Electronica = next musical phase?

I'm calling it. The next phase of popular music will be electronica/dance. We had ballad-y powerhouse songs in the early 90s (a la Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston). We had teenybopper music in the late '90s (e.g., 'N Sync and Britney Spears). We had R&B music in the mid '00s (such as Beyonce and Rihanna). What's in store for the '10s? Electronica/dance, yo.

We're seeing some of the early pioneers of this with Lady Gaga's music. Her music--admittedly fucking bizarre--can definitely be roughly classified as dance-y/electronica-y (I mean, her Wikipedia entry classifies her as such). Here is her latest offering, "Bad Romance":


Two weeks ago, Owl City's first mainstream single "Fireflies" topped the Billboard Hot 100. Owl City is without a doubt electronicky ... and catchy. I first heard the "Fireflies" song on the radio and went mad-crazy when the DJ didn't name the song or artist upon the song's completion. It wasn't until I heard the song a few more times on the radio before I was able to find out these details.

Owl City is a a band led by Adam Young, a Minnesota native. He accumulated fame via his MySpace music page and was the musician with the most listens who was unsigned by a major record label (with something like over 10 millions views). So a record label (or labels? I didn't closely read his bio....) took notice. [Insert commentary about Web 2.0 and how it's changing the "normal" procedure of things. Please note that I want you to fill in the blanks there as I could comment a lot on that, so I'm just trying to save some space. Yes, I'm trying to save virtual space. Please stop judging me.]

Of course, other musicians are not unaware of this changing musical climate. If we look to mainstream artists who have remained relevant through "musical phases" (that is, they have a career that spans at least a decade), we can quickly see that they have observed the shift toward electronica as well.

In September 2009, Britney Spears released the very dance-y song "3":

In August 2009, Shakira released this electronica-like song "She-Wolf":

In March 2009, the Black Eyed Peas released the dance/electronica(?) song "Boom Boom Pow." They might say they're an R&B group, but all their recent stuff ("I Gotta Feeling" and "Meet Me Halfway") says otherwise.

In September 2008, Christina Aguilera released the "futuristic"-sounding song "Keeps Gettin' Better":

Granted, my musical knowledge is not that of an "expert," so I could be completely wrong. I know I'm leaving a lot of "evidence" out. I also realize that some of these songs might be annoying (i.e., "Boom Boom Pow"). But they do help to prove whatever point I'm trying to make. I should also qualify my "theory" by saying that anything that is mainstreamed into popular music will not be true to its home genre, so these songs will be no doubt "pop-ized" with influences from electronica or dance ... or something.

SIDE NOTE: Some of these videos are not hosted by YouTube because those songs can't be embedded outside of YouTube.


I would include an "unrelated" yet cool music video, but there are already way too many videos in this posting. I would have just re-posted the Owl City song at any rate. :-)