It always seemed to me that the successful performers started from a base of “known and accepted” styles and then reached a bit beyond… Their success then moved the needle for the next innovation. Incremental stuff. I agree that truly NEW music rarely achieves a big audience because listeners have no frame of reference to understand it. Like “twelve-tone” music. It’s just an artificial formula for creating sounds; an interesting intellectual exercise, but has no “natural” foundation for a classical music lover to relate to. But I think the article is wrong about popular music being static. It will change because people do seek out the “next big thing”.
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It's all just ones and zeroes. Mark W in mid-MO