I was watching all of news reports of Britney Spears' attempted comeback, and I realized that it has been ten years since the first wave of teen pop music aimed at the children of the baby boomers came into existence. When the Spice Girls came from across the pond to sing their "Wannabe" ("Yo! I tell you what I want, what I really really want") and Hanson was singing "MMBop", who knew that this would end the domination of grunge and the east coast/west coast gangsta rap feud and usher in a whole new generation of people to music? At any rate, this sea change would bring in the Backstreet Boys, Nsync/Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Chrsitina Aguilera, Usher, Beyonce/Destiny's Child, Jessica Simpson, 98 Degrees/Nick Lachey, and a whole bunch of other artists making music for an audience much younger than the grunge or gangsta rap audiences of the early to mid 1990s. In fact, most of the audience for this early teen pop were in their early teens or tweens at the time. This audience turned MTV's TRL into an institution in the process, and it was appointment viewing for many years. They also bought CDs in droves, giving the major record labels their biggest sales in the history of recorded music.

Fast forward to today; thanks to file sharing and iPods (and mostly a lot of crappy music), music sales have plummeted drastically over the last five years. While some of the teen artists were able to transition their music into a more adult sound and stay popular (Justin Timberlake, Usher, Beyonce, Christina Aguilera), most of the initial vanguard of the first wave of teen pop have dropped into obscurity or have struggled to stay popular by becoming tabloid fodder (Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson). TRL attracts about half the audience now as it did during the teen pop heyday, and they are looking to reformat the show and call it "YouRL". MTV itself rarely plays any music these days, and most teens find their music entertainment online, especially at Myspace and YouTube. The young teens who were fans of the initial teen pop phase are in college or have graduated from college now, and they spend more time listening to their iPods than the radio. The question now is, will there be a second wave of teen pop that will bring pop music back into the spotlight; will the now adult fans of the initial teen pop craze create a new music scene that was as innovative as the acid rock of the late 1960s, the punk rock and new wave of the late 1970s and early 1980s, or the alternative and hip-hop movements of the late 1980s and early 1990s; or is popular music as we know it a dying art form?

728huey said:

i don't feel that teen pop has left the spotlight.



i don't believe so. though they may try to draw inspiration from it or pretense... i don't see anything innovative happening on a mass scale. maybe an artist or two here and there. these so called new "punk" acts are just that..and ACT. not the real thing. there's really not much i can see teenagers or youth to truly be rebelling against in a world that's constantly catering to them. true hip hop died in the mid to late 80's IMO. alternative which is still pop/rock to me will continue to sound the same. some of it good most boring.



pop music will always be around. i think a lot of people who may be able to revive it will either be lost in the shuffle of it all or it may come from the very people who were either part of the 1st wave or the big names we are all familiar with here... Madonna, Prince, Michael, etc...


in a way...it's like going into a store and having a million choices. sure there's some good shit out there but after looking for more than a few minutes most people give up. because it all looks and sounds the same. i'd like to think that most people here are pretty versed in music and constantly seek other genres and artists despite of who their favourites are. but for the general public they aren't going to care to much what's fed to them.

i still get excited about buying an actual cd or dvd. reading the credits about who produced what who wrote this and that, artwork etc...
teens nowadays seem to have the attention span of a light switch (no offense to them) because that's how they are being conditioned. "just give me the song i want and give it to me now" even if i have to take it from a site mentality.

it's said that everything comes back in 20 years... so the 80's should be in full effect by now.
i wouldn't be surprised if Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, and the NKOTB get together and do an 80's fever tour and blow these newer acts out of the water.