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Beyond embracing a genre, your next new favorite artist or genre should make you feel something

Has the moment arrived when, beyond exploring new (to you) genres, the music industry will once again enable us to experience raw, authentic, and worldly emotions? What's next? There was a time when mainstream labels and streamlined methods of discovering artists made that conversation very simple. But now, in 2026, there’s access to 50 million new songs each year, plus an existing catalog of over 100 million, all available on streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. As our music choices — new and old — expand across genres and become more globally diverse, the question of who and what comes next, in ways that are most sustainable and meaningful, is harder to answer than ever. What if the answer isn’t just an artist making Christian, country, Korean pop, Latin pop, 1990s R&B, or 2000s rock — the genres dominating recent music consumption? What if, beyond genre and vibe, it’s about how and why a song makes us feel — or makes us feel seen and heard — that guides us to our next favorite star? What if we rewind time and, since all music is available at all times, rediscover artists with empathetic sounds that blend classical, folk, jazz, and soul, bringing them to the forefront? What if, instead of SZA, the top artist was Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, or Nina Simone? What if it were the foundational artists of music's last few generations — Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at a Mississippi interstate's intersection in exchange for the keys to the Delta blues, Lead Belly, bequeathing the world with the route from blues to rock and roll, or even Miles Davis interweaving jazz into that conversation, whose artistry was revived? Holiday, Joplin, or Simone — or similar artists — gaining mainstream fame could answer many ongoing social questions about how music's mainstream can provocatively address three key issues: What happens when the world denies you the right to feel complete? What occurs when social structures make it your destiny to remain limited? Who truly defines your story — yourself or the voices around you? What songs might emerge when emotion, politics, and music become one? If you're uncertain about this idea, explore some catalogs for inspiration. Kanye West samples Holiday's "Strange Fruit” in "Blood on the Leaves” (2013). The song examines how fame stresses the need to stay genuine in relationships. Janis Joplin's "Ball and Chain" revisits “Big Mama” Thornton’s classic blues-rock track and serves as a powerful statement on what it feels like to be denied recognition, voice, and emotion — perhaps on a scale larger than romantic love. And what about Nina Simone? With sharp literacy and exceptional musical talent, her work draws from multiple civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s — including Afrofuturism, Black liberation, and women's rights.  A simple quote from Simone offers the most logical reason about why she, moreso than any other artist mentioned in this story, could be next: “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? I choose to reflect the times and the situations in which I find myself. That, to me, is my duty."