In my opinion, right now is the most exciting time in pop music since I was born, mostly because it’s just so intensely weird. Flirting with dubstep, a style that even just a couple of years ago was considered stylishly avant-garde, has become de rigueur for any pop artist who wants to seem up-to-date. Meanwhile rap music sounds more and more like Aphex Twin with every passing day. I sometimes imagine going back in time to play someone Beyonce’s “Bow Down/I Been On” so I can tell them that the pile of weird, warped noises that they’re hearing is in the future the latest single by one of the most popular musicians on earth.
I also like to go the opposite way and picture how pop fans in the coming decades will see us. At this point I’m pretty certain that in 2033, when not very imaginative people put together “2010s” costumes for Halloween, they’ll be wearing Kanye-style shutter shades and “Sex, Drugs & Dubstep” T-shirts. And when the hipsters of the time start digging for songs that are just soooo 2010s they’ll snicker with glee over Demi Lovato’s “Heart Attack” the same way my friends and I once did over crappy pop songs from the 60s that were loaded with egregious amounts of sitar.