emerging in the 60s through 80/90s. When was the last time we experienced the birth of a brand new genre of music, within years becoming a big new thing in at least big parts of the world. Mostly, with the exception of maybe dubstep and maybe a few African and Asian genres, this hasn’t happened after the arrival of the smartphone, just to pick that game changer. Vaporwave? Seapunk? PC Music maybe, but I’m talking major, as in Prog, Techno, House, Grunge. Perhaps I’m just wrong here, and feel free to tell me so, preferably with a counter argument, but it is my gut reaction to this post.
The next new thing has rarely come from the major cities. Look at 20th century U.S. musical innovations: New Orleans, Kansas City, Memphis, Detroit, Nashville. Chicago and Philly played major roles, but innovation usually comes from the hinterlands …
I agree Jim. The music came from the hinterlands and then traveled and was financialized in the port cities because they have more people but also the money. But started out in Mississippi delta or sticks of Tennessee or northern England or farm belt of Ohio.
Jesse Welles, y’all. Cracked the code. An iPhone, an acoustic guitar, and relentlessly prolific great songwriting! Yep, sounds like an old formula… until you try to do it then you find out how hard it is to be simple and original.
I may be too simplistic, but I think the “next best thing” is always on the fringes because we are rebels at heart. It has more to do with human nature and whatever pushes the envelope at the time mixed with a bit of talent that appeals to the heart and senses. The works that last appeal to the parts of us that don’t change. That’s why they become classics.
My husband and I are both musicians, and we just saw “Yacht Rock” with Michael MacDonald, Steve Lukather et.al., showcasing the popular music of the 70’s and 80’s, which was blown out of the water by MTv. Stuff we loved “Back in the Day”. Lately I’ve discovered an Italian guitar quartet that’s playing to sold out crowds through Europe, and their Videos on YouTube. They don’t sing, but they have made lovely arrangements of “Africa” (Toto) that the audience without prompting, sings along with; a Van Halen group that their video JUMP is filmed at a skateboard park (with skateboarders); a lovely treatment of SOUNDS OF SILENCE / LAST OF THE MOHICANS; and a Disney medley, Mozart, Beethoven and Beatles ( HEY JUDE is a new addition to the lineup for me ). A computer-controlled light board amps up the ambience. A nice introduction to what exposure that music we loved is still getting. Talented players, arrangements to be studied by songwriters like me who are trying to home-record with limited instruments. Recommended. Also check out PLAYING FOR CHANGE.
A similar thing happened in the 1930s when the music industry blocked radio from playing records. Radio stations responded with creativity instead of shouting and suing. They cultivated and hired local musicians and orchestras. For example, a mid-sized station in Huntington, WV had its own composer and arranger.
I think that the next big thing is not going to be a big thing. It’s going to be small groups performing for small audiences locally and live. People will appreciate the talents of locals who they can come to know personally and who they can be inspired by and learn from in person.
That sounds like a typical characteristic of ‘the next big thing’, rather than the next big thing itself. New waves in popular music have always started local, and then exploded out of bars, pubs, village halls… skiffle, beat groups and punk being prime examples...
In this case, they're remain local and small, that's the difference
That doesn’t sound like a ‘big thing’ to me, however commendable (there’s nothing I like better myself)…
The big thing is that there will be no big thing anymore...
Except industry manufactured shite
With everything feeling fake and AI taking over, I think people will crave face-to-face, embodied, real, and tangible experiences Of art. Most art won't get out but I'm sure some things will break through.
I think the next big thing in music it’s already happening regional music it’s becoming international now. Bad bunny, peso pluma and C tangana are looking back to their cultures to create his art
At the risk of going off a side track, that same type of "creativity" takes place in the zone where the meadows meet the woodland and the resulting growth from cross fertilization so to speak.
Where food groups overlap such as Cambodia with the French influence, to name just one.
It's why the charges of "cultural appropriation" are nonsense as that's exactly where the creativity happens.
It's the borderlands outside of the mainstream where new life and forms arise; where creativity is incubated.
You speak of ecology. Permaculture! Nature is the great teacher.
Interesting read. Thanks for your time and effort. The next big thing is already here, in my opinion. Aurora, from Norway.
I'm an Aussie, so some of the Americans here may not realise that almost all of our entertainment and culture has been imported from the United States for the last few generations. I grew up watching American TV, listening to American music, watching American movies, and reading American books. Culturally, I was raised in America.
This is changing, however. Today, the United States' monopoly on culture is waning. In the last few years, in no small part thanks to streaming services, the people that I know have been watching shows that are more hetero-cultural. People are talking about Korean, Indian, German, Japanese, Chinese, and even Australian music, movies, and television.
This extends to literature. The rest of the world is developing, and their people are becoming educated. With it, they will begin to produce art, literature, and other media, likely with good English translations.
We are entering a different period in history, in which the cultural centre of the world is not the United States, and it likely will never be again.
Is there any reason that you, or anyone else, sees that “the next big thing” in music may not come from somewhere that has not already provided a previous “next big thing,” e.g. Liverpool, Cartagena, New Orleans, Kingston, Havana, Rio de Janeiro, just to name a few port cities in particular with strong musical traditions and significant global output? Not to sound too businesslike about it.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that the most important factor for the production of “next big things” is a vibrant local live scene of relatively young people. Given reports of young people stuck in their bedrooms on their phones obsessed with the internet, that seems a challenging proposition. Oth, perhaps Tik Tok was the “next big thing” and future “next big things” will be similarly distributed and not from one specific place. Perhaps the age of monoliths is over.
I also think it important not to see this through purely North America or European eyes, or hear it through those ears. I mean we’ve already had K-Pop, right?
I have some firsthand experience with the K-Pop industry. It is completely manufactured by major corporations. It's a top-down thing (rather than coming from bottom up). I wouldn't put it in the same category as other musical movements. I think Ted's point is that you've got to get away from corporate control in order for a new scene to develop. You may have a point about Havana and Kingston, then. Maybe also Dakar, Bamako, or other cities in the Sahel are in the running.
Thanks. I will admit to have paid close to zero attention to K-Pop, probably instinctively for the reason you mention.
I’ve been around “world” music for over forty years now - and will admit to being somewhat jaded by the fluctuations of the biz. Of course, besides giant corporations there have been all sorts of small to middling labels attempting to influence the market. And providing some outstanding music. I try to pay most attention to those run by enthusiasts, of which there have been many. Currently, I’d suggest we are in somewhat of a lull and many face the common and obvious struggles of the contemporary industry. There has certainly been a precipitous drop in really exciting releases over the past decade. But, cherrypicking will still result in some . . . cherries.
I haven't seen you comment on Oliver Anthony - his newest tune posted 10 days ago is up to 3,030,707 views on YouTube - and like you, in interviews he's very critical of the music business relying on formulas. If you haven't seen "Scornful Woman" would love for you to the check it out and comment if you have the time - and particularly what you think of the Billy Contreras fiddle solo, which seems like new territory to me. Anthony himself comes across as crafting his own version of speech/song with his Virginia country turns of phrase.
The thing to look for is 1) a sense of rebellion and 2) a "scene" to nurture the movement. The Big Thing in my generation was Punk. I was 16 in 1977. The movement began with a sense of rebellion against the 60's generation who were perceived as sell-outs. The Scene was first in New York and London and exploded in towns across the Anglophone world wherever the Ramones or the Sex Pistols performed.
Where is the sense of rebellion today? I see a lot of people content with corporate pop in all forms -- complete with bland monochromatic chord changes and auto-tune on all voices. People must unconsciously want something more authentic, but I'm not seeing it. Perhaps I'm just looking in the wrong places.
Also, is it possible to nurture a new sound and new movement without a physical place for the music to be born in? Given the crisis of connection, is it even possible? Can social media alone create a scene that nurtures new music?
Having said that, I agree with Ted that human creativity will ultimately find a way to flourish.
I remember the rise of Punk. There was a CBC program in the early 1970s called "Here Come the '70s" that forecast its fashion, especially hairstyles. Musically, however, they were forecasting the rise of atonal chanting. Win some, lose some. :)
it will be from the heartland, because what the market is desperate for is something that has become prohibitively rare…honest without needing to portray it, real voices, real instruments, (real dropped timing)…real. with no stink of being fabricated at the boards.
The hopeful necessary optimist is up-voting your nod to 'the heartland.' The equally necessary pragmatist in me knows this is wishful thinking on my part and that what greets me wherever I tune in to terrestrial regional radio online, especially community radio, I am not finding or hearing much if any "real dropped timing" from recordings, and a diminution of the regionally flavored and blue collar struggler next door hosting\producing these broad and netcasts.....
Our host on this The Honest Broker Substack page, Ted Gioia seems to be an exceptional exception to the House Rules....
My wishful thinking has rarely prevailed in my 66th year on this dizzying spinning orb.
Wishing other individual makers of media greater traction in our land of the free and home of the brave (which the Marx Brothers sang as "Home of the knave\And land of the spree...") back in the late 1920's on Vo-De-Ville and Broadway stages and filmed for our new national moviehouse industry through the 1930's, 40's and so forth such as Cocoanuts, Duck Soup, Animal Crackers, A Night at the Opera, Horse Feathers and A Night In Casablanca....
Now there's the kinda film festival my local theaters could book back when I was growing up in NYC in the 1960's, 70's and Trump-ian 80's & '90's with near full houses at the Carnegie Cinema and other underground revival movie houses and re-purposed store-front community centers in the outer boroughs....
Keep a sense of humor and some space for an occasional instrumental interlude filmed live such as a harp solo or piano contortionist like Harpo and Chick-o....Not to mention the bellowing cadences of WC Fields shouting down from the porch-hung swinging snoozer in 1934's rib-tickling and Vo-De-Ville shticking movie IT'S A Gift, matching the Paul Revere dashing through the apartment row-house lawn shouting out the shaggy dog punch line: "Are you Carl LaFong?! That's capital C small a small r small l capital L small a capital F small o small n and small g?! La-Fong, ARE YOU CARL LA-FONG?!?!?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ar79EC2I90
Carl LaFong
Chris “homemovieschrisbungo” Bungo
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38,576 views Apr 12, 2017
W.C. Fields - IT'S A GIFT (1934)
Boy howdy and how we could use some of this kind of Vo-De-Ville to Hollywood cinematic magical Special Effects (requiring only that above-referenced Porch Snoozer Swing on precariously hung chain, a stair-descending cocoanut and a crabby sleep-deprived put-out-of-the-domestic bliss bedroom indoors of this precarious porch swing by his cleaver-wielding wife with the demeanor of a 19th Century British battle ax, errr battleship....:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41SFTn9xHus&t=18s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41SFTn9xHus
Out on the Porch
williamclaudefields
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434,189 views Feb 2, 2007
From " It's a Gift" Mr. 'Bissonay' is trying to sleep, but an insurence salesman wants to know if he knows a man by the name of La Fong, Carl LaFong ... "I hear he's interested in an Annuity Policy. Maybe you would be interested in such a policy?!"
Tio Mitchito
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Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of A-Tone-ment Tenement sSeekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
Interesting, but I believe there will be no more big surprises, big new anything, since the (very poor) way the world of musical (not to mention most other) entertainment operates these days works against this. Certainly it won’t be at the level of the many major new genres emerging in the 60s through 80/90s. When was the last time we experienced the birth of a brand new genre of music, within years becoming a big new thing in at least big parts of the world. Mostly, with the exception of maybe dubstep and maybe a few African and Asian genres, this hasn’t happened after the arrival of the smartphone, just to pick that game changer. Vaporwave? Seapunk? PC Music maybe, but I’m talking major, as in Prog, Techno, House, Grunge. Perhaps I’m just wrong here, and feel free to tell me so, preferably with a counter argument, but it is my gut reaction to this post.
The next new thing has rarely come from the major cities. Look at 20th century U.S. musical innovations: New Orleans, Kansas City, Memphis, Detroit, Nashville. Chicago and Philly played major roles, but innovation usually comes from the hinterlands …
Detroit was a major and affluent city back then. And it's not just Chicago and Philly, tons, if not most of the stuff came from L.A and New York.
I agree Jim. The music came from the hinterlands and then traveled and was financialized in the port cities because they have more people but also the money. But started out in Mississippi delta or sticks of Tennessee or northern England or farm belt of Ohio.
"Cleveland Rocks," Ian Hunter
Jesse Welles, y’all. Cracked the code. An iPhone, an acoustic guitar, and relentlessly prolific great songwriting! Yep, sounds like an old formula… until you try to do it then you find out how hard it is to be simple and original.
I may be too simplistic, but I think the “next best thing” is always on the fringes because we are rebels at heart. It has more to do with human nature and whatever pushes the envelope at the time mixed with a bit of talent that appeals to the heart and senses. The works that last appeal to the parts of us that don’t change. That’s why they become classics.
My husband and I are both musicians, and we just saw “Yacht Rock” with Michael MacDonald, Steve Lukather et.al., showcasing the popular music of the 70’s and 80’s, which was blown out of the water by MTv. Stuff we loved “Back in the Day”. Lately I’ve discovered an Italian guitar quartet that’s playing to sold out crowds through Europe, and their Videos on YouTube. They don’t sing, but they have made lovely arrangements of “Africa” (Toto) that the audience without prompting, sings along with; a Van Halen group that their video JUMP is filmed at a skateboard park (with skateboarders); a lovely treatment of SOUNDS OF SILENCE / LAST OF THE MOHICANS; and a Disney medley, Mozart, Beethoven and Beatles ( HEY JUDE is a new addition to the lineup for me ). A computer-controlled light board amps up the ambience. A nice introduction to what exposure that music we loved is still getting. Talented players, arrangements to be studied by songwriters like me who are trying to home-record with limited instruments. Recommended. Also check out PLAYING FOR CHANGE.
A similar thing happened in the 1930s when the music industry blocked radio from playing records. Radio stations responded with creativity instead of shouting and suing. They cultivated and hired local musicians and orchestras. For example, a mid-sized station in Huntington, WV had its own composer and arranger.
https://polistrasmill.com/2025/06/12/return-to-local/