Those who don’t remember the past are supposedly doomed to repeat it. That may be true most of the time. But not when it comes to music. Then it doesn’t matter if you remember or not — either way, it’s just deja vu all over again. With that in mind, here are some of my predictions for the music scene in 2019. Spoiler alert: Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
• Consumers will be inundated with 50th anniversary box sets of classic albums by artists like Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, The Who, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and more. Meanwhile, members of Spooky Tooth will be seen hanging around used record stores, purchasing their own LPs and hoping someone recognizes them.
• Lady Gaga will win an Oscar for A Star Is Born — or her cult of Little Monsters will make everyone in Hollywood wish she had.
• Tons of old suckers will shell out tons of money to attend a 50th anniversary concert at Woodstock. At least half will claim to have been at the original event.
• Another slate of aging rockers will announce farewell tours to try to milk their fans one last time. Meanwhile, another slate of aging rockers who went on farewell tours last year will announce their comeback tours.
• Ticketmaster will find new ways to screw concert fans out of more money, and then express shock — shock! — when they are caught red-handed doing it. People will complain bitterly online for a day, then immediately go back to shelling out $750 for tickets to a show by the two remaining members of some second-rate band from the ’70s.
• The Grammys will totally botch one of the major award categories for the umpteenth time, followed by the news that this year’s ceremonies were the lowest-rated ever. For some reason, no one will wonder if these two events are connected.
• Everyone over the age of 30 will begin to notice that they no longer have any idea who most of the presenters and performers on music award shows are.
• Some new music app/service/device will come along and instantly be proclaimed “the future” by pundits who aren’t old enough to remember life without Twitter. Somehow, it will require everyone to spend more money on some dumb thing they don’t really need.
• Teenagers will get way too excited about cookie-cutter new albums by female pop stars and non-threatening boy bands — many of whom would recoil in horror if actually forced to spend time with them.
• Oldsters will get way too excited about some stadium-rock legend’s new album — which will then instantly vanish without a trace immediately upon release.
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will continue to be the Golden Globes of music award shows — though it would be even better if they would make Rick Wakeman the permanent host.
• Kanye West will say something monumentally stupid. Everyone will pay attention to him. So then he’ll do it again. And again. And …
• Two rappers will engage in a meaningless online beef that nobody but their publicists cares about — and was probably orchestrated in the first place.
• James Corden‘s Carpool Karaoke will thankfully run its course. But it will be replaced by something even stupider and more annoying. Like Jimmy Fallon‘s Subway Karaoke.
• Some female pop star will date some famous guy, get engaged to him and then break up. Overwrought fans will act like it’s the modern equivalent of Romeo and Juliet when it’s really the equivalent of Archie & Veronica.
• Neil Young will launch some new archive/audiophile site/device/app that he promises to update with exclusive content forever — until he totally abandons it six weeks later.
• CDs and DVDs will be one year closer to being back in style, at which point I can sell my collection and retire to the Bahamas. At least, that’s what I will keep telling my wife.
• Jimmy Page will claim he’s going to put out a new album and go back on tour — as soon as he finishes remixing the upcoming 50th anniversary set of Led Zeppelin reissues.
• I will continue to download and archive 10 times as much music as I can possibly listen to. And wouldn’t have it any other way.
