An Editorial by someone unqualified to talk about anything.

I was driving down the highway on my way home from another long day at the ‘raising my blood pressure to concerning levels’ factory listening to my usual playlist when all of a sudden an epiphany hit me. See, I was shuffling through my usual eclectic mix when tapwater princess by biblemami came on. For the uninitiated and without digging into literally any of the nuance of the song (as it doesn’t pertain to my world changing epiphany) it’s a pretty great club ready house track. In this moment of simple, mindless contentedness I came to a realization:

Bringing back clubbing could fix all the things.

…or at least some of the things. Now you may be thinking while reading my silly article on your smartphone “what are you talking about clubs are so active?” and to that I say “not all of us can be European Zack”. In all my 23 years on this planet I have never once set foot in a club, and my main reason for never going is pretty simple: I’ve never felt the need to. As a social activity I’ve never sat down and went “I need to go overpay for drinks and listen to songs that don’t even slap that hard tonight”. That last part is super important as well as I think the feeling around clubbing in North America is completely off. It hasn’t always been like this either, because I remember a time before I was legally aloud to even think about clubbing (for fear of the thought police bringing me to thought jail) when the vibe and mystique around clubs was completely different.

Being born in 2002 I grew up hearing some of the greatest club hits ever made in my general day to day. Cascada’s Every Time We Touch was playing on the radio, and “coming up next on Z103.5 we got Cry For You by September”, not to mention the live broadcasts directly from a club in Toronto every Friday(?) night. It was a different time entirely, to the point that I remember being excited to experience that feeling when I got older. I remember my Mom leaving me with my Grandparents to go out with friends on occasion, bars and clubs were a mandatory experience for anyone even remotely young, and yet I feel we’ve completely lost that in the modern day. Part of the problem is that if I were to walk into a club today, my understanding from first hand accounts is depending on where I go I’m likely to hear something by Kenrick Lamar or god forbid, Benson Boone, and I have absolutely no issue with either of those artists (allegedly) as I genuinely love some Kendrick tracks, but it’s simple not the same as the bouncer finally letting you in and Bulletproof by La Roux is playing from the DJ booth.

It’s sad really, because I think it’s a greater trend that is indicative of the feelings of a generation. We largely listen to very serious music, music with less whimsy to its composition. This isn’t to say “serious” music can’t fit an energy quota, but there’s mountains of shallow “Recession Pop” that was club ready that we haven’t properly replaced yet. I could go into the billion reasons why music has changed the way it has, but some of that stuff (economics, world events, etc.) is way outside the scope of a music blog editorial. All this is just to say, I think a lot of people are missing out on this “young wild and free” energy, something that used to be a staple of your 20s. I can’t paint with broad strokes as there are going to be exceptions to everything I say in this article (clubs that play the right stuff, people that go clubbing every weekend), but the prevalence and social need simply is not there the way it was, and the fact that I can’t hear Pinkpanthress other than the one song tiktok has fallen in love with, or god forbid Yazida in a single club local to me is something I will continue to dwell on until we fix it.

So here’s my pitch. We gotta bring back club music, and we gotta go to clubs. In turn for reasons I cannot explain, this will fix:

• The mental health crisis
• The housing crisis
• Rising cost of groceries
• The current rise of fascism
• My car insurance being so god damn high
• The hellscape that is “Tinder”
• My own personal sense of whimsy

And probably way more things. Source: (Trust me bro).