From the first time a guitar was sent through an amplifier, debate has raged about what constitutes "proper" music.   The invention of the synthesizer had many classical musicians reeling.  Electronically created sounds were frowned upon, and seen as detrimental to musicianship.  Many critics argued (and some still do) that electronic music was soulless, lacking in emotion and cold.  One close listen to a track such as 'Subterraneans' from the seminal Brian Eno produced David Bowie album 'Low' can put a stop to that argument in one fell swoop.  An electronic circuit creating an oscillating waveform is arguably as mechanical as a hammer striking a piano string, and by the early to mid eighties a large proportion of tracks in the British and American charts prominently featured synthesizers, drum machines and early samplers.

Sampling of music has created equal controversy.  In its rawest form, digitally copying a section of another piece of music has its roots in the sharing of influences present in any form of popular song.  The "chain gang" songs of slavery in the States had an influence on Blues music; the Blues was incorporated into Elvis Presley’s Rock 'n' Roll sounds, which further influenced subsequent musicians.  This link follows through many, many other styles; with pretty much every band or songwriter making a 'nod' to the type of artists they grew up listening to or were influenced by.  Think of Oasis’ songs that mimic the melody and structure of early Beatles tunes.

Even if you study the so-called "groundbreaking" artists of today, you'll see the link.  In the past year both Radiohead and Richard D. James (under the pseudonym of Aphex Twin) have released critically acclaimed albums with very different styles to that of commercial music.  The origins of these two artists' albums can be heard in the experimental electronic sounds of Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the compositional style of John Cage (Aphex Twin’s 'Drukqs' album even goes to the extent of featuring several sparse pieces played on a prepared piano).

This "copying" of styles throughout contemporary music has its logical conclusions within the sampler.  A reference to another piece of recorded work is no more blatant than when it is lifted en-mass from the piece itself.   Looking objectively at the progression of technology and pop music, it seems obvious that we should have ended up at a stage where the sounds and sections used in some forms of music are interchangeable.

Modern pop, and in particular dance music may feature undisguised references to many ideas that have gone before, but ignore their historical significance.  The sampling process physically uses part of a recording as another piece of a musical collage - taking many elements from other sources, then presenting it as a new commodity.  A great number of chart singles feature samples from other tracks (not always old ones: some tunes can very quickly get released featuring whole sections lifted from songs that were released barely weeks before).  That sampling is intertextuality of the most obvious order – so much so that it is extremely easy to listen to many moderns songs without realizing there are samples throughout them.

Samples are taken from such a wide variety of sources that it is almost impossible to have a large enough knowledge of music to be able to spot them all.  This means that the historical relevance of those 'pastiches' is bound to be lost, especially on very young listeners.  The cycle goes around and around, the context there if you search for it, but otherwise irrelevant – or presented as if to suggest an entirely different context, perhaps for narrational purposes.

In today's globally linked world, the varied styles present in music come from many different continents.  The late George Harrison's passion for Indian music and Ravi Shankar were an important event in the blurring of western and eastern styles, and this cross-referencing of sounds has become commonplace today – especially in dance and ambient music.  Think of a standard General MIDI synthesizer: the preset sounds will always include ethnic instruments such as the sitar.   Without this blurring of musical borders such features would be uncommon.

Now that the countries of the world have become a musical jigsaw with pieces that fit together in many different ways, what will the near future hold for dynamic new styles of music here in the United Kingdom and across the Atlantic in America?   Our two nations broadly share the same developments in style and technology, and have directly influenced each other's changes in pop and rock.  Perhaps future genres will contain ever more blatant elements; production tricks and samples from what has gone before.

Record companies themselves could dictate change: with the likes of Sony dominating the industry and buying out many former independent labels, music could become more watered down, safe and less experimental.  Could the Beatles have recorded an album comparable to 'Sgt. Pepper' in today’s sales based climate?  Probably not: Radiohead’s recent 'Kid A' and 'Amnesiac' albums were the equivalent of such an experimentation, but both eschewed traditional song structures and received only limited critical acclaim.  As rewarding as both albums can be to the open-minded listener, Radiohead's record company Parlophone must have wondered whether the band were committing commercial Hari Kiri when presented with them.  The Beatles used their unique position in the rock industry to come up with a more complex sound.  Radiohead did the opposite: stripping away layers of instruments; playing with synthesizers and technology to make the songs less tuneful, and in the process gaining new fans and losing others.

Historically, "rock" music can be seen to repeat clichés from past recordings, and present them in a very traditional way.  It is likely to continue to do so.  Likewise, pop and electronic dance music is now doing the same.   Trends are present in the charts and clubs on a seemingly rotational basis, whether it be 70s, 80s or 90s revivals, or dance music fads (House/Trance/Drum’n’Bass/Hip Hop/Breakbeat).  It is as if music has become increasingly multi-cultural, and cyclical.  With the world's styles already analyzed and incorporated into what we commonly hear, the only 'innovation' in new music could be the combinations in which styles are blended together and presented to the listener.  Dance in particular has no one definitive categorization: almost weekly we hear of new and unlikely combinations of older genres.

Music that was deemed Progressive during the seventies is now just another influence in the melting pot of rock music.   A healthy analogy for new artists would be the 'act' as a shopping trolley in a supermarket, with the aisles full of every possible strand of music.  The act's contributors each choose their personal favourites to place in the trolley among the others, and this mixture and the friction between the different items creates something unique, although every individual item can be recognized within.

Major shifts in music trends have been somewhat lazily defined in decades.  Former Factory Records boss Tony Wilson suggested recently that in the U.K. they in fact occur every 13 years.  He cited key moments as 1950 (Rock'n'Roll, the prominence of American Blues bands), 1963 (The Beatles), 1976 (the Punk era begins), and 1989 (Acid House).  This is dangerously over-simplified and pays attention to mostly British only music.  He predicted the next 'big thing' as happening in 2002, logically enough.  What many of these years mentioned have in common here in the U.K. are that they accompanied times of social change or hardship.  Punk is a prime example of unskilled musicians making a bold statement of disaffection with the Government in power.  With a higher standard of living now in 2001, considerably less social deprivation and much less unemployment, music may not have the political driving force behind it needed to inspire future generations.  We may have an ongoing position of bands deciding which previous decade they'd like to sound like – as if browsing through those supermarket shelves.  The Britpop of the nineties could have commenced a long running 'Retrospective' movement.

Many musical movements have been brought about by the creation of new technologies.  Amplified band instruments generated louder, rockier sounds from the fifties onwards; electronics and digital innovations spurned dance music in its many guises.  It is arguable that every conceivable sound can now be created by our currently available equipment: therefore the only "groundbreaking" artists will be the ones who use presently possible sounds, instruments, and styles, but in original or unexpected combinations.

The record labels' increasing profit and marketing driven methods will ensure that chart music becomes less and less relevant to the lover of influential music.  Compare how much money is spent on a Steps promotional video to how much it cost to actually record the song it is promoting: the advertising and forceful plugging of the music as a 'product' almost denies the act a claim to status as a true 'artist'.  Abhorrent 'Popstar'-type television shows serve to monopolize this chart domination of "music-by-numbers" that will only follow trends in music rather than lead them.  In the early 21st century the pop chart only matters to school children, and can easily be dismissed as irrelevant and 'fixed', by the nature of its many confusing regulations.

Tony Wilson has been known to make mistakes.  Whisper it, but he might be wrong.