Music is constantly changing in our society; most of these changes have been made in tandem with developments in technology in the past few centuries – the people behind the music, the composers, have helped set the tone for most aspects of life through their music and in this essay I’m going to explore the history behind several famous composers from the past few decades.

The first artist I’m going to look at is R.E.M. – from Losing My Religion to Shiny Happy People, their songs have become instant classics with Losing My Religion even being used on the track list for Guitar Hero 6: Warriors of Rock (1). The band originally started out as Peter Buck and Michael Stipe after they met each other in Athens, Georgia while both were attending the University of Georgia – they ‘struck up an unlikely friendship’ (2) and moved in together; from then on, they started messing around with writing songs before officially forming R.E.M. with Mike Mills and Bill Berry a year later in 1981 when they released their first single Radio Free Europe (even though they had unofficially been together since 1980 with their first show being at a friend’s birthday party in an abandoned church in April 1980) (3). In total, the band has had 4 Top 10 singles on Billboard Hot 100 (with the highest being Losing My Religion at No.4), 22 songs overall in the Hot 100, 2 Number 1 albums on the Billboard Hot 200 chart (Out of Time and Monster) and one Top 10 album on The Official U.K. Albums Chart with Collapse Into Now peaking at No. 5 (4). Their album Automatic For The People in particular was one of their most politically charged albums – released in 1991, it covers topics such as Ronald Reagan’s presidential run in America and the AIDs crisis, mainly discussing themes of mortality, especially because it was the “time in your life when your older relatives start going” (Peter Buck, 2017) for the band (5). Ignoreland was the band’s angry political rant about coming up through the Reagan years and with lyrics like “These bastards stole their power from/The victims of the us v. them years/Wrecking all things virtuous and true” (6) they imply that the Republican party used manipulative tactics and propaganda to take power away from marginalised groups in society. One of their most popular songs is Losing My Religion, released as a single from the album Out of Time – on YouTube alone; the music video has accumulated over 600 million views since its re-upload in 2011 (7). The song was named after an archaic expression meaning to be pushed to the limit and the basis of the song – the iconic mandolin riff – originated from guitarist Buck’s attempts to master the mandolin; he played back his attempts from learning the instrument and he felt that that riff in particular would “make a good basis for a song” (8). The lead singer, Stipe, shot down claims that the song came from personal experience when he admitted that he had tried to top The Police’s hit Every Breath You Take while the band were writing the song.

The next artist, Coldplay, is easily one of the most popular bands of the last decade; they have had great chart success with 21 overall songs in the Billboard Hot 100, 4 top 10 hits, 4 Number One albums and 1 Number One song (Viva La Vida) as well as collaborations with other artists (namely Beyoncé and The Chainsmokers) for singles and even songs for one of their most recent albums, A Head Full of Dreams – this was their first album in over a decade to not have reached Number One in the Billboard 200 albums chart, however (9). This was also the album they received most criticism on for the album art alone – their design was based around the flower of life symbol that had previously been used for an album cover by Bring Me The Horizon 2 years prior for their album Sempiternal. This resulted in people taking to Twitter to accuse Chris Martin of copying them (10) and built up to the point where Oli Sykes (Bring Me The Horizon’s frontman) smashed up Coldplay’s album at the 2016 NME awards (11). However, he says that it was “in no way a protest against Coldplay” (Oliver Sykes, 2016). Their debut album, Parachutes (released in 2000), gave the band their first Top 5 hit (Yellow) and they even won a Grammy for it in 2003 after touring North America the year prior (12). Their second album, A Rush Of Blood To The Head, was released in 2002 after the events of 9/11 – this heavily inspired the album with their biggest hit – The Scientist – featuring the lyrics “nobody said it was easy/it’s such a shame for us to part” (13). In Coldplay’s 2018 documentary from the start of the band through to the 2015 album of the same name (A Head Full of Dreams), it followed the journey of Coldplay from before they came together as a band in 1996. They met while studying at university where they lived in the same student halls - Guy and Jonny were jamming songs together a year before they formed the band with Chris Martin and Will Champion (14). When Coldplay started, they originally didn’t have a drummer; Will was a friend of the band and despite the others originally asking his flat mate (who was a drummer) to be their drummer, he came and set up before leaving so Will decided to play since he “was the only one left” (Will Champion, 2018) and then Coldplay were officially formed. Chris described A Head Full of Dreams as “the first time we got everything we were always hoping for” (Chris Martin, 2018) in terms of artistic vision when creating the songs for the album – they were finally in a place where they had access to everything they needed to express their ideas musically and visually on stage with everything set up exactly as they wanted.

The last artist I’m going to look into is Queen – being one of the most popular bands from the last 40 years, their music has become a staple in society with various songs used throughout media; for example, like R.E.M., their song Bohemian Rhapsody was featured in the track list for Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock (15) and it was used in the opening sequence of Wayne’s World (16). Another one of their songs – Another One Bites The Dust ­– has been used in multiple movies, including Iron Man 2, The Fast And The Furious (16). They’ve done exceptionally well in the charts with 6 UK Number 1 singles (Bohemian Rhapsody, Innuendo, Under Pressure, Five Live, Bohemian Rhapsody/These Are The Days of Our Lives and We Will Rock You) including one with George Michael, 26 UK Top 10 songs, 21 weeks at Number 1 and 108 weeks in the Top 10 (17). Before Freddie Mercury joined the band, their sound was much different – originally, the band was just Roger Taylor and Brian May under the name ‘Smile’ with vocalist Tim Staffell until his departure in 1971; from 1967 through to 1971, their albums ‘boasted the motto "no synthesizers were used on this record"’ (18) as a way of proving their allegiance with the post-Led-Zeppelin hard rock band surge. Freddie Mercury brought a theatrical element to the band inspired by the glam rock of the late 70s, and through this and their ‘pseudo-classical arrangements’ their unique sound catapulted them to the top of the charts with their song Bohemian Rhapsody (19). However, this success was hardly recognised by music critics at the time – a famous review by The Rolling Stone in 1979 even went as far to label their latest release Jazz as ‘fascist’ and they were never taken seriously by rock critics because of the pop element that synths brought to their songs. Most of their influences came from other British rock bands/artists at the time such as Pink Floyd, David Bowie, The Who, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin. Due to this range of influences, the main genres they played were all sub-genres of rock with psychedelic, hard and pop rock being the most obvious and prevalent throughout all of their music. In 2019, a movie about the band’s entire history – named Bohemian Rhapsody after their most famous song – was released to mixed reviews. While most were positive and praising the movie for it’s accurate portrayal of the late Freddie Mercury (played by Rami Malek), there were quite a few that pulled apart the factual inaccuracies in the film. For example, Fat Bottomed Girls was played during their tour in the early 1970s despite being released in 1974; We Will Rock You was recorded in the wrong year; Freddie wasn’t diagnosed HIV positive until after Live Aid and; Rock in Rio was in the 80s while in the movie it was shown to be in the 70s (20).