How We Get a New Renaissance

A new renaissance? Yes, we need it.

Raise your hand if you’ve felt bored by entertainment lately.

Raise your other hand if you’ve surrendered to the algorithm, letting Spotify spoon-feed you the same six songs you didn’t even really like in the first place.

Raise your middle hand if find yourself wanting a cultural reset.

Good. Now put them down before someone calls for help.

Culture has become frictionless. We’re drowning in content but starving for discovery. The machines don’t just recommend music; they dictate taste. And without resistance, without risk, without effort—nothing really surprises us anymore.

Filterworld? It’s your fault.

You say you want to be excited about music again, but you pay $12 a month for every song ever made and still listen to the same playlist called Vibes.

You want to find a new sound, but you only check what’s trending, as if the system designed to make everything homogenous will suddenly hand you something singular.

You say you want another Springsteen or Cobain, but if they showed up today, you’d probably just assume they had a good social team.

It’s not just that being an artist is commercialized—it’s that the process of becoming one has eclipsed the work itself.

A band doesn’t just exist anymore. It has a content strategy. A marketing funnel. A debut album now requires a lead-single rollout, a TikTok activation plan, and a well-timed “authentic” controversy.

And we don’t just listen—we evaluate. Streaming numbers, engagement rates, brand viability.

It’s not that gatekeepers disappeared. You became them. And you’re worse at it. At least the old A&R guys could tell when something was interesting before deciding how it could be profitable.

Recently, I met a friend at work for lunch. His food was untouched. His ears were squinting at his phone.

Instead of our typical conversations, like the total demise of the American economy or casual tax evasion, we focused in on Paul Simon.

We sat there, huddled over his phone, listening, trying to untangle the vocal harmonies in The Sound of Silence.

He wasn’t being nostalgic. He was frustrated.

He talked about how bands just don’t exist anymore, flat out—let alone great bands. He said that in the ’90s, music could literally change your life, and he’s the product of that.

The thing that made bands like Guided by Voices or My Bloody Valentine great—their rawness, their weirdness, their refusal to sound like everyone else—is now a liability. Because today, everything is optimized for efficiency.

And efficiency is the enemy of discovery.

We don’t find bands anymore. We get fed them. No crate-digging. No mixtapes. No sitting in a friend’s car while they play you something they swear you need to hear. Just the algorithm, nudging you toward what you already know, already like, already resemble.

This is why people don’t create things without these systems in mind anymore.

If Guided by Voices emerged today, they’d be nudged toward cleaner production, more playlist-friendly song structures, less weirdness. They’d be lumped into a Spotify playlist called Lo-Fi Punk, along with twenty other bands that kind of sound the same. And then they’d disappear—flattened into algorithmic landfill.

But, it’s not like musicians were ever pure.

Kurt Cobain loathed fame so much he signed major-label deals, filmed music videos, and played the reluctant rock star because it was a myth that worked.

Springsteen built his persona on the working-class American dream. Lately, he’s on a Broadway tour, with an accompanying Netflix special no less, taking a moment to admit he’s never worked in a factory and doesn’t know how to fix a car.

And nobody cared. Because the myth was always more important than the man.

But today? The myth is gone. We see the machine’s gears turning in real time.

And knowing this doesn’t make us smarter. It makes us less invested.

And the worst part? We act like we barely even mind.

Sure, the algorithm has helped niche artists find an audience. It’s easier than ever to make music from your bedroom or hear something new. There have even been a few diamonds in the rough. But in all, we let it make us lazy, and we compromised ourselves.

This is what happens in an era of bread and circuses—Panem et circenses.

Long ago, the Romans figured out that you don’t need people to be truly happy or self-actualized, just entertained enough to stop asking questions and carry on.

Now, we’ve numbed ourselves on DoorDash and Discover Weekly.

But in the ’90s, Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices wrote songs during his lunch breaks as a fourth-grade teacher in Dayton, Ohio. He didn’t do it for trends, or engagement, or virality—he did it because that’s just how he lived his life.

In his music, which he continues to release even to this day, you don’t hear a hit single. You don’t see a TikTok dance. You feel the genuine spirit of the music. You experience his love for making it.

That’s inspiring. That could change your life.

And maybe that’s what we need again. Not just artists making things, but making things that don’t exist to be seen.

The most essential act of discovery—one person sharing something with another—has been overtaken by a machine. But we can take it back.

You need to be willing to try something you might hate.

You need to be willing to share something for the innocent sake of loving it.

You need to be willing to create something that might only bring a smile to your own face.

A new renaissance won’t be announced in a press release. It won’t be engineered in Silicon Valley.

It’ll happen in the places algorithms can’t reach.

It starts with you, even if just over lunch.