i appreciate a sentiment i’ve seen here and there around the net, even if it’s not as fully explored as i would like, that on a larger scale music industry puppets influence their fans more than politicians or pundits do. and with the very obviously controlled scene of the 21st century, this seems to be the case in an even stronger sense than in decades past. of course this has always been a reality as long as record labels and their owners have been determining what the airwaves deliver so it’s not just a matter of old people complaining. in any case it’s perfectly logical that we should be able to make judgments about developments that signal shifts in societal understanding. to imagine that popularized music is just that with purely static meaning in relation to other phenomena and that simply changes as people do from generation to generation is an absurd position to take.

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