I write about random things a lot. I write a lot about random things. Is the transit strike over yet? I have to write this column a week in advance, and I understandably have no way of knowing as I write this. I do know what a segue-way is, though...

Predictions are funny things, particularly when applied to an animal like the music industry, itself a highly unpredictable force. It's like the Chaos Theory; though you can argue its existence is purely random, there is an undeniable pattern, a regularity so sparsely punctuated within that it's easy to miss. Similarly, with a few years practice and a good sense of musical climate, it's also possible to notice that type of shift in music.

That in mind, I'm going to lay out for you a prediction for you: 2010 is going to be a terrible year for popular music.

Shock value aside, we're right on the cusp of another big shift in popular music, and at this point it's impossible to say what exactly it's going to be. So many high profile acts released music this past year that in 2010 there's going to be a shortage of music that is so universally appealing and assuredly marketable, necessitating something fresh.

While it's easier to notice in terms of art or television advertising, the concept of culture being influenced by political or economic factors is especially applicable to music — I'm not sure if you've noticed, but lately there has been a noticeable trend in music to a place more mature, less elaborate than in recent years.

For example, take the recent record Beggars by Thrice, a rock band from California. Released August 11, this album is an unmistakable progression from their humble beginnings in 1998 and through records like 2003's The Artist In The Ambulance. But with that growth comes real insight and fascination — Beggars is an album made delightfully unique by its seeming simplicity, a marriage of rock character and indie melody.

As rock music ebbed in the 90s, there was a definite swell in 1999, one last wave we could all toe, thanks to Woodstock. From there, the wave of pop music that began with the Backstreet Boys in 1997 and grew through Mickey Mouse-clubbers was strong enough to take centre-stage, but not substantial enough to last more than a couple of years before imploding around 2003.

With nothing truly substantial to merit attention, we discovered indie music and the brilliance of acts like Broken Social Scene (perhaps the greatest single collective in Canadian indie music to date), Arcade Fire, and others. Shortly after, Zach Braff produced Garden State, whose 2004 soundtrack did more for the popularizing of indie music than any other collection, before or since. Within the last decade we've seen the cyclical rise and fall of many forms of music, and we're about to witness another. To put it in black-and-white, 2010 is going to see either the rise of some new genre of music or the return of some long dormant one. I make no promises, but you can take to heart that it's going to be a very interesting and telling year. I'm out of words.