The contemporary scene is in overload. There is so much of everything to the point of over-stimulation. The base animal finds it too much and is increasingly like a rabbit in the headlights. Popular music, the once defining art-form of the 20th Century, no longer tells a story other than one of its own decline. There is so much music around now, so easily accessed, that the specialness has gone. Ordinariness prevails.

This is not to say that the old stuff won't retain its specialness. Past works are guaranteed their place at the top table. The classic songs will become richer with time. The point I make is to do with currency. The days of greatness are over in music and possibly all the arts. This is the age of ordinary. Everything is rendered ordinary because there is so much on offer that anything different that might push the frontier gets lost in the crowd. There are more people on the stage these days than there are in the audience.

In an individualist world there is no individuality and everything becomes the same. Popular music is generic. People copy others, play safe, become afraid of risk and those types who historically would have taken risks are excluded as not being relevant because they are too different. Marketing folk and analysts look to what works and order up more of the same to maximise the take. This is a disaster for creativity.

There is no sign of the overload problem lessening. The volume increases exponentially by the hour. Consequently I think the golden age of popular culture is over and it will be a long time before great works of genius are seen again. Mercifully the vintage material still exists and will remain the gold standard. The films, the music, the books and plays can always be looked back upon for identity. It is just that contemporary work will increasingly have no purchase not because of innate quality or lack of talent but because the overcrowded context won't allow it.