Jimmy Iovine Knows Music and Tech. Here’s Why He’s Worried.

Are you impressed by artists’ work now?

Artists have these new platforms that are very, very powerful. So why do visual artists like Mark Bradford, Kara Walker, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer make such powerful statements on where we are today in our culture, like Marvin Gaye, Public Enemy, Bob Dylan or Rage Against the Machine did? What has changed?

One of the reasons I left music was because there wasn’t a kind of music that I related to. I grew up with Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon. When Neil Young’s “Ohio” came out, I was 17 years old. I was a year from being drafted. My instincts said that this war is wrong. And here was a guy whose music I loved, and all of a sudden, I was part of, “We don’t agree with this.” And Neil Young had one-tenth of one percent of the platform that some of these artists have now.

These days I am getting that from the art world and not the music world.

So I call up Ed Ruscha, and I said, “Could you make me an American flag?” And he said, “Only if I can make it the way I feel about America today.” And I said, “Absolutely.”

When I got that painting, I knew that Ed had hit on something. And I said, “Where are the musicians that are doing this?”

There are some clues. Have we entered into an age of music where artists are afraid to alienate people? Since the country is so polarized, am I afraid to alienate the other audience? Am I afraid to alienate a sponsor from my Instagram? I don’t know. I’m asking the question.

But you do have artists like Eilish who are talking about climate change.

There are a few. But not nearly enough.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/arts/music/jimmy-iovine-pop-decade.html?emc=rss&partner=rss