Y2K - What's Going On ?

So now that we're half way through the first year of the 21st Century what can we pinpoint as the major musical trends of the moment ?
A casual look at any top 40 of the last few months will reveal that dance music's colonisation of the mainstream is now almost complete. Trance and UK Garage tunes have come to dominate the upper reaches of the charts. And it should be pointed out that the sales of these records are severely undermined by the fact that they will have appeared on countless Ibiza and Aya Napia compilations by the time they are released as stand-alone tracks.
The balance between these two dominant strains of dance culture has been shifting slowly but surely in favour of the Garage sound (and its younger sibling Two Step). Some of us are surprised that this hasn't happened sooner but eventually the more melodic and vocally-oriented form is bound to become pre-eminent in terms of record sales as the Trancers go the way of early nineties hardcore-houseboys and disappear back underground.
On the Indie/Rock front things look pretty bleak. If middle-class kids have to get themselves worked up about US retro-punks like Blink 182 and the Bloodhound Gang then things must be desperate. But then again at least there is some semblance of energy about these groups. On the UK side of the pond it appears that the more catatonic you present yourself the greater your success it terms of record sales. Travis are the obvious example of the dreariness=mass popularity equation but relative newcomers like Toploader and Coldplay are well on the way to emulating this formula. Christ if I'd known back in the early eighties what post-punk introspection would eventually lead to I'd have burned me carpet coat and joined the white-sock brigade like a shot.

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