Where Have All the Songsters Gone?

• by Ken Hiebert

This is a question that has had me perplexed for some time.  Or maybe the more pertinent question is, “If there are great songwriters, will people even listen to them?" 

I’m thinking of guys like The Eagles, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Lennon/McCartney and a host of others as well.  Add whomever you want to the list, but I’m talking about people who wrote amazing songs that were hugely popular at the time and these songs are still alive and well 40 or 50 years later.  Will any of the popular music of today be around in 40 years?  There is so much of everything available so easily and at so little cost, that the actual (perceived) value has been cheapened to the extent that most products are built just to throw away.  The general attitude is that it’s cheaper and easier to just toss something and get a new one, rather than to maintain it and keep it for life.  The attitude towards the mass consumption of music I’m sure is much the same.  People have 5000 songs on their iPods, the vast majority of which were forgotten shortly after they were downloaded and the main objective is just to get more, newer, cooler tunes. 

The fact is, there are great songwriters out there right now, but how many of us can even hear them, much less find them?  And if we do hear them, will we recognize their value to be such that we want to hold onto them?  The longevity of any great song still requires those who love it to keep it alive and if they’re much more interested in moving on to something new and "more exciting”, they probably won’t be bothered. The only CDs I tend to buy these days are from local artists that I actually know because they are as good as it gets and they are easy to find and great to listen to - and those discs won’t get lost at the bottom of my hard drive and then get deleted to make room for new stuff.