While the stars sank into a corona coma, the children and the elderly conquered the parades: Summary 2021 in music

While the plague put the senior artists to sleep, the youngsters quickly entered the vacuum, the veterans returned to the game in a huge way, American hegemony only grew stronger, Britain regained its power, the tiktok drove everyone crazy and Adele turned vinyl into a hot commodity again.

7 notes on the year that has been in international music

Avi Goldberger

29/12/2021

Wednesday, December 29, 2021, 00:00

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Ran Danker performs Olivia Rodrigo's "Drivers License" at the Walla Studio (Editing: Aviad Ballyipur and Hair: Gili Algebystyling: Eyal Hajabi)

1. Post-Cubid

We entered 2021 when the world was in shambles, which severely affected the music industry. In terms of spending, January and February were in a coma that would not embarrass bears in the winter. During all this time there was, more or less, only one hit in the world: "Driver's License", a melancholy ballad of a 17-year-old Disney star named Olivia Rodrigo. Not something that woke the pandas. The clubs, halls, record stores - all closed until further notice. The festivals planned for the summer were canceled one after the other, the tours were postponed and apps and radio continued to play songs from 2020 and even back.

When March came and the world began to break free from the closures, the world of music also began to awaken. Two and a half months into the year came the release of the first notable albums for 2021: Justin Bieber and Lena Del Rey released new works that day, and for the industry - the signal was given back to routine. At least to try to get back to routine.

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Only one hit in the world.

Olivia Rodrigo (Photo: GettyImages, Kevin Mazur / MTV VMAs 2021 / Getty Images for MTV / ViacomCBS)

But it all comes with an asterisk.

The amount of recorded material accumulated by artists and record companies in the last two years is enormous - but without backing them up on tour, which is the real money maker, the viability of publishing the materials is very limited.

After the Corona caused the postponement of the big tour of 2020, again this year, due to the restrictions in different countries and the difficulty of moving from country to country, the tours of artists like Doa Lipa, Weekend, Harry Styles - and in fact almost all - were postponed again.

Artists who have already tried to travel the world have faced moment-to-moment cancellations and suffered damages.

Such was the case, for example, of Thomas Anders of Modern Talking, who canceled his upcoming appearance in Tel Aviv due to the closure of the sky.

In the rest of the world, too, the stories are pretty much the same.

Members of the Eighties Human League were already on the ferry from the UK to Belgium, when they discovered that the congestion limit had been restored there.

The show, of course, was postponed.

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Severe pocket injury.

Ed Sheeran (Photo: GettyImages, Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for iHeartRadio)

The extent of the damage from the lack of performances is no less amazing.

The British Sun revealed this week that the British Ed Sheeran's income from performances fell from about NIS 810,000 per day (!) In 2019, to at least seven shekels per day in 2020.

The reason for this: in 2019, he managed the most successful tour in history, selling almost nine million tickets and bringing in about NIS 2.5 billion.

In 2020, however, all of its profits amounted to streaming revenue.

If we try to be optimistic, then the 2022 show schedule seems pretty tight right now, even though everything is very hesitant. Artists do not set performances around the globe and things are mostly limited to shows in the same country, or a maximum of two or three locations or physically close countries. Will be removed, or at least become easier, the music world will continue to operate in a neutral state.

2. The Young Revolution

Excitingly, while the big stars in the world put their careers on hold, we discovered that in the pop world there is really no vacuum. Like the wild boars that filled the streets of Haifa as people hid in the house, the parades also found substitutes for the giant artists who are waiting with their releases, until the world of performances returns to normal.

What took advantage of this void were very young artists, some even minors. The same Olivia Rodrigo for example, only 17 years old, continued to make a force. Her debut album "Sour" was one of the big hits of the year. The second hit out of it, "Good 4 U", won like its predecessor the first place in all the important parades in the world. When at the end of the year it was announced that she was up for eight Grammy Awards at the upcoming ceremony, it was already clear that this was her year. She was not the only one. Australian pop singer The Kid Laroi reached number one on the US charts with "Stay", his duet with Justin Bieber when he was just 16 years old.

Also back with a successful album this year.

Billy Aylish (Photo: GettyImages)

These two were joined this year by other singers, with 19-year-old Billy Aylish, who returned this year with a successful new album, already considered old.

Earlier this year it was 17-year-old Canadian Tate McRae, who in March released her debut album, "Too Young to Be Sad", on RCA - the same company that previously signed Elvis Presley, David Bowie and Miley Cyrus.

At the end of the year we also met Gail, also 17 years old, for her debut hit "ABCDEFU", a cheeky rocking farewell song, on his way to conquering the first places in the world in early 2022.

There is something preliminary, exciting about these successes.

Gail's social networking pages, for example, feature an ordinary American girl from Nashville, who in one post gives credit to her mother for a photo she took, in another she brags that she ate four sandwiches with cheese steak and in a third post shows an unfocused picture of Times Square in New York, where an advertisement for her music is shown.

Unlike the giant artists, whose entire publication goes through a battery of publicists, we experience something moving, wild and real here. Somewhere, the music of all these young people is like this - things that girls and boys write, without filters of producers and activists. You should quickly enjoy the authenticity This one, before the super-publicists take over.

Revenge of the Elders

From the other extreme, not only the youngsters took advantage of the absence of the stars of the hour to stand out, but also some veteran stars, some in their 70s, 80s and even 90s (!). It's no secret that in the last decade big names from the past have struggled to find expression in parades. Artists like U2 and Madonna repeatedly tried to return to the main stage, which aggressively rejected them.

When Elton John's 74-year-old duet "Cold Heart" with young British singer Dua Lipa came out last summer, he told the London Capitol Radio that he really hopes this segment will make it to the top 20 on the charts. After all, he hadn’t had a hit in almost two decades. And here, half a year has passed since then, and Elton John, amazingly, this year had three (!) Hits at number one on the UK charts, including this song.

The Swedish band Abba also made a comeback out of nowhere. The band members released "Voyage" in October, their first album in 40 years, which became one of the best-selling in the world in 2021 and also released a top 10 hit all over Europe, "Don't Shut Me Down".

Basically, past artists are still having a hard time breaking into the mainstream charts, but in the last two years they are starting to see a slight change in trend, with language and name flashing success for artists like Whitney Houston, Kylie Minogue or Gary Barlow. One of the main reasons for the veterans' absence from the parades was that the use of apps for listening to music, from which the parade data is taken, was mainly the property of teenagers. But as time goes on, more and more adult audiences are joining the apps, helping veteran artists become part of the game again.

Beyond these hits, 2021 has been good for veterans especially in the album segment.

The album that topped the first week of the year was "McCartney III", Paul McCartney's first album to reach the top since 1989, and later this year we also won successful albums by Duran Duran, Paul Waller, Tom Jones, Manic Street Teachers and Coldplay.

All of these comebacks are exciting, but they dwarf the story of "Love for Sale" - Tony Bennett's duet album with Lady Gaga released in September.

Bennett is already 95 years old, and this year it was reported that he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

This did not stop him from creating an exciting album with Gaga, which brought them no less than seven (!) Nominations at the upcoming Grammy ceremony.

4. Globalization?

In September 2020, Billboard, the magazine that collects data for all US charts, announced a new parade - the Global 200. That is: a global parade, the center for streaming and digital sales of songs from around the world. In the past we received data from every country and country Digging through them to understand what's going on everywhere, because almost all the music in the world is streamed in three apps (Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube), centralizing this data today is a pretty simple thing. With Global, for the first time, we can actually measure what the really big hits are. Across the globe.

On the face of it, this parade seemed to represent a new approach. Instead of dominance, as in the past, of American artists, we got the artists like the Korean BTS and Blackpink and the Latin Maluma and Bud Bunny, who came in first place. To conclude - but the truth is probably the opposite.

Conquered the parades, but American hegemony was not broken.

BTS (Photo: GettyImages)

Once companies based in the United States became the ones through which people heard music all over the world, local centers of power weakened.

The octopus arms of the music corporations from Los Angeles are now reaching everywhere and the share of music from the United States is only rising - and not falling.

In Israel, for example, a country where about 80% of music consumption is local, the change is seen on a daily level: Of the 20 most played songs on Spotify in Israel in early December, for example, ten were by artists from abroad.

5. The British invasion returns

Those who may have succeeded in breaking American hegemony this year were British artists.

In one week last October, five of the world's top ten songs came from the UK: excerpts from Adele, Doa Lipa with Elton John, Coldplay, Glass Animals and Ed Sheeran.

Doa Lipa's "Levitating" has even become the most streamed song of the year in the world.

The (British) Empire strikes again.

Doa Lipa (Photo: Reuters)

After years in which British music has declined in size, it seemed in 2021 that the long-standing investment in artists from the kingdom was finally bearing fruit.

These are not just UK-based established artists who have been successful this year: lots of new young names have shown buds of originality and creativity in the last two years, in a variety of styles, and it is definitely worth following the music that will continue to come from there.

6. Let's Get Physical

It's hard to sum up a year in which Adele's album came out, without talking about it.

As expected, her fourth album, "30", became a huge success.

It was the only album this year to sell over a million copies in the United States, while its numbers in the rest of the world are also really impressive.

While the world of performances has been shut down, Adele, as well as other artists who mainly cater to a slightly older age group, have taken advantage of the interest of their target audience in purchasing physical formats of their albums.

The sale of records, CDs and tapes (!), Is again a big deal in recent years, but in 2021 the phenomenon reached extraordinary heights.

Sony Music, Adele's record company, has produced half a million "30" vinyl records.

For this purpose, all the record factories in the world were hired, and for a few weeks it was the only album produced on Earth.

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The huge amount caused Ed Sheeran, who also sells quite a few vinyls, to bring forward the release of his latest album "=", so that he could find time in the factories for him as well.

At the same time, Abba's albums were released, and the re-recording of Taylor Swift's "Red" album - two more artists with an audience that loves black plastic.

Thanks to such releases, record sales have reached a record not seen this year since the 1980s.

It all comes with a price.

For years it was precisely the fringe genres, indie bands or electronic music artists, that kept the format alive.

Thanks to them, several record factories remained in the world, which are now making a nice box office.

Now, because of the demand from the giant companies and mainstream artists, suddenly there is no place in the manufacturing plants for indie and electronics.

Marginal artists are pushed to the end of the queue and have to wait for unreasonable times for their prints, making record printing irrelevant to them.

The big money is the one that speaks, and without it, is much harder.

7. The ticking

The only ones who manage to break the giant corporations are independent artists who are flourishing through the ticking, and in 2021 this phenomenon only intensified.

The hits that come out of Tiktok are almost always surprising: Eurovision winners, the Italian Monskin, built a career through the app, which helped, among other things, bring rock back strong to the charts.

Build a career from ticketing.

Monskin (Photo: GettyImages, Dean Mouhtaropoulos)

They are not alone: ​​Glass Animals, a cute band from Oxford, also suddenly had huge success thanks to a challenge using their song "Heat Wave", which came out two years ago;

Ckay became one of Nigeria's first international stars thanks to his hit "Love Nwantiti";

And also Arcaze from Orlando, whose remix of the forgotten piece "Do it to Me" by the band Cherish has become one of the cool hysterias of the year.

Somehow, the big corporations have not yet managed to beat Tiktok's crazy algorithm, and the hope is that by 2022, too, they will fail at that.

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• Adele

• Ed Sheeran

• Billy Aylish

• Ticket

• Abba

• Elton John

• Olivia Rodrigo

• Doa Lipa

• Monskin