Originally published in print February 2021.

Mark Fisher was a writer and teacher, whose books are often cited as some of the best introductions to critical theory. His brilliant Capitalist Realism explores how capitalism is commonly regarded as the only ‘realistic’ economic system. It is not that everyone agrees capitalism is fantastic, or even good, but it’s widely accepted that there’s no alternative. Fisher explores this through discussion of popular media, and his experience of teaching in England.

 

Fisher’s second book Ghosts of my Life focuses on the mostly negative cultural effects of capitalist realism. Fisher thought our inability to imagine alternative futures has stultified popular culture, particularly music. All pop culture can do is repackage what already exists, hence the fashion for endless revivals. Just look at contemporary artists like Dua Lipa, Fontaines D.C., Miley Cyrus, and Jessie Ware. They’ve all released albums in 2020 that intentionally evoke music from the 70s and 80s. 

 

Fisher contends “21st century culture is marked by… anachronism and inertia” and “the period from roughly 2003 to the present will be recognised — not in the far distant future, but very soon —  as the worst period for popular culture since the 1950s.” This statement was made in 2014, so seven years on seems a fair time to ask whether Fisher’s prediction came true. From my point of view, the idea that the period of 2003 to 2013 was culturally stagnant is ridiculous. There are plenty of artists from that period whose music I love, and still listen to today. Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, Death Grips Exmilitary, and Why?’s Alopecia are all examples of albums from these years that I consider great. Significantly, all three albums belong broadly to the genre of hip-hop, which flourished in this decade. There are plenty of other artists whose music from this period I like: Joanna Newsom, Animal Collective, Modest Mouse, FKA Twigs, Oneohtrix Point Never, Sufjan Stevens etc.

 

Was Fisher not aware of these artists? Surely, he couldn’t insist in good faith that Death Grips, Oneohtrix Point Never and Animal Collective were uncreative or unoriginal. Perhaps he considered these artists too niche to count as part of popular culture? If so, his position was misguided. Yes, they’re not being played in supermarkets (though you’d be surprised), but these bands have a definite presence in our music culture, even if it’s just through influencing the sounds of the most popular artists. 

 

But more to the point, a firm distinction between “mainstream” and “underground” culture is no longer tenable in the twenty-first century. Once, you could point to what played on the radio, MTV or Top of the Pops as “the mainstream”. And what was played on pirate radios, in secret raves, what was traded in mixtapes was “the underground”. When the internet came to be most people’s primary source of media, these distinctions were largely eroded.  

There are more bands making and distributing music now than ever before. As such, there are a lot more niches and subgenres. The way the internet allows people of similar interests to form communities has created whole subcultures around types of music that could never have even gotten studio time in the 60s.

 

What Fisher perceived to be a stagnation was really a moment of transition. Contemporary bands don’t need to sign to a label, or have a radio hit, in order to find a listenership. The way music is produced and distributed changed rapidly in the period Fisher was writing. A brave new digital world was being created and populated.

 

Was the music of 2003 to 2013 bad? Or was it good? To my mind, this is a stupid way to approach music culture. There were so many artists active in this year, that you could spend a lifetime just trying to listen to them all. At the end of that lifetime, why would you even want to lump them all together? The definitive characteristic of the 2000s might have been its lack of a single dominant style, saving hip-hop, but rather that so many different styles were germinating.

 

The thing that makes me scratch my head when I read Fisher’s music criticism is that he infuriates himself over the blandest music of the period. For example, he discusses the Black Eyed Peas song ‘I Gotta Feeling’, writing, “In spite of the track’s declamatory repetition, there’s a fragile, fugitive quality about the pleasures ‘I Gotta Feeling’ so confidently expects… [It] comes off more like a memory of a past pleasure than an anticipation of a pleasure that is yet to be felt.” There is no evidence, not even a quotation from the lyrics, to support these claims. Fisher attributes to the song subtle emotions it simply doesn’t have, as if to justify the time he wasted listening to it.

 

Why does he insist on searching for hidden sadness in ‘I Gotta Feeling’ when he could listen to the explicit despair of Have a Nice Life’s album Deathconsciousness from the previous year? Because one is more popular, and therefore of more importance to the culture? The mainstream has always been the place where genuine emotion goes to die. Who is looking to Black Eyed Peas for spiritual food but Fisher himself? Nobody is expecting to walk into Spar and have their soul ripped in half by the beautiful music coming through the speakers. 

Fisher’s claim is shaky, and I think he was too smart not to realise it. I don’t think he truly believed these claims about music stagnating. Rather, I think it was a provocation. He wanted his readers and students to look at our culture critically, and question whether capitalism was really as beneficial for our mental health and our art as it is for our businesses. He wanted people to question, to argue, and to think. But this goal was accomplished at the expense of dismissing and insulting a whole generation of musicians, who are genuinely making some great art, and of giving intellectual support to all those people on internet forums who complain they were “born in the wrong generation”. And for that, it’s hard to forgive him.