Dear Nigerian musicians, shouldn’t the goal be timelessness?

Dear Nigerian musicians,

What do you think when names like Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, King Sunny Ade, Prince, and Celine Dion are mentioned? What do you think that they have in common? What do songs like “I’ll Always Love You”, “Valerie”, “Man In the Mirror”, “Merciful God”, “Material Girl”, “Purple Rain”, “My Heart Will Go On” and Lionel Richie’s “Hello” share?

Timelessness. We will forever remember these songs for good. There’s nearly no one – across generational gaps too – that can’t relate to one or more of these songs for good. One would think that a musician sets out to make great hits and not forgettable “jump around” songs, the likes of which the Nigerian music industry looks bent on putting out yearly.

Are we jumping ahead of the times? Are we being too impatient or are we wrong to expect that the industry would have blessed us with songs to remember for ages by now? It’s hard to think of this industry and  not think of potential but we all know that Almost Doesn’t Count.

When one thinks of the contemporary Nigerian music scene, it is becoming increasingly difficult to point out any songs that we can call classic after African Queen. And therein lies the problem.

We say artistes have “blown” but what do we mean when we find it hard to remember the songs that got them to “blow” seven to ten years down the line. It’s hard to think that it would matter what the size of a musician’s cassava is in ten years. Sure, they are interesting right now and we dance to them and make us happy but the question is what will we remember years and years after?

Or are we being to quick? Because we think of artistes like Asa and Lagbaja and Sunny Nneji and Adekunle Gold and we smile knowing they will be on playlists for years to come. Still it won’t be too much to just put this out there to you all to please bless us with content that will be evergreen.

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