If the author continued their lineage beyond hip-hop, into electronic music (house, drum n' bass, downtempo), I think they would see that "favorite instrumentalist" has transformed into "favorite producer".
Yeah, I had a similar thought around "favorite producer" as the language to use these days. I saw RZA speak a few years back and one thing he mentioned was that he just didn't have access to instruments and instrumental teaching when he was a kid like others may have had in earlier generations. He said something to the extent of "I could have been Mozart if I had had that access". What he did have access to was an ASR10, an EPS16+, a bunch of records, and great ears.
I've always wondered how much impact lack of funding for music education in schools has had, where a surprising number of people just don't know what instruments are even called anymore.
You could argue the restrictions caused by not having access to formal music education and classical instruments caused a lot of innovation in the music space. People made music long before any kind of formal music theory was a thing and will make music nonetheless.
Oh for sure, I'm very glad RZA exists and made the music he did. Knowing your flat 9s and 13s isn't going to make you a great player on it's own. Pushing the tools you have available is often where the interesting things live.
But I'm still always surprised when people just don't even know what instruments are called [1]. (It's not their fault, of course).
"Producer" means at least two things. In electronic music, it's commonly used for the person actually composing and arranging a track. It's used to differentiate from a DJ, who plays other people's music and doesn't "produce" anything. You can install FL Studio on your laptop, mess around a bit, and you're a producer (not a very good one probably, but the word does not imply quality).
In most other genres, "producer" is the person in the studio doing the recording, or also commonly, running the team that does the recording and plays the background instruments etc. Eg your big band leader.
In film (and gamedev), "producer" is the "product" head honcho, more like a CTO than an individual contributor. That's not dissimilar to producers of large music productions, but very dissimilar to deadmau5 jamming out a tune in his basement studio.
Another way to look at it is Phil Spector needed 4 entire Beatles to churn out hit record after hit record. Today someone in his position (a person in a studio with lots of gear) (or just a laptop even) can arguably make an entire hit record on their own, without anyone singing or playing an instrument. Is that really a different role? In a way it is, because you're no longer managing people. But in many other ways it isn't - it's using gear to make a record.
Instrumentalists and singers are just instruments a producer plays. And now we have DAWs and VOCALOID.
Just as the Beatles would be no more than a skiffle band playing bars without George Martin, Stock-Aitken-Waterman is responsible for huge 80s hits from Dead or Alive, Rick Astley, Bananarama, etc..
The Beatles did write their hit records themselves though. Lots of people helped making it Sound Real Good but unlike Rick Astley they did write the songs.
Not that it matters, in my opinion, a good song is a good song. But sometimes the producer plays the singers and instrumentalists and sometimes it’s more the other way around.
> It's used to differentiate from a DJ, who plays other people's music and doesn't "produce" anything.
Just to be clear, this isn't the etymology of "producer" in the electronic music sense, it's from the second definition you described: The person doing the recording.
This is because electronic music is largely created largely using tools that were designed to be used on recorded music in the studio such as delays and reverbs. Electronic musicians are called producers because they use the recording studio itself as an instrument (along with synthesizers and samplers). Hip-hop makes this distinction extremely fluid as the person recording the vocals is often the same person making the backing track.
As a producer myself, the art of production is barely enough anymore as apps like TikTok and Twitter greatly devalue music. Many rappers and music producers also end up becoming vocalists, actors, and even comedians... While also being required by platforms to constantly share behind the scenes videos of how they make music.
Don Toliver is a producer turned artist, so is Metro Boomin... Ti is doing stand up comedy, and even Rick Ross is vlogging and running a podcast now instead of working on primarily music. Spotify not paying artists has a lot to do with it I'm sure... It's a sign of doom for music if making music becomes worthless, because the only music left will be artificially generated, and any real music connoisseur knows that's just never going to cut it.
I do have favorite instrumentalists, but yeah this is pretty accurate. I will listen to whatever people like George Lever, Mike Dean, Nolly, etc. are involved with.
The article asks two different questions, one about the decline of the instrumental hit and one about the decline of the instrumentalist, and doesn't go far to answer either.
I'd be interested to see a breakdown of the instrumental hits throughout the decades. Is the decline simply due to classical and jazz going out of fashion? How many are soundtracks? Surely most modern instrumental hits are EDM, yes? This data-driven history could use some more data.
As for the other question, the article's examples of popular instrumentalists were much more famous as bandleaders than as clarinetists or trombonists. Cheap recorded music and digital music production has pushed both the band and the virtuoso performer out of popular culture, replaced by the solo artist and their multi-instrumentalist producer (sometimes the same person). This is true even outside of hip hop. I bet a non trivial amount of pop fans would be able to name Jack Antonoff from his work with Taylor Swift, Lorde, and Lana del Rey.
I guess those artists technically don't often make "hits" that top the pop charts. But I agree - here in the UK, rave music literally defines a whole generation of people born in the 70's and 80's.
But even in popular music, when I was a teenager we had acts like Fatboy Slim, Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, and Moby producing tonnes of tunes that are not primarily vocally led. More recently you have Avici and David Guetta and the likes.
Not to contradict the writer in any way, obviously in popular music this format has largely disappeared. But even so there are lots out there and a ton of diversity. Some from recent listening: James Blackshaw, Zoe Keating, Max Ananyev, Mary Lattimore, Anna von Hausswolf, Goldmund.
and of course Emahoy Tsegue-Maryam Guebro, Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Jack Rose, RIP.
Individual musical artists have so many more tools now that they can produce a whole song with multiple instruments plus vocals much more easily than 10 years ago, let alone 50. But the trend is still interesting to track.
I listen to a fair amount too but someone's list from jazz or metal or some corner of classical would be totally unfamiliar to me too. Fortunately it's so easy to search for a name, click a track, and listen for 10 seconds that you can breeze through recommendations super fast.
Of course lazy commenters like me don't link to representative tracks... perhaps a task for AI. "Go to top YouTube video for selected text" would probably suffice.
You might know of Ryuichi Sakamoto from his work with Yellow Magic Orchestra. (Or not, but YMO seems to have more name recognition.)
Big recommend for Keating. She doesn’t have a large catalog, but her albums are fantastic. I wish she was more prolific. (I think she’s doing a lot of composing for TV and film.)
Hiromi Uehara is a contemporary japanese jazz pianist and composer I'm a fan of. She's released a solid catalogue of 12 studio albums in the last two decades.
Looking at this week's Billboard electronic/dance chart I see: David Guetta, Tiësto, Illenium, Marshmello, Calvin Harris, Chainsmokers, Skrillex ...
All extremely popular musicians who are known primarily as producers/DJs rather than vocalists. And there are tons of popular instrumental electronic and dance tracks.
Calvin Harris does actually sing (Feel So Close, Summer, etc.) but he's currently at #1 on the UK singles chart (Miracle) with Ellie Goulding on main vocals.
In electronic music, vocals are just another sampled oscillator garnish, taking as just much credit as the drum machine... Far cry from the front & center heroic place occupied by the pop music singer.
This is in part because of exploitation and lack of credit/royalties given to the vocalists instead of the lack of importance to the music.
Take a look at the story of Martha Wash, the huge iconic voice behind "everybody dance now", "ride on time" etc. You can't deny that these type of vocals are the tent-pole of those tracks but they basically scammed her by using demo sessions and using lip-syncers in music videos.
Carbon Based Lifeforms anyone? Solar Fields?
Solar Fields did soundtrack for Mirror's Edge for example.
So many good composers doing electro/synth instrumentals nowadays but aren't mainstream, which might be good thing
Aphex Twin, The Orb, The Irresistible force, Lane 8, Ben Boehmer, Air, Marconi Union, The Free Association, Floating Points, Gas, 2814, Nala Sinephro, Loscil, Max Richter, Banco de Gaia, Skee Mask, The Future Sound of London, Jan Jelinek, Earl Grey, Bonobo, Susumu Yokata, Stars of the Lid, Detroit Escalator Co. Global Communication, Biosphere, Max Cooper.
Some of their songs hit me hard, MOS6581 is one of them.
Also I am very into stargazing, these kinds of songs are best to listen when staring into infinity
I adore those artists, transports my mind to another place like no other music. However I can’t help but feel a little disappointed this stuff didn’t catch on more, like they should have inspired 1000 followers to invent new sub-genres by now. Maybe they did and I just don’t know where to find it.
> That doesn’t negate the fact that hip-hop is a lyrical artform, with the emcee being the star since the 1980s.
I don’t think this is true. Instrumentals in hip-hop are largely first class citizens. Lyrics are at the forefront, yes, but consider that rappers are judged more on their technical ability to navigate the beats they choose.
It’s the only genre where artists are regularly deemed unworthy of their own instrumentals.
The author’s example is ironically the best example of this. It’s N.Y State of Mind by Nas (regarded as one of the best beat selectors of all time), on Illmatic (one of the best hip-hop albums of all time), and produced by DJ Premier (one of the best producers of all time).
Given my background, I was (and am) mostly listening to German Hip-Hop (but of course it’s born out of US Hip-Hop, which I appreciate as well, including Illmatic and pretty much anything with “primo beats”), but the same thing applies.
I do value good lyrics of course, but for a track to be really good, it primarily has to have a really good beat, and really good flow in how the lyrics are presented. Then, even next-to-nonsensical lyrics can still make a good track on that.
But conversely it’s rather hard for a track with even fantastic lyrics to be really “good” (in my mind of course), if it has bad beats and sub-par flow.
for english-as-a-second-language people it comes no suprise you'd have an adjusted ear for the music vis-a-vis the lyrical end of the songs. if youre not putting together the words fluidly, youre not getting the 'solo opera singer on the stage' attention to the movie that the words provide.
when the words fail you, its important to have good production values to fall back on and enjoy in the song.
i believe most the people in the US however are words above all listeners, and will accept subpar production, because theyre focused on the 'opera singer and the movie.'
I don't know how that follows from what I said. I was talking about German Hip-Hop, where I do understand the words just like a US-native listener would in US Hip-Hop. And for that, "it primarily has to have a really good beat, and really good flow in how the lyrics are presented" is true for me. I don't know why that would be different in a different language.
(By the way, I've been in the US long enough that the same is approximately true for US Hip-Hop by now, but that's neither here nor there.)
> i believe most the people in the US however are words above all listeners, and will accept subpar production, because theyre focused on the 'opera singer and the movie.'
That's what I dispute. Obviously I have no hard data, but just at a cursory look it seems to me that, in US Hip-Hop as well, good beats and flow with subpar lyrics tend to do better overall than good lyrics with subpart beats and flows.
This is no different from any other genre of music.
> But if you asked a random person on the street to name a clarinet player, I suspect most people couldn’t come up with one, let alone one known for their good looks.
The space of potential sources for inspiration has exploded. How many people had a favourite typographer or open source software contributor or racecar driver or whatever else a hundred years ago? Music is different, sure, as others have commented, but there are so many different things or people to consider now that it's getting a little tiring with the nags to know every last thing that people used to know. Don't get the relationship backwards. Knowing your favourite candle maker used to be about the candle maker achieving things that impressed you not you feeling guilty about not knowing any candle makers.
Downton Abbey suggests that people 100 years ago did sometimes have favorite racecar drivers. Wikipedia completely supports this by noting several races between 1887 and 1907. The course for the Indy 500 was built in 1905.
"But if you asked a random person on the street to name a clarinet player, I suspect most people couldn’t come up with one, let alone one known for their good looks."
If they could come up with one there are good chances that it would be Woody Allen. Definitely not someone known for their good looks.
This guys whole culture beat is so absurd. He seems to miss the time when record companies would, as a technological necessity (anemic information flow up and expensive information distribution down), create hits in a more or less top down way. People still like and listen to instrumental music as much as ever (probably more instrumental musicians are producing more music of more different types than ever before) but what he wants is for some giant distribution system to tell everyone "this is a hit, this is culture."
There are plenty of well known, all instrumental, musicians these days.
Almost certainly more than there've ever been.
Most just don't show up on things like Billboard because that ceased being a representative way to track musical consumption a long time ago.
There's an overwhelming amount of content now, across all mediums, and there's a lot of "dark matter" that isn't well represented in the mainstream.
It's like when someone, who enjoys streaming television asks someone else what they're watching... Who knows. Could be a popular show on Netflix, could be a niche YouTube channel where a man slowly fixes a wooden boat by hand.
I love instrumental music, or even instrumental solos. Instrumental sort of died on the radio after the Van Halen era. Long gone are the days of Spanish Guitar, and groovy hits like Green Onions… even Evil Ways by Santana could probably be thrown in.
Sowing of, the last holdout for long instrumental solos was Country music, but even they’ve fallen to the dreaded Nicki Minaj interlude as the genre has moved to four chords and snap beats.
>‘Well there weren’t amps.’” Albeit a simplification, Setzer’s quip is pretty accurate.
Seems like Setzer can quip pretty accurately from time to time. Not too many like him.
For almost 20 years starting in the early 1960's, guitar amplifiers got more capable every year in ways that professionals could appreciate.
Santana was a good example, before Woodstock he was already developing his maxed single-note lead guitar tone & style. He's always been the bandleader and never intended to do vocals so his flambuoyant instrumental style makes for a good frontman, his vocalists over the years have been professional sidemen. Every year he would come back with better amps than the year before, same with lots of classic rockers, like Steppenwolf or the Beach Boys. You could see the smile on their faces as they played last year's hits with their new-found stonk. Better equpment each year than had ever existed before.
Before that it was not too easy to make single-string guitar notes loud enough to stand out from the mix and substitute for the original rock & roll melody instrument, the saxophone.
Players needed to bang on all six strings at a time just to be heard, keeping them in the rhythm section. Plus it took a while for solid-body guitars to proliferate, which could actually be cranked without feedback.
Vocalists had to fight feedback too and were mostly the only electified member of a big band or jazz group.
Nobody really had enough satisfying power for any of this until the 1960's.
The 1950's Fender Bassman preferred by Setzer for his lead guitar playing is only a 50-watt amplifier, not really voiced differently than other amps sold for 6-string guitarists. There was just no reverb or tremolo on a Bassman since bass players really did not need effects. It had strong enough speakers to be run at full volume where the tubes were easily overdriven to some tasty distortion for guitarists but bass players growing up all said WTF. It wasn't good enough for rock bass with only 50W when you really need about 300W for clean bass to be as loud as an acoustic drum kit. But cranked all the way up a 50W amp is barely loud enough for lead guitar though.
When you think about it, when the Bassman was designed it was intended to make Fender's new solid-body basses as loud as an acoustic string bass. Otherwise you wouldn't hear anything. That's really about all it will do for a bass, man.
Ampeg was a bit ahead of Fender at the time, their amps were designed to make an acoustic string bass louder to begin with so they could be heard along with all the horns.
I'm surprised nobody's mentioning Mike Oldfield who was topping the European charts in 1974-1975 with Tubular Bells and Hergest Ridge. Both mostly instrumental album with 20min+ tracks... Totally unimaginable now.
I don't know if these anecdotes prove anything, but two of my favorites, Joe Satriani and Steve Vai, had popular instrumentals in the late 80s/early 90s.
And one of my non-favorites, Kenny G, is one of the best-selling artists of all time, more than 75 million records.
Kinda leans into the point of the post, I think. Vai, Satriani, and Eric Johnson are still working today, but they peaked popularity wise in the late 80s / early 90s.
Not sure Satriani ever topped “Surfing With The Alien.”
Between the prolific musicians I admire the most, like Allan Holdsworth, Devin Townsend, Zappa, Pat Metheny or him - he seems to be the most troubled but interesting character. It's like if the only, coherent and 'real' way he speaks is only though the guitar - any other way you'll get some gibberish our simple minds can comprehend. Heard the other day he has health issues and hope he's better now.
Hadn't heard of the health issues, hope he's doing well. He does speak sometimes, but only through a deranged puppet named Herbie. Apparently when Guns N Roses manager was working out the details of him recording and touring with them, he would only speak to the manager through Herbie.
It's all just a character though of course. He did some recordings with the LOTR actors, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd (Merry and Pippin) spoke a little bit about it on their podcast. He had a strict rule about no cameras or cell phones when meeting him, and they were able to hang out with him sans bucket and Herbie.
They are reasonably popular but I personally don't find their talent better than other bands I've heard in the past in their genre, even though their main guitarist is quite talented.
In contemporary music I believe King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are a better sell for talented instrumentalists.
Are they? I thought math rock was all about weird time signatures. By contrast, Polyphia is pretty accessible. And I've never heard them play a weird time signature.
Not actual math rock, I don't want to get into a genre purist debate, but I mean math-esque i.e. mathy. They flirt with changing time signatures across instruments constantly in their music; not necessarily complicated ones, but multiple through each song.
I guess this style is more common nowadays with 90% of bands writing straight up label music or their music is influenced by their label so much that they're pressured to pack their music with more dynamics.
El Ten Eleven is a great instrumental band that is kind of famous in the alternative scene.
Otherwise, popular instrumentals are all techno tracks that made it into the charts. Think of Fat Boy Slim, Jus†ice or Daft Punk. I’ve seen Jus†ice live and they perform something similar to a pop/rock concert. Pretty cool.
I was able to get a lesson and jam session with Tosin Abasi from AAL. He's so chill and ridiculously skilled. I distracted him at one point and made him drop his lasagna on the floor... He kept saying it wasn't my fault when I apologized but it kind of was :(
Thanks for the recommendations. I listen to Tigran Hamasyan and Animals as Leaders all the time, but I hadn't heard of Plini before. His Strandberg guitar sounds so much better than mine for some reason.
I can only recall a few songs in my lifetime that was instrumentals that were hits.
Apache by The Shadows
The good the bad and the ugly from the same movie
Ballade for Adeline - Richard Clayderman
and lastly Crockett's Theme from Miami Vice.
Also Kenny G was big in my days but then they started with using guest vocalists on their music.
If you remember those songs, then surely you must have heard many more from the same era. TFA totally glosses over the increase in instrumental popularity during the 60s and 1970s.
Two big factors completely missing are 1) decline of Top 40 AM radio, and 2) decline of 7-inch 45 vinyl singles.
I remember the following instrumental hits of the era, they may not have reached number 1 but were definitely played a lot on air and were in my parent's (and then my) record collections. I'm sure there were many more.
Antoine Boyer, Matteo Mancuso, Josh Meader, Max Ostro, Ichika Nito for new musicians, Plini, Nick Johnston, Polyphia, Julian Lage, Josh Smith...there's a ton of great instrumentalists out there. I think this question has more to do with distribution of content than whether or not there are fans.
This is really interesting question. Outside of hip-hop I listen to the instruments far more than the vocals. Even with hip-hop though I'm very much listening to the production but the vocals are clearly the star most of the time.
My favorite instrumentalist right now is Mary Halvorson.
It's very genre dependent. Mary Halvorson, for instance, is a great pick, but jazz is, and likely always will be, about individual musicians. Especially be-bop and bop oriented jazz where virtuosity is highly prized. Even when they form groups, the focus is on the interplay of the individual players. Halvorson is rather interesting as she is considered a great guitarist and a great composer.
The same is often true in rock and metal (especially the more extreme variants). The solo and the riff are very highly prized. Fans will follow individual instrumentalists across bands, and the "selling point" of one band will often be the mixture of the instrumentalists. A recent example is the revamped Gorguts lineup, which is a really a superstar line-up of avantgarde-esque metal musicians. Featured solos are still common. Vocals, when screamed, are often seen more as percussion or rhythmic texture rather than the centerpiece of the music. In metal, instrumental acts are still quite common and popular (obviously relative, pop music still dominates the charts).
Well said. I'm a big metal fan and agree that vocals are fairly textural (especially death metal) and more of a sound. And always good to see Gorguts being mentioned in a comment. Ha.
Huh. I'm a huge fan of instrumental music. I encountered Plini and Nick Johnston and through them discovered my favorite guitarist, Guthrie Govan. Then through him discovered his band The Aristocrats, with Bryan Beller (who's awesome, but I don't know too much about bassists) and the drummer Marco Minneman, who's now my favorite drummer after Neal Peart passed away.
I also really like all the Dream Theater adjacent stuff, like Liquid Tension Experiment...
Ok, guess I'm rambling. I dunno, for some reason I find it easier than ever to find all kinds of fantastic purely instrumental stuff, and now with YouTube you often get to more easily observe the musicians themselves, as opposed to listening to CD's back in the day.
Outside of musicians, the public and mainstream just have an easier time identifying with songs that feature lyrics. Most people need to possess some rudimentary ability to play an instrument to appreciate and to look closer into individual instrumentalists.
Of course an obvious exception is classically minded listeners, but they're sadly relatively rare as well.
As a pianist, it's easy for me to rattle off the names of my favorite pianists: Fats Waller, Thelonious Monk, Keith Jarrett, Sviatoslav Richter, etc.
"EDM" seemed to do alright for a few years with the mainstream. Plenty of techno, acid, house et al crept through even without vocal samples. This is probably a UK/EU-centric viewpoint.
I love Lage too, but I play guitar. I think people who play an instrument are vastly more aware of star instrumentalists than the general public, especially the star instrumentalists who play the same instrument you do.
The statement might be hyperbole. But most people seem to need vocals in their music, like kind of an anchor. I mostly listen to instrumental music, and have always found it difficult to share that interest.
There are many instrumentalists whom I follow on social media (Instagram, Twitter, Youtube). I imagine that most people interested in instrumental music do the same.
She does, and was the first instrumentalist that came to mind shortly followed by Yo-Yo Ma, and various classical guitarists like Pepe Romero (I'm not sure I have a personal "favorite" per-se).
The article doesn’t mention lyrics, which has to be one of the biggest contributions a singer provides to a song. Being able to emote through language in addition to music may as well double the effect a song may have on people.
the article could explore a bit more the importance of voice for subjectivity and identity. I would say that with the emergence of the 'idol' culture, the voice also took center stage. the voice is one of the fundamental elements of the structure of subjectivity, it is what marks the individual character. Of course one can admire a player playing an instrument, but then we are admiring their skill and not them. I see material for a more serious investigation in the interconnection between idolatry of musicians and the role of voice in subjectivity. It's a shame they didn't pick it up
I was curious so if anyone else wants to know: the last #1 instrumental song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US was "Frankenstein" by The Edgar Winter Group
There have been 13 instrumentals to hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after Frankenstein by EWG.
The most recent was Harlem Shake in 2013. Before that, it was the Miami Vice theme in 1985. Chariots of Fire hit #1 in 1981. Rise by Herb Alpert in 1979. The Star Wars Theme / Cantina Band hit #1 in 1977.
its the distribution bottleneck. dubstep shouls be infinitely more popular among the masses than it is, and its quality enough to deserve its own commercial radio stations in the metroplexes, and rotation on, well, a late 1990s mtv format.
hundreds of five star dubstep tracks. but ask around and people might be able to name skrillex and a few other names who arent dubstep.
Not only is he(Tom Jenkinson / Squarepusher) an amazing composer he's up there for being an incredible and innovative bassist. Not sure if he's "underrated" but I feel as a bass player alone he's special.
Saw him live a few years back with a band. Great with a band (the band was great too), but as one dude at the show said, "It's crazy to think that he can legit do all of this alone without the band".
I’ve never really understood picking favorites for music, games, movies, etc. I’ve always found “what’s your favorite <x>?” a hard question to answer. What’s wrong with enjoying things without ranking them? Do other people find ranking somehow increases their enjoyment?
While I agree, there is often a pattern that is uniquely appealing. People who express those same patterns become a style and styles become generes. Most people can pick a favorite genere at least.
If I had to name one it would be the violinist Vanessa Mae, but I think DJ's have replaced bands and musicians in many ways and have certainly added value to the original work, which ironically is a copyright nightmare.
I wouldnt listen to this original soundtrack/song,
It'll be interesting to see how AI disrupts the "mix other people's stuff and call it your own composition" space. I have to admit I look forward to DJs complaining about models being trained on their work. In a very primitive way what we calls DJs really are forerunners to the LLM.
