Mega-teen music scene has started to grow up

 

Youth acts are still creating hits, but most of this year's top sellers were in their 20s or 30s

 

NEW YORK -- Just a few years ago, when teens dominated the pop charts, to be a singer of a more senior age -- say, about 30 -- was something to be downplayed or outright omitted on one's musical resume.

 

But these days, Justin Timberlake has graduated from 'N Sync to sexy adult club tracks, Christina Aguilera is a married woman singing mature ballads and it no longer seems necessary to shave a few years off your age. Though teen acts such as JoJo, Rihanna and Chris Brown are still creating hits, they are no longer ruling the marketplace. Most of this year's top-selling artists were in their 20s or 30s, like Gnarls Barkley, Mary J. Blige, James Blunt, Nelly Furtado and Shakira.

 

"There has been more product that was clearly adult for the last five to 10 years," says Sean Ross, vice president of music and programming at Edison Media Research, which tracks radio trends.

 

"Thirty-five-year-olds are going to a point where rap is OK, and 18-year-olds want more mellow music. It's more like there's nothing galvanizing in the center, and that lets everybody see what's in the fringes."

 

Still, there may be the rumblings of a teen craze on the horizon. The year's second-biggest-selling album was the soundtrack to the Disney TV movie High School Musical, although it was aimed at the tween set. And a graduate from that film, Vanessa Hudgens, is having some success on radio with her solo debut.

 

In addition, though there have been no monster albums from teens this year, there have been other radio successes with acts such as 17-year-old singer Paula DeAnda ("Doing Too Much"), 16-year-old rapper Jibbs ("Chain Hang Low") and 16-year-old JoJo, whose ballad "Too Little Too Late" was a top-five Billboard pop hit.

 

"I think a lot of times it's been older people, but now the teenage group, the younger group, it's very youthful now," DeAnda says. "There's hot new artists out there. It's a real big year for us."

 

"I think it's kind of happening," JoJo says of a possible teen resurgence on the charts. "But I don't think it's in the same way that it happened maybe seven years ago with the boy bands and Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera."

 

Back then, acts such as Spears and Aguilera made blockbuster albums that sold millions of copies apiece during a music-industry boom.

 

But as the acts grew older along with the teens who once worshipped them, the craze began to fade, along with the decline of the music industry with the advent of Internet downloading.

 

A recent survey from the Recording Industry Association of America showed that from 1996 to 2005, the number of 15-to-19-year-olds purchasing music declined from 17.2 percent of music buyers to 11.9 percent. The percentage of buyers ages 20 to 44 either declined very slightly or remained about steady, but the biggest leap was in the 45-and-older group, which now represents 25.5 percent of music buyers, up from 15.1 percent in 1996.

 

Even though Barry Manilow and Bob Dylan had No. 1 debuts with their albums this year, it's not as if pop is no longer a music that appeals to youth. After all, one of its biggest sensations, Beyonce, is a certified veteran at age 25.

 

But her boyfriend, 37-year-old Jay-Z, had one of the biggest sales debuts of the year with his album Kingdom Come. On it, he talks about being mature and seasoned and even has a song, "30 Something," bragging about his elder status.

 

"When you're 50 years old, you still love hip-hop but you just can't relate to the music anymore because the people making it as they grow, they're still trying to cater to a younger audience," he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. "I just felt it was very important for me to make a grown-up album, and that's the tone of it, the whole album."'

 

Jay-Z isn't ruling out selling to the kids either. And it seems that these days, there's less of a distinction between the MTV set and the VH1 set.

 

Daniel Powter, 35, had one of the year's biggest hits with "Bad Day," a singalong piano track that first got popular when it was used as the sendoff song on American Idol.

 

Powter credits his life experience for helping him to finally make a hit such as "Bad Day."

 

"I think I've put a foundation in. I couldn't have written the music when I was 18," he says.

 

"I don't want to lie about how old I am. I still feel good. I still feel great. I love to play music."

 

Yay! :lol: