13 May

It's only in popular music that fights over 'originals' really happen. Symphony orchestras and jazz bands dine out on almost nothing but 'covers'. It's not a musical thing, it's a social thing. Popularity culture always produces at the same time the desire for authenticity, for distinguishing all of the copies from the original. Except it's all of the copying that produces the original, there is no such thing as an original, without copies. You can see the same things happening with everything social media now touches. More 'authentic' or 'natural' health care ('natural' is a juggernaut right now). Or politicians who 'say it like it is', like Bob Katter or Trump, loved because they're supposedly more authentic. But there is no more authentic or natural anything. It's an artefact of popularity culture.