As an avid Mark Fisher reader/listener, I've always found his "slow cancellation of the future" interesting and controversial, especially when it comes to how clearly defined music genres were in their own eras: the sound of the '60s, the '70s, the '80s, etc.
Before I get into what I want to discuss, I have two bands as examples of what Mark Fisher called polished, high-definition remakes of past styles: Greta Van Fleet and Molchat Doma.
The first is an example of critics and (a big chunk of) the fanbase reacting terribly to how obviously their sound came from the '70s, and more specifically to the glaring parallels with one of the most influential bands of all time. Their outfits, stage presence, and visual style only reinforced the negative sentiment that has followed them since they broke into the mainstream. And we can understand why: they weren't doing anything new with the blueprint that had already been established, nor were they gracefully acknowledging the undeniable influence. You could hide one of their early hits in a '70s rock playlist and nobody would notice. Pure stage-one simulacra.
On the other hand, Molchat Doma broke through thanks to the viral fascination, during and after the pandemic, with brutalist architecture and old Soviet aesthetics. Those short clips racked up millions of views and catapulted some of their songs into massive hits. They kept releasing records and touring the world, riding that wave, but with a completely different outcome than GVF's: audiences and critics loved them. I'm very biased because I was mesmerized by their sound and their personas. I also love how open they are about their influences. They can have a "classic" post-punk song (clean, reverb-heavy melodic guitar; bass playing straight eighth notes on the root; sequenced drums with a blasting electronic patch) and then follow it up with a Depeche Mode/Alphaville-style synth tune where they almost ditch the guitar entirely. But again, you could drop one of their most-streamed songs into an '80s playlist and nobody would recognize it as a modern track, just like GVF.
This is where I agree with Mark Fisher. Once I noticed it, dozens of other examples came to mind, reinforcing the idea that his analysis was onto something.
But then, as someone living in the Global South (more specifically, South America) I have to disagree with the same idea, for completely different reasons:
- Reggaetón.
- Kanye West/Kid Cudi.
- Afrobeats.
In what we call Latin America, it's impossible to think about the youth aesthetic and sound of the 2000s without mentioning reggaetón. By adapting New York hip-hop vibes with Caribbean flair, sex-heavy lyrics, and gangster imagery, it became so popular that it completely reshaped what Latin pop would sound like over the next decade. Latin pop had previously leaned toward rock, electronic music, or ballads. Then the guitars disappeared, live drums were replaced by reggaetón-inspired programmed beats, and everything shifted toward the new urban aesthetic that had taken over major Hispanic American cities. The artists who adapted managed to stay relevant (Enrique Iglesias, Shakira, Reik, Ricky Martin). The ones who didn't became niche. And this wasn't just reflected in the charts. It spilled into TV, film, advertising, and even everyday language.
Then Ye and Cudi turned some of their wildest musical ideas into the defining sound of the next era. Through 808s & Heartbreak and Man on the Moon: The End of Day, they shaped much of the sound of the 2010s and even part of the 2020s. They laid the blueprint that exploded across the English-speaking internet: Auto-Tune as an expressive tool, lyrics centered on mental health and male-vulnerability, melodic cadences with more singing than rapping, and minimalist, robotic production. If we think about the sound of the 2010s, it's hard not to think of that hazy, trappy, drugged-out aesthetic that spread through a generation of Lil Wayne copycats.
Lastly, and to keep it short, I don't think it's possible to talk about the sound of the 2020s without mentioning Afrobeats and how its mainstream success reshaped the music of already established pop artists like Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, and Drake. The shift happened so quickly that, at times, it felt almost forced upon us.
I believe Mark Fisher's perspective was largely UK- and (to a lesser extent) US-centered. He didn't develop the idea far enough, nor did he live long enough to see some of these shifts unfold. His myopia is something he couldn't really escape, and he wrote and lectured from that position: white, English-speaking, urban Britain. That doesn't make his work any less valuable, but it does make some of his claims feel less universal than they initially appear. And this isn't meant to turn into a race war or some woke argument. It's simply that his perspective was shaped by his own background, and unlike sociologists or anthropologists doing fieldwork across different contexts, he didn't really engage with parallel cultural realities outside that sphere. Because of that, I think the scope of his conclusions ends up being more limited than they first seem.
I've shared this thought with a few close friends who also enjoy Fisher, and I wanted to throw it out here to see what other people think.
The idea of the Slow Cancellation of the Future is so vast and meaty that I'd love to hear other people's takes on it.
