Music lost its centrality to pop culture in the early 2000s.

Evidence

Perhaps this shift reflected a broader cultural reality: Music was losing its place as the central pillar of pop culture. For all the ingenuity of OutKast’s “Hey Ya!,” the most defining musical moment of 2003 arguably wasn’t a song. It was Madonna open-mouth kissing Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera at the MTV Video Music Awards—a moment of pure spectacle that repurposed music as the mere backdrop to television drama. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 132

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the omnivore monoculture reading goal: the decline of music as a status-defining pillar of youth culture is a step toward the flattened universal-taste thesis.