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music journalism

How Many Festivals Is Too Many Festivals for the UK to Accommodate

Posted on 1 July 2026

UK festivals have gone beyond a rite of passage and an annual pilgrimage for the experienced. Now, the hardest part isn’t wading your way through the mud or finally facing the Portaloo; it’s choosing between the different festivals when browsing the festival posters is practically an act of spot the difference. Between the similar fonts and the same handful of touring acts, it’s becoming harder and harder to choose where to buy your £7 portion of chips.

Britain loves festivals. That much has been screamed from every campsite, glitter tent and overpriced bar queue for years. The sharper question is this: how many festivals can one market actually hold before the whole thing starts eating itself? Whatever the number is, we’re long beyond it.

The warning signs are already visible. Independent festivals are folding, postponing, downsizing or vanishing entirely. The events with legacy behind them still command devotion because they carry mythology. Glastonbury is a cultural weather system. Download, Green Man, Boomtown, Bloodstock, End of the Road and Womad all have a recognisable identity. Around them sits a swollen middle of festivals trying to launch without a reason to exist, trying to survive on borrowed atmosphere, trying to sell urgency with line-ups that could have been assembled by copying last summer’s spreadsheet.

When Every Poster Starts Looking The Same

Oversaturation becomes poisonous when distinction disappears. A festival without history has to work harder. It has to offer curation with a clear point of view, a setting worth travelling to, a community that recognises itself, or a bill that could only happen under that name. Too many events are offering a logo, a field and a recycled line-up with all the emotional charge of a supermarket meal deal.

The customer has changed because the economy has changed. Festival marketing still talks to people as though disposable income is lying around waiting to be converted into wristbands. In reality, a ticket is just a fraction of the cost, and more often than not, you can pay for a luxury holiday by the time you’ve finished forking out for travel, food, drink, camping gear and every other cost you’ll incur along the way.

When the bill looks familiar, hesitation becomes rational. Fans are being asked to gamble hundreds of pounds on an experience that may feel interchangeable with five others. That is the fatal word for festivals: interchangeable. Once a festival loses its sense of occasion, the price begins to feel obscene.

The industry loves to blame the public for losing appetite, but that feels far too convenient. People still want live music; there’s more demand than ever; the problem is with the supply.

Legacy Cannot Be Bought With A Headliner

There is a reason some festivals sell out before a single act is announced. Trust is currency. Green Man can move tickets because people believe in the world it has built. Glastonbury survives its own mythology because the festival itself is the headliner. Those names have become part of people’s lives, annual rituals passed through friend groups, families, scenes and subcultures.

Newer festivals have every right to exist, but existence requires purpose. A line up alone rarely creates that. Booking recognisable artists may shift attention, but it does not automatically build devotion. When every promoter is chasing the same names, the same touring cycles and the same safe bookings, culture shrinks under the illusion of abundance.

The acts who might benefit from thoughtful placement and committed audiences are pushed into early slots, while posters lean on a familiar upper tier because recognisable names soothe investors, sponsors and nervous ticket buyers. We can’t blame festival organisers for erring on the side of caution in the face of rising operating costs. Yet caution also creates the very problem it tries to solve. If every festival books safely, the public loses the emotional reason to choose one over another.

Should Councils Decide If A Festival Helps Or Hinders?

This is where the high street comparison becomes interesting. When a new shop enters a town centre, councils at least understand the argument around balance, public use and local value. If a place already has too many empty units, too many betting shops, too many identical chains, people start asking what the area actually needs. Festivals often arrive with bold claims about tourism, local spend and cultural benefit, yet the deeper question is often left untouched: does this event add anything, or does it just take away from what already exists?

A council should never be placed in charge of taste. Nobody needs a committee deciding whether a psych rock weekender deserves a licence on artistic grounds. That path leads straight to laminated joylessness. But local authorities could ask stronger questions before approving another event chasing the same audience with the same bill.

Does it support local artists? Does it pay suppliers properly? Does it have a credible financial plan? Does it bring value to the area, or merely extract money from it for one weekend? Does it create work for local people? Does it protect the land it uses? Does it understand the community it is entering?

These are not anti-festival questions. They are pro-culture questions. Festivals use public space, local infrastructure, transport systems and police resources. They affect residents, businesses, workers and artists. If an event collapses, the damage spreads beyond one failed weekend. Freelancers lose income. Local suppliers lose trust. Fans lose money. Artists lose opportunities. A weak festival can harm the very scene it claimed to serve.

The Monopoly Problem Behind The Mud

The festival market does not operate on a level field. It is every man for himself in the music industry, but some men are standing on much higher ground. The bigger players have more leverage with artists, sponsors, ticketing systems, advertising channels and infrastructure. They can absorb shocks that would kill an independent event outright.

That is where oversaturation becomes a power problem. When the market is crowded, the festivals with the deepest pockets can keep shouting. Smaller events have to fight for visibility while facing the same inflated costs, the same cautious audience and the same shrinking attention span. The public may see a crowded calendar and assume the sector is healthy. Underneath, independent organisers are being forced into a knife fight with a teaspoon.

The answer cannot simply be survival of the biggest. That would leave us with fewer risks, fewer local scenes, fewer strange bills, fewer community-led events and more corporate smoothness. Music culture needs independent festivals because they can move with sharper taste. They can platform artists before the industry decides they are safe. They can build scenes around conviction rather than market dominance.

Government support, VAT relief, council-level cultural strategy and better funding routes all deserve serious discussion. Independent festivals should be treated as part of the country’s cultural infrastructure, not disposable private gambles. At the same time, organisers have to meet the moment with more imagination. A festival is not a playlist with toilets. Festivals need reason to exist beyond profit.

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Article by Amelia Vandergast

When a Culture Journalist Treats Gigs Like a Personal Inconvenience, the Industry Pays the Price

Posted on 28 June 2026

There is a perfectly valid kind of culture journalist-penned article to be written about gig fatigue. There is a sharp, intelligent discussion to be had about why some audiences are edging towards comfort, controlled environments and lower-effort nights out. There is room to talk about burnout, social exhaustion, post-pandemic habits, rising ticket prices, booking fees, predatory touring models, poor etiquette and the sheer physical drain of standing in a packed room after a day spent trying to survive late-stage capitalism with a half-dead phone battery and a bank account in mourning. That kind of article could have been useful.

Instead, the Guardian published a piece which basically read: person who hates gigs, hates gigs. A subjective dislike was dressed up as some grand cultural verdict, delivered with the presumed authority of a culture journalist, yet carrying the emotional range of a miser complaining that cinema refreshments begin and end with a coke. It was thin, smug and weirdly damaging at a time when UK venues are already struggling to stay open.

Why publish it like that? Why rub salt into the wounds of an ecosystem already dealing with closures, rising costs and exhausted audiences? Why give space to a take that treats live music as an endurance test while barely bothering to ask why people still go, why venues matter, and why a room full of people choosing mess over sterility might still mean something?

The Opinion Piece That Mistook Preference for Truth

There is a difference between saying “I hate going to gigs” and presenting gigs as a busted cultural format. Personal taste can absolutely drive criticism, but it needs self-awareness. Otherwise, it becomes one person’s irritation cosplaying as public insight.

The article’s biggest issue sits in that strange leap from bad personal experience to sweeping diagnosis. Muddy sound at one Earl Sweatshirt show becomes a wider indictment across every venue that isn’t arena and a thrown drink becomes emblematic of live music itself. How lazy can a ‘writer’ possibly be? He took the most annoying elements of gig-going and treated them as the whole event. In that vein, going on holiday is akin to torture because you have to survive the airport before you get there.

Anyone who goes to live music regularly knows the experience varies wildly. Some venues sound magnificent. Some sound terrible. Some crowds are generous, locked in, electric. Some crowds can make you wish you chose to say in with your cat. But isn’t that the same for everything in life? Nothing is ever a guarantee. And one of the most important variables is what mood you’re stepping into a venue with!

The inference that one muddy room can stand in for the whole live circuit is ludicrous. As though there’s no distinction between a basement punk show, a 400-cap indie venue, or a warehouse rave.

A Smarter Article Was Sitting Right There

The frustrating part is that the idea had potential. The headline could have opened a real conversation about how live music now competes with comfort culture. The cinema comparison could have led somewhere interesting, it could have explored how habits are shifting towards lower entertainment budgets, energy levels, and discomfort tolerance.

For some people, a messy high-energy night no longer feels like release; it feels like labour. A gig can involve expensive transport, late finishes, sensory overload, sticky floors, queues, bad toilets, overpriced drinks, aching feet and an audience that treats phone footage like a civic duty. For people already burned out by the ambient dread of being alive in Britain in 2026, the appeal of a controlled sit-down experience makes sense.

There was space here to discuss accessibility too. Plenty of people love music but struggle with standing venues, intense crowds, poor sightlines or unsafe audience behaviour. Plenty of fans have been priced out. Plenty of artists are also exhausted by touring schedules designed around survival rather than artistry. These are serious issues.

Instead, the piece swerved into the flatter terrain of personal annoyance. It took what could have been an intelligent cultural argument and left it sounding like a diary entry from someone who should probably stop accepting gig tickets.

The Guardian, Clickbait and the Vanishing Music Desk

The most damning part is the job title. When a culture journalist says they are forever inventing reasons to turn down gig tickets, what are we supposed to take from that? Is this an admission that musicians are being denied proper coverage because the person in the chair would rather be elsewhere? Is it a confession that live music has become a professional inconvenience to the very people positioned to write about it?

Musicians already fight for scraps of media attention. Independent artists, grassroots venues, promoters, photographers, engineers and local scenes operate with shrinking resources while national platforms keep narrowing the doorway. If someone with cultural reach frames gig attendance as an ordeal, it lands badly because live music coverage is already far thinner than the scene deserves.

There is also the uncomfortable possibility that this was the point. Outrage works. A headline telling gig-goers that gigs are secretly awful will travel because people love disagreeing with it. The Guardian knows that.

Still, clickbait with a broadsheet accent is still clickbait. There was nothing in the piece that resembled editorial intellectualism. It was not a provocation with teeth; it was a grumble with a media pass. At a time when venues are crying out for support, context and public advocacy, publishing a thin sneer at the live experience feels spectacularly tone-deaf.

Conclusion: Thank God People Still Want the Beer and the Noise

Thankfully, plenty of people are still willing to be showered by “stale beer” and suffer through “muddy sound systems” in pursuit of something cinema cannot give them.

Yeah, gigs might ask more of you, and you’ll stumble into the occasional grim one; everything in life is a gamble; when you stop rolling the dice, you might as well roll over and die.

If someone hates gigs, fine. Stay home. Go to the cinema. Drink the coke. Let the rest of us keep the rooms alive.

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Article by Amelia Vandergast

When Pop Stopped Belonging to Everyone: Music Fandom After the Death of the Household Name

Posted on 31 May 2026

There was a time when mainstream music felt less like a guilty pleasure and more like public weather. Everyone stood under pop music. The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Bowie, Madonna, Prince, Michael Jackson: these artists moved through homes, radios, television screens, record shops, school discos, family cars and pub jukeboxes in a way that made mass popularity feel almost natural. Liking them rarely demanded an explanation; their reach gave them a strange immunity. Even when they were strange, theatrical, subversive or sonically ambitious, they still belonged to the cultural zeitgeist.

Today, music fans have access to more songs, scenes, subgenres, micro-scenes and algorithmic rabbit holes than any generation before them. Yet with that freedom came a new kind of suspicion; it’s ‘cooler’ to reject contemporary popular artists than to get behind them; there’s a tendency to dig up dirt and to find reasons why they’re not worthy of stratospheric fame. But who can blame those who sniff out media plants and spot the ploys of record labels who use bots to artificially manufacture hype? Although, that sense of cynicism doesn’t quite explain why some fans reject artists once too many people arrive at the party.

Somewhere between beatnik coffee houses, hipster record collections, 90s indie snobbery and streaming-era fragmentation, the mainstream became something many fans measure themselves against.

The Age Before Indie Made Popularity Suspicious

Before indie became a cultural identity in the 90s, popular music carried far less automatic stigma. The Beach Boys could be adored by teenagers, respected by musicians and absorbed into family life. The Beatles were the biggest band on earth while pushing studio experimentation into stranger, richer places. Bowie made art-school alienation feel glamorous enough for prime-time television. Popularity and artistic nerve could sit at the same table without the room collapsing.

Mass success once had room for eccentricity because monoculture still had a functioning machine. Radio, television and print press could turn an artist into a national reference point, seemingly overnight. A song could move from Top of the Pops into the school playground by Monday morning. Even people who disliked a hit still knew it. That shared awareness created a social glue that has lost its adhesion and created more tribalism in our already fractured society.

The 90s indie explosion changed the emotional grammar of fandom. Indie gave people language for resistance, the ability to turn taste into identity, for the thrill of belonging to something that felt slightly removed from the commercial conveyor belt. It gave outsiders a flag. It also hardened certain fans into bouncers at the door of their own taste. Once music became tied so tightly to self-definition, mass appeal started looking suspicious.

What Counter-Cultures Exposed About the Mainstream

The beatniks, early hipsters, punks, ravers, goths, metalheads and indie kids all exposed something essential about mainstream music: the centre only feels neutral to the people it already serves. Counter-cultures formed because the official channels missed something. They missed boredom, alienation, sexual rebellion, class rage, spiritual hunger, political disgust, gender play, regional frustration and the sheer need to sound feral in a world obsessed with hegemony and intense in its rebuttal of individuality.

Beatniks found rhythm in refusal, pipsters, before the word became a punchline, prized obscurity because obscurity offered shelter from mass taste, punk ripped through the idea that technical excellence mattered more than urgency, rave culture built temporary utopias out of bass, sweat and illegal spaces and indie shared the magic of turning the small room into a kingdom.

Mainstream music absorbed these movements over time. It always does. The centre watches the margins, takes notes, cleans the fingerprints off, and sells the feeling back with brighter lighting. Just think about how the Spice Girls co-opted the ‘Girl Power’ motto following the Riot Grrrl movement led by Bikini Kill, Hole, L7 and Babes in Toyland. This cycle made fans more alert, because once you have seen rebellion repackaged as a marketing mood, trust becomes harder. For many listeners, rejecting the mainstream became a survival tactic for taste, a way to keep something sacred away from corporate flattening.

When Fans Turn on the Bands They Loved

One of the strangest rituals in music fandom is the moment some fans abandon a band because the room gets bigger. A group can be adored in a basement venue, worshipped through self-released EPs, praised for raw promise, then accused of betrayal once the wider world catches on. The crime is rarely a song, production choice, or interview. The crime is being found.

This reaction says as much about fans as it does about artists. Early discovery gives people ownership. Finding a band before the crowd arrives can feel intimate, almost secretive. The songs become part of private mythology: late-night walks, bad flats, cheap pints, heartbreaks, identity formation. When that same band ends up on festival main stages or soundtracking adverts, the intimacy feels invaded.

Sometimes the suspicion has merit. Some artists do sand down their edges for broader appeal or lose the voltage that made them matter. Yet the automatic rejection of popularity can turn into its own cliché. Mass attention can also give musicians more resources, better studios, stranger collaborators and the confidence to take bigger swings. A band becoming popular proves that the audience changed around them, as much as the band changed in front of the audience.

The End of Monoculture and the Collapse of the Household Name

The old idea of the household name in music now feels increasingly unstable. There are artists with millions of monthly listeners, huge tours, devoted online communities and major commercial power who could still walk past entire demographics unnoticed. A teenager’s superstar can be completely unknown to their parents. A globally streamed rapper can mean nothing to a guitar-led indie fan. A pop artist can dominate TikTok while barely touching traditional radio memory.

This is what the end of monoculture looks like: fame without total recognition, success without universal awareness, and scale without shared reference. Streaming shattered the old centre into countless personalised feeds while algorithms serve taste back to us until the world starts to feel smaller and more bespoke. The result is exhilarating and disorientating. Music fans can find their people faster than ever, while losing the shared public soundtrack that once made pop feel communal.

The household name may still exist in rare cases, usually through legacy, scandal, visual identity or cross-media saturation. Yet the era when music itself regularly produced figures recognised across generations, classes and subcultures appears to be fading. The centre has lost its grip. For independent artists, that carries hope. You can build a devoted audience without asking the entire nation to understand you. For culture at large, it raises a sharper question: what happens when everyone is listening, but fewer people are listening together?

Conclusion

Perhaps we were never meant to have monoculture in the first place. From an evolutionary standpoint, human beings formed tribes, rituals, local songs, regional myths and small circles of shared meaning. The idea that one song, one artist, one broadcast, one cultural moment could unite millions was always a technological accident, a by-product of limited channels and mass media machinery. The world may never have been designed to move as one crowd.

Music fandom now looks closer to human nature: fragmented, territorial, passionate, suspicious, devotional, contradictory. Fans still want belonging, but many want it at a scale that feels personal. They want the thrill of discovery, the comfort of shared obsession and the status of taste that appears untouched by the obvious. Mainstream music still matters, yet it no longer owns the weather. It is one climate among thousands.

Article by Amelia Vandergast

THRESHLD Interview: Signals from the Faultline Between Flesh and Machine

Posted on 20 April 2026

THRESHLD was born to transcend the artifices of the typical musical project; it feels like a coded disturbance pushed through speakers, screens and nerve endings alike. In this interview, we speak with the Baltimore-based artist behind the transmission-driven concept about the personal rupture that set everything in motion after a pandemic-era job loss, and the influences that shaped this stark, immersive vision. From the philosophy of “signal before meaning” to the collision between mechanical force and exposed vocal intensity, THRESHLD opens up about identity, control, interference and the uneasy structures shaping modern life. The conversation also moves through the project’s visual language, hybrid live format and the discipline of building an independent world with real depth. For anyone drawn to industrial sonics, conceptual weight and art that leaves a mark before explanation arrives, this is one to read in full.

THRESHLD feels rooted in an idea as much as a sound, so where did the project first begin for you on a personal level, and what part of your life pushed you towards building something so conceptually loaded?

This project started for me during 2020, around the COVID pandemic, after being laid off from my job at the Harley-Davidson York plant. It forced a reset. Music and art had always been a huge part of my life—tattoos, painting, playing in local bands around the Baltimore area—but this was the point where it shifted from something I did into something I needed to build.

What pushed it into something more conceptually driven came from a mix of that moment and my early influences—artists like The Prodigy, Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, Marilyn Manson—projects that weren’t just music, but full experiences. Seeing how they created something cinematic and immersive changed how I viewed everything.

THRESHLD came out of that pressure point. Not to fit into anything, but to build something that reveals instead of conforms—something that carries weight before it’s even understood.

You describe THRESHLD as a transmission-driven project rather than a traditional band. What does that structure give you emotionally, creatively and philosophically that a more conventional setup never could?

Calling it a transmission removes the limits of a traditional band structure. It keeps the project open—able to evolve, shift, and expand in multiple directions without being boxed into a single identity or genre.

Creatively, it creates space for progression. Emotionally, it feels more honest because nothing is forced into a format. Philosophically, it turns the music into something that’s received rather than just performed.

It also leaves the door open for collaboration, new themes, and development into something much broader than just music. THRESHLD isn’t a fixed form—it’s something that can grow into whatever it needs to become.

The phrase “signal before meaning” carries the potential for some pioneering sonic philosophy. What does that idea mean to you, and how does it shape the way you write, arrange and present your music?

“Signal before meaning” is more than a phrase—it’s become a core philosophy behind everything in THRESHLD.

It’s about impact before explanation. There are things you feel immediately that you can’t fully articulate, and those tend to be the most real. We approach the music as a conduit for that—letting it come through without forcing it into expectations or predefined structures.

Working this way removes the pressure of trying to make something “fit.” Writing, arranging, and presenting the music becomes less like a task and more like something natural—something that exists on its own before it’s analyzed.

There’s no missing the tension between the industrial, electronic framework of the sound and the emotional force in the vocal delivery. What draws you to that friction, and what does it allow you to express about yourself?

That contrast is intentional. The industrial and electronic elements represent structure—something mechanical, controlled—while the vocals sit against that as something raw and human.

That tension reflects something bigger. It mirrors the duality in human systems—social, political, psychological—where control and chaos are constantly pushing against each other.

It allows me to express a deeper level of discontent while still existing inside the machine itself. You’re both inside it and aware of it at the same time. That friction is where most of the emotion comes from.

A lot of your themes circle identity, control, hidden signals and interference. Were those ideas born from specific experiences, thought patterns, or wider observations about the world you’re moving through?

These themes come from a wide range of sources. Psychology and sociology studies, books, films—especially sci-fi, horror, philosophy, religion—all of it feeds into the thematic layer of THRESHLD.

But a big part of it is personal. There’s a growing awareness that a lot of what we see—identity, behavior, even thought—is shaped or filtered in ways people don’t fully recognize.

Mental health being such a major focus now has made that even more visible. People are starting to realize things aren’t as stable or understood as they once thought.

THRESHLD sits in that space—between what’s presented and what’s actually there. It’s not about defining it. It’s about exposing it.

The visual identity of THRESHLD feels inseparable from the music. What role does imagery play in the project, and how consciously do you build the aesthetic language around each release?

The visual side is inseparable from the music. It’s part of the same signal.

Every release is built with a visual language that reinforces the atmosphere of the sound. Whether it’s distortion, glitch textures, or symbolic elements, it all contributes to the same world.

It’s not about repeating imagery—it’s about maintaining a consistent feeling. The music creates movement, the visuals give it form.

Your hybrid DJ and live performance approach gives the project a different kind of presence. What shifts for you when you perform in that format, and how do you want the audience to feel inside that environment?

Live, everything becomes more immediate. There’s less separation between the sound and the audience.

The structure is controlled through backing elements, but the delivery is fluid. It shifts depending on the moment, the energy, the environment.

The goal isn’t just to perform songs—it’s to create something physical. Something people feel through the low end, the pacing, the tension. If it’s working, it doesn’t feel like a performance—it feels like something happening to them.

You’re building THRESHLD independently, with a strong sense of world-building around it. What have you learnt about yourself through that process, and where do you see the project heading next in terms of releases, performance and expansion?

Building this independently forces clarity. There’s no buffer—you see what connects and what doesn’t in real time. It sharpens the direction and removes anything that isn’t necessary.

Right now, the focus is on expanding reach while pushing the identity deeper—more releases, more refined live execution, and stronger integration between sound and visuals.

The goal isn’t just growth. It’s immersion.

Making each release, each performance, feel like stepping further into something—not just hearing it.

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Connect with THRESHLD and stream their sound on all major platforms via this link.

Interview by Amelia Vandergast

From Tabloid Gallows to Digital Pitchforks: How the Mob Decides Every Artist Deserves a Public Hanging

Posted on 19 March 2026

There was a time when the tabloids were the villains of the music industry’s moral theatre. Red-top journalists camped outside flats, shouted questions through car windows, and plastered front pages with photographs of musicians at their lowest ebb. Back then, the cruelty felt industrial, a machinery of humiliation powered by circulation numbers. Yet scroll through the comment sections of any recent story about an artist’s vulnerability, and the landscape feels darker still.

In 2026, British singer Lola Young revealed that she checked herself into treatment after collapsing on stage and confronting her struggles with addiction. What followed was not a reflection of a culture that had supposedly learned from past mistakes. Instead, the internet erupted into mockery. Comments joked about being addicted to eating crayons or cheeseburgers, while others sneered that young artists simply “cannot handle a line”. The mob laughed, especially at the body-shaming comments.

The tabloids once thrived on scandal, but today the cruelty has been democratised. Everyone with a smartphone can take a swing. Looking at the online response to Young’s honesty, early 2000s journalism suddenly reads with the pastoral innocence of a Beatrix Potter tale.

When Amy Winehouse Became Public Property

If any artist symbolises the brutality of the old tabloid machine, it was Amy Winehouse. Catapulted into global fame in her early twenties, Winehouse possessed one of the most devastating voices of her generation. Yet the British press rarely treated her artistry as the story; they chased the spectacle of her unravelling.

Winehouse was photographed stumbling down Camden streets, crying outside pubs, clutching herself in distress during her final performance. The tabloids splashed those images (which probably resulted in a hefty payout for someone) across front pages with headlines that bordered on gleeful cruelty. “Amy Winehouse on crack”, they shouted. Each headline sharpened the caricature.

What made the coverage so grotesque was the obviousness of her pain. Even the most casual observer could see she was drowning. Addiction had hollowed her out in full view of cameras. Yet instead of compassion, the press discovered a profitable soap opera. Her suffering became entertainment.

Winehouse even sought legal protection from the relentless photographers who camped outside her home in a desperate attempt to reclaim a shred of privacy. By then, though, the machine had already decided her role in the narrative. She was the punchline and their payday.

Then came the inevitable turn. When Winehouse died in 2011, the tone shifted overnight. Headlines mourned a “troubled star gone too soon”. Tributes poured in from the very outlets that had built careers documenting her collapse. The sinner was recast as a saint, and tabloids discovered their conscience a few thousand headlines too late.

From Fleet Street to Facebook: The Rise of the Digital Mob

For years, cultural critics comforted themselves with the idea that we had evolved beyond that era. The media had been forced into self-reflection after Winehouse’s death. Public discussions about mental health and addiction have become more open, and there was a sense that society might handle these situations with greater empathy next time.

That optimism now feels embarrassingly naïve.

Where once a handful of tabloids dominated the cruelty economy, the internet has expanded the arena. The mob now sits in comment sections, Reddit threads, and social media feeds, knowing that if they attract enough attention with their spewed hate, they can cash in on it. There is no editorial gatekeeper, no journalist weighing the implications of a headline. Instead, cruelty is crowdsourced.

The screenshots circulating beneath stories about Lola Young illustrate the shift perfectly. A musician speaks openly about addiction, relapse, and recovery, and the response is a cascade of cheap punchlines from poxy people who would do anything for the validation of a couple of laugh reacts. Strangers compete to land the harshest joke, all the while, empathy becomes a casualty of the algorithm.

Even more depressingly, there’s a casualness to the cruelty. Tabloid editors once made calculated decisions to print humiliating stories. Online commenters, meanwhile, treat it as sport. The humiliation of a public figure becomes a form of entertainment, a communal laugh track echoing through the digital void.

It reveals an uncomfortable truth about modern culture. The tabloids may have refined the art of public humiliation, but the appetite for it was always there. Social media merely handed the microphone to everyone.

The Perverse Pleasure of the Pedestal Collapse

Why do people revel so eagerly in the downfall of public figures? The answer lies somewhere within the uneasy architecture of capitalism and celebrity culture. Fame creates a hierarchy. Musicians, actors, and artists occupy visible positions above the crowd.

For some observers, seeing those figures stumble provides a strange sense of balance. If a celebrity collapses, the gap narrows. The pedestal cracks. The hierarchy feels less intimidating.

Addiction and vulnerability become convenient tools for that narrative. Rather than recognising them as human struggles, they are reframed as moral failures. The comment sections fill with smug observations about resilience, toughness, or “today’s youth”.

This attitude ignores the brutal realities of fame. Young artists often experience an overnight transformation from anonymity to global scrutiny. Their private lives become public property where every mistake is documented and every weakness is monetised.

Substances often appear in that environment not as reckless indulgence but as coping mechanisms. A way to numb the pressure, to escape the noise, or simply to feel something other than exhaustion. The tragedy is that the same culture which creates the pressure also punishes the coping.

It is a cycle that repeats with grim predictability. A rising star struggles. The media amplifies the spectacle. The public laughs. The artist spirals further. Then, if the worst happens, the same voices gather to mourn.

A Society That Confuses Exposure With Empathy

What makes the Lola Young episode particularly revealing is that she spoke openly about recovery. She checked herself into treatment. She attends meetings. She works with a sponsor. By any reasonable measure, this is a story about confronting addiction with honesty and seeking help.

Yet the response demonstrates how little cultural progress has actually been made. Public discussion about mental health may be more visible than ever, but visibility has not translated into compassion. Instead, confession becomes content.

There is something chilling about the speed with which empathy evaporates online. Society abandoned the literal gallows centuries ago, yet there remains a psychological thirst for public punishment. The stocks and pillories have simply been replaced by comment sections and quote tweets.

People gather around downfalls with warped enthusiasm; the digital crowd wants a villain. If none exists, it will manufacture one. The result is a cultural environment where artists who admit weakness are mocked while those who hide it are praised for their “strength”.

It is a perverse inversion of reality. Hopefully, AI does takeover, if it does, society will probably know far more empathy.

Article by Amelia Vandergast

The Influencerisation of Music: When the Algorithm Demands a Personality Before It Hears a Song

Posted on 10 March 2026

Independent musicians once built their reputations through gigs, word of mouth, and if they were lucky, being picked up by radio or magazines. Now, the emphasis is on the artist to promote themselves by pointing a phone camera at their face several times a week and pretending they feel comfortable about it.

Somewhere over the last decade, the independent artist absorbed the duties of a lifestyle influencer because releasing music alone rarely sustains visibility. Artists are now expected to narrate their lives through reels, post running commentaries on their creative process, and maintain a personality brand strong enough to keep an algorithm interested.

Due to the speed of the shift in the industry, many musicians barely question how visibility now relies on content cadence as much as artistic merit. A songwriter who releases a brilliant track twice a year risks disappearing behind someone who uploads daily snippets of personality, humour, or self-aware vulnerability.

This arrangement works perfectly for musicians who enjoy performing themselves as much as their music. For the the more introverted artists who entered the field because music allowed them to speak without being watched, the industry now feels like a fluorescent-lit stage they never agreed to stand on.

The Independent Artist Has Been Recast as a Content Creator

Scroll through the average musician’s social feed and the pattern becomes obvious. Studio footage. Casual commentary. Relatable jokes about songwriting. Clips of unfinished demos. Quick updates about life, coffee, gear, or existential crises.

The music itself occasionally appears like a supporting character in its own promotional campaign.

Social platforms were originally framed as tools that democratised exposure for independent musicians. In theory, they removed the gatekeepers and allowed artists to reach audiences directly. In practice, they replaced the gatekeepers with an algorithm that demands constant constant input from the artist.

Consistency now matters more than scarcity. The artist who posts daily sits comfortably inside the system. The one who surfaces occasionally with a polished piece of music risks being treated like an inactive account.

What once felt like artistic independence now resembles a part-time broadcasting job.

The Quiet Artists Who Never Asked for the Spotlight

For introverted musicians, this expectation borders on cruel irony. Many people are drawn to music precisely because it allows expression without the pressure of constant social performance. A tortured artist can’t easily become a performing monkey. Yes, artists perform their music, but for some playing to a room of 1000 people is easier than talking to one person. Social anxiety racks more musicians than you’d think. The skin of a salesman is uncomfortable for most artists who just want to create and communicate through sound.

Independent artists can lock themselves away for months, attempting to convey feelings too complicated for conversation through sound, but that toil is far less painless than looking into their front camera and recording a video message pleading with people to pay attention to their latest gig or release. The current system is set to priviege the salesman over the savant, so, is it any wonder the modern music industry is so warped by superficiality?

There’s nothin wrong with how some musicicians possess the confidence of performers who enjoy direct visibility. Some artists genuinely thrive in front of a camera and cultivate loyal communities around their personality. The problem appears when personality broadcasting becomes the baseline requirement for being noticed at all.

The industry has never been a meritocracy, but the algorithm has mechanised and amplified the imbalance.

Why Are People So Desperate to Be Influenced?

The influencer economy rests on a peculiar psychological foundation. People claim to value independence, yet they follow strangers online for cues on taste, identity, and lifestyle.

Music once filled that cultural function through scenes rather than individuals. Punk, grime, indie, and electronic communities shaped identity collectively. The energy came from shared spaces, not from a single figure broadcasting guidance through short-form video. Social media shifted that dynamic, leading the chronically online to be more interested in aesthetics than culture, which now arrives through tastemakers who package personality, aesthetics, and opinion for other people to assimilate.

Fans now follow musicians partly for their music and partly for a sense of parasocial proximity and to reinforce their aesthetic identity. Watching an artist narrate their day or react to their own demo offers the illusion of connection. A carefully curated connection, because authenticity has become another thing to rehearse for artists.

The Performance of Authenticity

Modern music marketing is collapsing into a paradox; audiences crave authenticity while simultaneously interacting with platforms that reward highly performative behaviour.

Artists learn quickly which gestures trigger engagement; think along the lines of slightly vulnerable confessions, self-aware jokes about how “the struggle is real”, the casual snippet that looks spontaneous but required three attempts and decent lighting.

Soon enough, authenticity becomes a format.

When musicians begin shaping their behaviour around what performs well online, their artistic identity can blur into a marketing persona. What’s infinitely more messed up is that instead of documenting creativity, artists produce scenes designed to resemble creativity.

If the Influencer Bubble Bursts

Cultural bubbles rarely last forever. Audiences eventually tire of formats that feel repetitive or artificially intimate. Signs of fatigue already flicker across social media. Endless reels with identical pacing and punchlines begin to blend into a single blur.

When everything performs authenticity in the same way, nothing feels particularly authentic.

If that fatigue deepens, a shift in listening culture may follow. People could begin searching again for artists whose presence revolves around music rather than personal broadcasting.

Introverted musicians might find themselves unexpectedly well-positioned for such a shift. Their reluctance to treat life as constant content could become a form of credibility.

Article by Amelia Vandergast

Rock, Retirement, and the Reluctant Exit: Why the Stage Rarely Lets Go First

Posted on 25 February 2026

In the wider world of work, conversations about retirement always circle back to productivity, economic strain, and the supposed fairness of passing the baton to younger generations. Every political cycle brings the same predictable suggestion that the retirement age should be lowered so younger workers can finally get a foothold.

Yet in rock, the idea of stepping aside belongs to another universe entirely. Suggestions of retirement are practically framed like insults. You only need to look at artists like Ozzy Osbourne or bands such as The Rolling Stones to see how deep the refusal to bow out is. Ozzy pushed himself back into the spotlight at moments when most people would decide to spend as much time as they could with their friends and family. The Rolling Stones feel inseparable from the stage itself, as if the only thing that will finally call time is the mortal coil. They’d probably have no reservations about being wheeled out on stage in their caskets. On the surface, it looks poetic, admirable even, but underneath the myth-making sits a far less glamorous story about a genre that clings to legacy with such force that it locks doors for those trying to come through after them. When you look closely at the labour politics of music, rock’s resistance to retirement mirrors the country’s wider structural issues, and the cracks can be seen everywhere.

The Myth of the Eternal Rocker

The refusal to retire has been romanticised for decades. Audiences cling to the narrative that rock artists are built differently, that they feel no fear, no fatigue, and no ceiling on what the body can withstand. That mythology sets everyone up to fail. For artists, it creates a suffocating expectation that they must grind their way through age, illness, or sheer exhaustion. Fans who grew up with them often demand the same version of their musical youth, no matter how much time has passed. For the industry, the myth becomes a convenient shield that obscures uncomfortable questions about where the money actually sits.

If you take the case of Dick Dale, you’ll see how bleak the reality behind the glamorisation really is. Dale was celebrated as the King of the Surf Guitar, yet he spent his 70s and 80s far beyond royal treatment on physically punishing tours, which became a brutal necessity. He was working through severe health conditions because he needed to cover medical bills. People often retell the story with awe, but lurking under that awe is a failure of social systems that pushed a legendary musician to fight through terminal cancer to stay alive. It is not the act of playing itself that felt tragic; it was the absence of any safety net. Rock culture shaped the narrative around stoic resilience, but the truth is that he was performing because he had no realistic alternative when he found that his insurance wouldn’t scratch the surface of his medical bills.

The Gatekeeping of Legacy

The other complicated reality is that rock has become an old boys’ club in a way few people seem eager to acknowledge openly. Of course, they’d only be met with accusations of bitterness and/or inferior talent if they did. It’s all a sanctimonious circle jerk, lubed up by radio stations which refuse to play underground and breakthrough artists in this era when legacy dominates everything. The biggest festival slots still go to artists who peaked before most of Gen Z were born, and most of the newer rock acts are confined to smaller stages on their headline tours, leaving the arenas and stadiums to artists who reached their peak decades ago.

That loyalty to legacy can feel comforting. It preserves lineage and keeps stories alive. Yet it also shapes expectations so tightly that younger musicians trying to create something without a retro filter end up treated like outliers. New bands who refuse to model themselves on 70s, 80s, and 90s tropes often have little room to breathe. Those who lean into pastiche get further, which explains why so many start-ups in rock still rely on the same recycled swagger, misogynistic lyrics, and old-school formulas. When the industry rewards imitation over innovation, it is no surprise that breakthroughs feel rare or that when a rock band does break through, they reek of nepotism.

A Career with No Off-Ramp

Part of the issue is structural. Rock is one of the few career paths with no established off-ramp. Most musicians never expect pensions. Safety nets are uncommon. The lifestyle is so precarious that stepping back can feel like a financial cliff edge. Even major artists face enormous pressure to keep touring, because touring is the only reliable income left. When musicians come from backgrounds where money was never a worry, the choice to keep going feels like passion. When they come from backgrounds without financial insulation, the refusal to retire becomes tied to survival.

That divide helps explain why watching older rock artists grind through gruelling schedules creates such a knot of emotions. There is pride in the commitment, but also unease. People admire the fire, but something feels fundamentally skewed when artists who shaped the entire DNA of modern guitar music still need to throw themselves around on stages in their 70s and 80s to pay their bills. The industry thrives on nostalgia, but nostalgia has become a trap. It keeps the older generation working long past the point where rest should be a right, and it blocks new talent from escaping the chokehold of heritage worship.

Where Do We Go From Here?

If rock is to evolve, the culture around retirement and legacy needs a serious reshaping. I’m not suggesting putting everyone over 60 out to pasture, but maybe it would be nice to reject the romantic framing of eternal youth and endless stamina. Rock musicians aren’t immune to bad backs, dodgy hips, thyroid issues and arthritis.

There are phenomenal young rock artists scattered across the UK right now who aren’t relying on nostalgia or macho posturing, yet breaking through feels like hacking a concrete wall with a teaspoon. The industry has to stop curating the landscape as a museum and start treating it as a living ecosystem.

New festivals need to take risks. Radio needs to rewire its priorities. Fans need to stop waiting for clones of their teenage idols and start engaging with the next wave on its own terms. And somewhere in the middle of all that, the idea of stepping back from the stage has to lose its stigma. Retirement should feel like a transition, not a defeat. Rock’s greatest icons will always loom large, but they shouldn’t have to hold up the entire infrastructure until the final breath.

Article by Amelia Vandergast

A Freelance Music Journalist’s Brutally Honest Take on AI

Posted on 9 February 2026

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock or trying to fully commit to the analog lifestyle trend, you’ll have seen the fresh wave of protestive disdain over AI that has swept through social media lately. It all kicked off after the flood of cartoonish portraits spat out by ChatGPT, which have been plastered across profile pictures as people scramble for engagement or cling to the idea that sitting out a trend means cultural exile. Suddenly, people feel an urgent need to announce their moral objections, purely because you can’t scroll through Facebook without being ambushed by another obnoxious caricature.

Artists from every corner have stepped up to declare how sickening it is to see people bastardising art, but honestly, it barely grazes my nerves. Half the people screaming about stolen commissions wouldn’t have paid for a portrait in the first place (let alone the people creating them!). This particular trend isn’t the reason illustrators or designers are missing out, yet it sits on top of the larger rot spreading through every creative industry. That rot comes from the slow, quiet replacement of skilled people with convenient automated slop. Writers are being edged out by large language models, graphic designers are watching Canva and Adobe Firefly swallow their workload, and streaming platforms are filling up with generic off-the-shelf tracks churned out by Suno and Mureka. The list keeps growing, and every new innovation wipes out another skill someone once relied on to survive.

What’s bleak is how invisible most of this shift feels. For every public meltdown about AI portraits, there are a hundred private decisions made by organisations that want to protect their bottom line and refuse to hire actual humans. Creatives who once lived on commissions or freelance work are watching scarcity creep in, hoping the last few clients who still value humanity over speed don’t vanish.

And make no mistake, empathy is practically extinct. Skilled artists regularly post about being unable to find work after the mainstreaming of AI, only to be told they picked the wrong field or should apply for random jobs they’re wildly unqualified for. With desolation creeping through the high street retail and nightlife venues, there aren’t many fallback options. In Utopia for Realists, the argument was simple: once automation takes over, Universal Basic Income would be our cushion and we’d all breathe easier. That future is a fantasy. It’s not likely that Kier Starmer will push UBI while unemployment climbs. So here we are. Alone with the slop.

My Experience

During the pandemic, I was convinced I’d need to find a sugar daddy. Somehow, the opposite happened. The creative space caught fire as more people wanted press releases, artist bios, and reviews. My inbox overflowed with requests for poetry edits and write-ups. It felt like the world found fresh value in words.

By 2025, that urgency had evaporated. People shed their scepticism about AI and discovered they could get everything they needed in five minutes by asking ChatGPT. Suddenly, no one cared that their bios turned into vapid, empty noise with identical phrasing and lifeless rhetoric. Everything sounded the same. Negating sentence structures everywhere. Emphatic em dashes. Dead-weight vocabulary that makes my stomach drop every time I see it: delve, grit, allure. Once you’ve had enough exposure, you see the seams instantly.

Sometimes artists submit press releases accompanied by AI-generated cover art, AI-generated music, and an AI-generated bio. When that happens, I genuinely spiral. I sit there thinking, what’s the point of this music? Does it have one? Where’s the soul? If the entire project has been fed into a machine to spit out something vaguely cohesive, who is it actually for?

AI Makes Hypocrites of Us All

Here’s the part that catches people off guard. I have a ChatGPT subscription. Save the outrage, because there’s context.

I write for clients outside the music world too. One of them has paid me 1p a word since 2018. In 2025, they informed me that I needed to use AI to speed up my work because faster output meant they could justify paying me less. As if the rate wasn’t already insulting. They still didn’t want it to sound like AI, of course. So they insisted I run everything through Quillbot to scrub the AI tone. Ironic, isn’t it?

After months of wrestling with AI output, I developed an eye for the generic fingerprints. I saw the pattern everywhere. In statuses. In comment sections. In YouTube scripts. Entire corners of the internet now read like copy-and-paste templates. Average readers may think the phrasing sounds intellectual. To me, it screams artificial.

Now that I’m no longer forced into AI slave labour, I’ve looked at my options. They’re fucking slim. Where was the rage for me when I lost work? There wasn’t any. Not really. I’m just one writer. Not thousands of people posting slop portraits and provoking public outrage. The hypocrisy reeks. It reeks even more because the people screaming about how AI replaces people are the type to expect me to work for free.

I’ve spent years fighting for independent artists, showcasing their uphill battles, pointing at the pressures they face. They shout the loudest about AI’s dangers, terrified that it’ll steal their audiences, but I rarely see the same solidarity extended back. Apparently, using AI itself is fine. But watching others do it is cause for war.

Conclusion

People can scream about AI ruining art all they like, but the damage is already done to how we work, create, and connect. The hypocrisy of those who condemn AI while replacing people with it when convenient is the most bitter part of the whole mess.

We’re surrounded by automated noise, and it’s getting harder to hear the human voices underneath. Maybe that’s the real tragedy. Not that AI exists, but that we’ve allowed ourselves to be drowned out by it while pretending the problem starts and ends with a cartoon portrait generator.

Article by Amelia Vandergast

Course of Ruin Step Back into the Fire: An Interview

Posted on 16 January 2026

Course of Ruin return with a record shaped by years that pushed its creator to the edge and then demanded he sing his way back. In this interview, circumstances that pulled old songs from a forgotten hard drive into the harsh light of a hospital room, where a guitar became both a distraction and a lifeline, are laid out. The artist speaks openly about writing through treatment, confronting the subjects he once avoided and reigniting a connection with the bandmates who still feel like brothers after twenty five years. The Stonington Project carries the weight of survival and unfinished business, and this conversation hints at the deeper emotional charge running through every track.

The Stonington Project feels charged with emotional voltage from the first few seconds of Beneath a Burning Sky. When you finally revisited those half-written songs from 2006, what shifted in you musically and personally that made finishing them feel non-negotiable this time?

 The main thing would have to be the cancer diagnosis. I’ve been battling this since 2015 and this was the fourth time that it had come back and it came back with a vengeance. I wasn’t sure how much time I had left and since the majority of the cancer was in my lungs, I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to sing so it was important for me to get these songs finished up quickly in case things went sideways.

You’ve spoken openly about writing much of the EP while undergoing TIL therapy in the hospital. When you were stuck in that room with a guitar and a pretty terrifying prognosis, what role did sound itself play for you? Was it distraction, defiance, or something far more visceral?

At first it was more about having a distraction and something to pass the time. The first week of treatment was 6 hours a day of chemotherapy, then a week of TIL therapy and 3 weeks of monitoring, so you’re kind of stuck in bed for 5 weeks and you start to go stir crazy. You can only watch so may episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm or Family Guy before even that gets boring. So I asked my sister-in-law Hannah if she could bring one of my guitars with her when she brought my kids to visit. This would at least give me something to noodle around on during the infusions.

I quickly started to realize that I needed an outlet to process what I was going through. It seemed like every time the doctor entered the room, it was to let us know that the situation was getting worse and they were finding more cancer with every scan. Because of that I started to go into a pretty deep depression at the time and for months afterward so this was sort of my “therapy” so to speak. It gave me something different to focus on and channel that energy into something that had been laying dormant for the past 17 years.

How did you navigate writing the lyrics on death, fear and letting go that you once avoided, especially when they came from such a vulnerable and physically brutal chapter of your life?

In the past, lyrics were always just thrown together at the last minute and not really given the focus and attention that they should have. It was more about the riffs and guitar solos, so that was something that I really wanted to avoid this time around.

The lyrics for these songs were definitely a lot more vulnerable. Throughout the years I’ve been pretty selective about who I would share information with on what I had been going through. My wife Jenni and I didn’t want to constantly be viewed with pity, so we didn’t want to make it too public.

The lyrics/vocals for this record really had me putting myself and my story “out there” so to speak and because of that, I was a little nervous about how they were going to be received. Some of the darker songs were actually pretty difficult to get through during the recording process. It was really hard to not get emotional when tracking them and I would have to stop, take a break and collect myself so I could get through the session and have a take that I was happy with. I think because of that, the raw emotion really came through.

After a twenty-five-year hiatus, stepping into a studio again must have been surreal. Did it feel like slipping back into old skin or more like meeting a new version of Course of Ruin that had been hibernating in the background all this time?

It kind of just clicked. I had been a producer and engineer for years after the band stopped playing so being in a studio was just kind of second nature for me. The great thing this time around is that the studio is in my guest bedroom (The Guest Room of Doom). I used to own a studio just outside of Las Vegas, NV and that’s where the drums were tracked back in 2006. Those tracks had just been sitting on a hard drive in a cardboard box down in my basement along with some scratch guitar tracks for the past 17 years.

I recently produced and engineered a record for my friends son’s band Corvus last year before I went into the hospital and because of that, I had converted the guest bedroom of my house into a control room. So everything just kind of fell into place for me to finally finish up this project.

Since this has been a passion project for me for so long, it was a little different doing everything by myself. Writing, performing, engineering, mixing/mastering. I had to wear a lot of hats but I think it was what was needed to pull me out of this downward spiral that I was in. It left very little room in my head to dwell on the uncertainty of my situation because I was so consumed with trying to get this project finished.

That’s the exciting part about everybody getting back involved and the ability to start collaborating and being able to share the load of the writing process. You don’t realize how difficult it is to write/perform everything on your own until you’re in the thick of it. Even though these songs were my own brainchild, I did still get help from the guys by sending them roughs and getting feedback. Chris even helped me come up with the vocal melody for the verses of “Landslides” since I was hitting a bit of a writers block and I think that’s really what stoked the fire in all of us to start writing again. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you miss doing something until you experience a small piece of it and then that tiny morsel creates a full blown hunger to get back at it.

The EP is absolutely possessed with purpose. How did it feel to hear the finished version?

Honestly, it felt great. I think this is the first project that I have been completely happy with. I’m typically pretty hard on myself and I’ll always find things that I wished I had done better. I’ve always hated the sound of my own voice but with this project I’m able to sit back, listen and say to myself, “ I guess it’s not THAT bad”.

Back in the late-90s you were sharing stages with acts who shaped entire pockets of punk history. How did those early years of chaotic Orange County nights and post-hardcore sweatboxes inform the energy you tapped into for this EP?

I think that the late-90s energy will always be a part of everything that we write. The Orange County scene is what shaped us and continues to shape us. When we weren’t playing shows, we were at shows supporting our friends or attending shows of bands that we looked up to/were fans of. Even with this record being a bit slower and more emotive, you’ll still hear references of our Orange County Punk early influences.

You’ve described the band’s return as unfinished business rather than nostalgia. What exactly feels unfinished to you, and how does that hunger shape the material you are already writing beyond The Stonington Project?

I think what we mean by that is that we still have more to give. Even since we stopped playing, Jacob, Dave and Chris are still my closest friends (more like brothers) and we kept in touch and talk all of the time. We’ve had conversations about looking back at what we did and how when you are young, you really take for granted the opportunities that you had and don’t take the time to step back and just really let it sink in that you are jamming, touring, and having fun with your 3 best friends.

The Stonington Project was a unique record because it was more about me getting to scratch my creative itch and to help me cope with everything that is/was going on. The new material that we are working on is kind of going back to our OC Punk roots but still having a more mature spin on it since we’re not 18 years old anymore. I think in the past 25 years, we’re learned more of what to do and more importantly what NOT to do in the song writing process. I’m really excited to see where the new material is headed.

You’ve been handed a second chance at life and, in a lot of ways, a second chance at the band. How does that renewed sense of urgency and gratitude filter into the way you approach rehearsals, writing sessions and even band relationships now?

It really sparked a fire in all of us to start writing and creating music again. The writing sessions are interesting since we all live in different parts of the country. Dave and Jacob are in the Dallas, TX area, Chis is still in Orange County, CA and I’m in Stonington, CT so we’ve been sending riffs back and forth to start writing some new material together. When you’re younger, you really try to write songs that sound like the bands that you love so for me it was all about trying to sound like Strung Out, Lagwagon, Good Riddance, etc. Now it’s just about writing songs that feel good to me and then collaborating with the other guys to refine them and get a unique finished product.

–

Stream Course of Ruin’s latest release on Spotify.

Interview

Music Fatigue in the Age of Never Ending Noise

Posted on 8 December 2025

There is a strange hollowness settling over the music industry in 2025. It creeps in when you open Instagram for a quick dopamine hit. You scroll past a series of animals finding themselves in hilarious quandaries, then a sponsored post flashes up from a band with a carefully constructed thirty-second teaser. You pause for a breath, a millimetre away from tapping through. The question hangs in the air. Do you have the capacity to open your ears and your heart to something new? Do you have the patience to seed a spark of adoration that might become devotion? Or do you swipe past because you feel too overloaded to allow a song to stake a claim inside you?

You open Facebook to see a friend claim that some artist has changed their life. They swear this new name will define the next decade. You blink at the post with mild guilt and mild suspicion and hit the invisible accelerator on your thumb. The thought of clicking through to a track and sitting with it properly feels like a demand on your already depleted focus. Some days, white noise or an ambient playlist feels safer and easier. You can fill your head without letting anything in.

Musicians feel the absence. They rage at the algorithm, at attention spans, at every distraction that pulls people away from them. Yet the bigger question stands in the corner of the room. Are listeners simply overwhelmed? Are artists pleading for attention in a world that cannot hear them?

The Slow Creep of Listener Overload

We have never lived through a period where so much sound has been chasing us at once. People once bought an album, sat on their bed, and stared at the lyric sheet while the record spun. The act of listening required intention and stillness. Now, we are surrounded by an endless buffet of audio stimuli. There are podcasts for every passing thought, TikTok snippets that push thirty tracks in ten minutes, AI AI-produce loops designed to soothe but also to distract. There is no real boundary between silence and noise anymore, only a constant hum that becomes the sonic wallpaper of daily life.

Studies tracking attention spans in the context of social media have shown steady drops in the ability to sit through longer content. This shift not only affects visual media. It influences the desire to engage with anything that requires active listening or emotional investment. Traditional music discovery tends to assume that listeners still have the time and mental bandwidth to form connections. The architecture of modern life pulls the opposite way.

If you already feel overstimulated by a day of endless scrolling, the thought of exploring a new band feels like being handed homework at midnight. Even those who once devoured new releases weekly often say they feel numb around music now. The thrill has been dulled by the sheer abundance of choice.

The Rise of Passive Listening and the Retreat into Sonic Minimalism

Ambient playlists have quietly become the comfort blanket of the masses. They promise neutrality. They sit in the background without tugging at your emotions. They hold a place in your routine that once belonged to records you loved. White noise has also risen sharply in popularity, partly due to sleep issues caused by constant screen exposure. But the other reason is the slow retreat from emotional engagement. If life feels chaotic, you reach for something uncomplicated. Many people avoid new music not because they lack interest in creativity, but because they lack the energy to feel anything else.

The shift is visible in how people use streaming platforms. The tracks most frequently replayed are predictable, comforting and low demand. Playlists built entirely from gentle textures rise through the charts. There is a growing division between listeners who use music as an active emotional outlet and those who use it as a sensory buffer. Neither group is wrong. The divide simply shows a change in how people survive the pressure of modern connected life.

The problem for musicians is clear. They are still writing with the hope of being heard. Yet they are broadcasting into an environment where the average person might only have ten emotional calories left in the tank on any given evening. That gap between artist expectation and listener reality grows wider every year.

Musicians in the Digital Trenches

Artists are carrying the weight of a paradox that does not soften. They must promote themselves constantly because silence in the digital world is interpreted as irrelevance. Yet the more frequently they appear in feeds, the less likely people are to stop and take them in. Promotion has become a shouting match inside a stadium where everyone is wearing noise-cancelling headphones.

A growing number of musicians publicly voice their frustration at the demands of algorithms. They post about how their reach nosedives if they fail to feed the machine with enough clips. They speak about the collapse of discovery and the exhaustion of having to produce short-form content that has little connection to the music itself. Behind the dramatic posts, there is a more fragile truth. They fear they are calling out across a too-loud world where even the most dedicated listeners cannot keep up.

Evidence from multiple surveys shows that listeners often feel guilty about not supporting the artists they love. Yet guilt does not translate into time or focus. The bigger issue sits well beyond individual preferences. People are weathering information overload on a daily basis, and music is no longer insulated from that storm.

The Psychology of the Endless Scroll and Its Impact on Music Consumption

The feed-driven platforms that dominate daily life are built to reward rapid decisions. Every flick of the thumb is a tiny judgment. Do you stay with the content, or do you move on? These micro choices accumulate into a behavioural pattern that spills into the wider listening experience. If you expect instant emotional return from every piece of media, music that needs patience starts to feel heavy. Even a brilliant track can feel like an interruption rather than an invitation.

Scrolling behaviour also creates a false sense of social connection. Seeing others talk about music gives the illusion that you are participating in the cultural conversation. Yet many people confess privately that they rarely click on the songs their friends post. They react to the performance of enthusiasm rather than the art itself.

This cognitive fatigue makes new discoveries feel like an obligation. If you already spend hours filtering images, posts, reels and ads, discovering a band becomes an emotional task rather than a joy. A growing number of people feel that their love for music has not faded, but their ability to access that love has been blocked by constant overstimulation.

Article by Amelia Vandergast

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