Originality is a universally praised quality in art. It doesn’t always mean success for an artist, but it does mean unconditional respect from audiences that are hyper-passionate and pedantic about their art form of choice. While it is possible to string together key moments that gave birth to, catalysed, innovated, and construed music’s many genres, it doesn’t always lead to fulfilling revelations. In fact it often leads to more questions: Surely every song has been written now? What’s the cut off for originality in music? Do we just take our guitars off our laps, close the lid on our pianos and laptops and stop writing songs? At what point did music stop innovating?

The 1990s, it could be argued, might be the last decade of real innovation. Electronica took a hold on the mainstream with acts like The Prodigy, and more subversively in artists like Aphex Twin. It also saw the likes of New York rap collective Wu-Tang Clan push hip hop in a new and aggressive direction with 1993’s Enter the Wu-tang (36 Chambers), and hip hop itself was experiencing its “golden era”. At the same time, while bands like Oasis were re-treading sounds from 60s rock bands and doing little to move rock music along, Radiohead were bringing experimental guitar music to the world’s attention. So yes, on the surface the 1990s boast many original artists, but even these sounds could be linked to artists prior.

Looking back any amount of time before the 1990s reveals artists that precede them. For Wu-tang Clan it was N.W.A, the ones that put gangsta rap on the map, along with the now notorious city of Compton. Electronica made a significant splash in the 1970s and 80s with the popularisation of the synthesiser and artists like Giorgio Moroder. Radiohead owe a lot to krautrock bands NEU! and Can. But N.W.A didn’t invent hip hop. And electronica started before artists like Moroder, with musique concrete being a primitive form of sample-based music. Looking back has the potential to disregard any innovation once you figure out where it stemmed from. In this situation, looking forward bears more meaning. Artists in the 21st are still forcing music into new shapes. Death Grips are firing anger through a cracked lens of industrial, rap and hardcore, while milking the internet for all its worth releasing albums for free on bit torrent, carving their own way to notoriety. The 2000s have put bands in a new realm of creativity and technology.   

It’s just too easy to cut off at the 1990s, the last decade of the 20th century. It is convenient and palatable. Innovation can stop now, music has had its time and an infinite loop of recycling and regurgitated ideas is music’s destiny now that the 20th, the greatest century of human existence, is over. Truthfully, it’s anything but. As time goes on, originality is graded in smaller and smaller increments, and so innovation is less obvious. But innovation still occurs when artists manipulate what’s at hand. Modern bands can’t be The Beatles and The Velvet Underground, and trying to be them won’t result in meaningful progress. When an artist plays with the idea of originality, rather than the example, that’s when it pays off.

Words by Daniel Cook