21st Century Pop: The Mainstream Has Traded Ambition For Accessibility

"I've never thought of my music as being particularly difficult music to enjoy. I've never thought of it as being particularly inaccessible music," English singer-songwriter and producer Steven Wilson ponders. "The times have changed, unfortunately, and my music, which might have had a very large audience in the '80s is now seen as being on the fringes of the mainstream. But I'm not complainin' because I do have a very privileged career."

Throughout three decades boasting numerous acclaimed projects (Porcupine Tree, Blackfield, Storm Corrosion), the bespectacled performer has carved a niche and loyal following. Revered within the prog-rock realm, new solo record To The Bone is Wilson's nod to the forward-thinking pop records of his youth - Peter Gabriel's So and Talk Talk's The Colour Of Spring, among others.

He says the LP references a great era "when pop music was also extremely ambitious". "It's all about the idea of combining ambition with accessibility. There is more of a pop sensibility there, but it's also something that people will instantly recognise as being very much a Steven Wilson record with a Steven Wilson sound. I hope."

At what point does he feel accessibility and creative ambition largely became mutually exclusive within the pop world? "I think it's gradually eroded over the past 25 years or so. There's no doubt for me that the '80s was a high point for that philosophy, that you could be very accessible but without having to dumb your sound down at all. You could deal with very weighty matters in the lyrics, and have very cinematic production, great musicianship.

"I think that began to erode as we moved into the '90s and there were the movements like grunge and the explosion of electronic music being made in bedrooms. That's all great, but for some reason, unfortunately, the downside of that was really ambitious pop music gradually began to fade away. There was still some stuff in the '90s, the whole Britpop movement... But I certainly feel since the 21st century's come around, that kind of ambition has almost entirely disappeared from the mainstream. With a few exceptions - there's bands like Arcade Fire, and Radiohead are still around."

In recent years, Wilson has become the go-to guy for remixing beloved records. After initially being enlisted by prog forebears King Crimson and Jethro Tull, he parlayed this into re-imagining back catalogue releases for a broader range of artists, including Tears For Fears, Simple Minds, Roxy Music and Chicago.

"I guess I fell into it by accident, but it's been wonderful because I've learned so much also from being able to deconstruct and reconstruct classic albums. It's a real education. And a lot of what I've learned from that you will hear in records like To The Bone. I was remixing Tears For Fears last year, and I think a lot of that rubbed off on To The Bone. It's great to be able to give something back to these classic albums, polish them up for a new generation. But it's also great because I learn so much from doing it and it's a privilege to be able to mess with these sacred texts, in a way," he laughs.