I grew up in the 60s and 70s and I like a fair amount of the music but I also value the Great American Songbook canon of the 1930s - 1950s. I have zero interest in the bubble gum pop of the 50s and early 60s. What I connect with about the music of the 70s is the record production and the sound. To my ears it seems to hold up better over time as opposed to many pop records made in the early to mid 60s and later in the 1980s that have very dated production values. That's my two cents. But there are many exceptions to the rule.

 

Born in 1957, interested in pop/rock since 1970.

Looking at songs, my top 10 of all time is split as follows

60s: 1, 70s: 5, 80s: 4

Looking at albums, my top 10 shows a wider distribution:

70s: 3, 80s: 2; 90s: 1, 00s: 2, 10s: 2

So based on songs, maybe I fit the profile (although if we would go for top 100, the spread would be wider), but not based on albums.

 

Born in 1957, interested in pop/rock since 1970.

Looking at songs, my top 10 of all time is split as follows

60s: 1, 70s: 5, 80s: 4

Looking at albums, my top 10 shows a wider distribution:

70s: 3, 80s: 2; 90s: 1, 00s: 2, 10s: 2

So based on songs, maybe I fit the profile (although if we would go for top 100, the spread would be wider), but not based on albums.

Would you care to share your top 10 lists?

I know I put together a top 100 list for myself and it's not so easy. How about I dig out my list and start a thread over in the non-classical listening area?

 

I grew up in the 90s and I think plenty of pop music from all decades has qualities that make it special. Still, 7 of my top 10 favorite artists are from the 60s/70s (Dylan, Beatles, Zeppelin, King Crimson, The Kinks, Hendrix, Yes), so even for my broad tastes I still feel that, in terms of pop music, that era was quite special. I'd also say that music of that time period has more critical importance for several reasons, one being that it was the point where rock music and popular music production began to get more sophisticated and "artistic" on several fronts, as well as reaching a truly world-wide audience. That combined with the fact that there was a lot of social upheaval during that time probably made the music seem even more special (ala Orson Welles's famous Cuckoo Clock speech in The Third Man).

In general, it's been shown in studies that most people tend to find their favorite music in their early teens and it remains their favorite throughout their life, and that most people's favorite music tracks with whatever music was popular when they were in their early teens. This isn't especially true of "boomers" and 60s/70s music. I simply think the music of that period, for whatever reason, touched a huge audience and continues to do so. I still regularly see people younger than myself, people in their teens and twenties, that are passionate about music and love many of these artists. They do seem to have some appeal that is managing to cross temporal as well as cultural barriers, at least up until now.

 

Songs:

1. Shine on you crazy diamond (PF)
2. Mad man moon (Genesis)
3. Firth of Fifth (Genesis)
4. Ghosts (Japan)
5. Kayleigh (Marillion)
6. Private investigations (Dire Straits)
7. The ninth wave (Kate Bush)
8. Killer queen (Queen)
9. The sound of silence (S&G)
10. Vincent (Don McLean)

Albums:

1. Hounds of Love (Kate Bush)
2. Selling England by the Pound (Genesis)
3. Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
4. Fear of a Blank Planet (Porcupine Tree)
5. Scarlets Walk (Tori Amos)
6. Love over Gold (Dire Straits)
7. A Trick of the Tail (Genesis)
8. Little Earthquakes (Tori Amos)
9. The Raven that Refused to Sing... (Steven Wilson)
10. Unrepentant Geraldines (Tori Amos)

Of course, pretty much cast in stone in the upper half, and more prone to changes in the bottom, especially the 10th place.

 

I keep my list stored in the cloud, I am up there now looking around for where I may have left it.

 

In general, it's been shown in studies that most people tend to find their favorite music in their early teens and it remains their favorite throughout their life, and that most people's favorite music tracks with whatever music was popular when they were in their early teens.

Not true for me but for a particular slice of the musical pie. What this also may demonstrate is that many adults aren't music enthusiasts or life long learners.

 

I was born right at the tail end of the boomer age and when I got into rock and pop at the age of 13/14 the acts I latched onto were more often than not defunct or well past their prime. When I looked for new things during the 80s and 90s I again found myself liking stuff that had been around for a while, so I seemed destined to dwell in some kind of time lag. After a period going even further back in time and exploring rock & roll, blues and soul I pretty much gave up as I thought I'd amassed enough pop, rock and whatever else to sustain me for the rest of my life, plus classical and (to a lesser extent) jazz were new avenues I was keen to go and explore.

Looking back on 40-odd years of rock music I can say that one of my very few regrets about not being ten years older is that I missed out on so much great stuff from the 60s and 70s first hand, and to this day those two decades make up the large majority of my non-classical collection.

 

I was born right at the tail end of the boomer age and when I got into rock and pop at the age of 13/14 the acts I latched onto were more often than not defunct or well past their prime. When I looked for new things during the 80s and 90s I again found myself liking stuff that had been around for a while, so I seemed destined to dwell in some kind of time lag. I pretty much gave up after that as I thought I'd amassed enough pop and rock to sustain me for the rest of my life, plus classical and (to a lesser extent) jazz were new avenues I was keen to go explore.

Looking back on 40-odd years of rock music I can say that one of my very few regrets about not being older is that I missed out on so much great stuff from the 60s and 70s first hand, and to this day those two decades make up the large majority of my non-classical collection.

We all miss out on something.

I missed the Big Band era, when opera ruled

 

I don't buy into any kind of monolithic view of generations, music periods, genres, or people. I grew up on the music of the 60s, was n my 20s during the 70s, and my favorite music was a variety of Rock, Jazz, Roots, Singer-Songwriter, Classical, World -

My favorites have remained somewhat the same I still listen to the Beach Boys, Kinks, Beatles, Dylan from the 60s; Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, but Jazz overtook Rock/Pop during the 70s. But I'v added many favorites along the way and continue adding to that list. But the list is under constant revision as my focus shifts from one genre to another.

Throughout my life I've made a concerted effort to listen to current music and for a while when I more active professionally it was a requirement of my job as a songwriter to know what was being written.

I've never thought the music from the 60s or 70s was qualitatively better than from other periods - I truly believe that each generation produces some great music. But I tend to think that the music we liked when we were young made more of an impression on us than the music from when we were older.

 

I don't buy into any kind of monolithic view of generations, music periods, genres, or people.

This.

However, if Andorfoldes has identified a thing evident here, perhaps it's that certain threads attract older members who have acquired preferences from longer ago than the younger members and they also reflect that one's musical choices say something about their personalities.

It's not just about the music.

In my case, my two favourite bands are from opposite ends of my life: The Beatles and Radiohead. I'm pretty sure one reason I love them and their works is to do with who I was, what I was doing, how I was living and who the people around me were at the time. The Beatles were a constant presence when I was growing up (age 4-11) and Radiohead were a constant presence when I was raising my teenage sons.

I carry a lot of baggage with my music.!

 

With the perspective of fifty years' distance, yes I basically agree with the statement by AndorFoldes. Here's why.

1. There was the usual level of pap in pop, with bland melodies, vapid lyrics, boring structures and poor performances.

2. Unlike the '80s, '90s, '00s, '10s and '20s however, there was also music with intelligent lyrics, with innovative song structures, with unusual instrumentation, with hybrids of styles and cultures, with truly unique sounds. And there was A LOT of it!

3. The reference to '40s & '50s swing music is apt; it's the only other era in American popular music where the art of songwriting superseded catering to the lowest common denominator of public taste.

4. If you talk to any Gen-X or Gen-Y or newer music fan, they will INEVITABLY tell you that "classic rock" of their parents' (grandparents') generation is more interesting, more diverse and more immediately attractive than their own generation's music.

5. "Music" today (and I use the term reservedly) is a product of producers at their digital work stations. There is no artistry in importing loops.

 

5. "Music" today (and I use the term reservedly) is a product of producers at their digital work stations. There is no artistry in importing loops.

Andor is an idiot, IMHO of course.

Come on, this is the drivel of a man that thinks much too much of himself, obviously.

 

I am a boomer (born 1952), and I don’t listen to rock/pop that much anymore. However, I believe that there is more high quality music being released today than people realize. The difference is that it rarely reaches top 10 on the Billboard charts.

In NYC (and on the Net) we have WFUV, an “eclectic” music station, which blends music from the 60s (and occasionally earlier) to today. This works. It’s basically the only radio station I listen to. And there’s a lot of good music from artists I would never hear about otherwise. My younger brother (a late boomer) keeps up with this, and he is consistently inviting me to concerts, to which I rarely go.

Having said that, I do believe the mid/late 60s/ early 70s was a particularly rich era for popular music. Not just the amount of musical and lyrical exploration, but also the creation of “pop” hits. I mean Motown alone . . .

I should add that I am rarely engaged by hip hop, WFUV does not play it often.

 

Having said that, I do believe the mid/late 60s/ early 70s was a particularly rich era for popular music.

I think we ascribe more virtue and prominence to that era because it was such a tumultuous time and presented such a clear delineation between generations.

The cultural gap between the great generation and the boomers we did not see pervious or since. I think this helps to cloud an objective perception.

 

I've read a study which found most people over a certain age don't like "music" per se. They like reliving their youth, including listening to music from their youth.

 

The first generation of serious popular music writers grew up, and focused on the music that they experienced in their formative years as critics and listeners. Since those writers stayed on top of the industry for a long time, it created some sort of self-perpetuating mythology of the 60s canon to an extent and resulted in that generation of critics being completely blind to some of the developments past that - bands like Black Sabbath were completely mocked during their early years, Kraftwerk, possibly the most important post-Beatles group, was mocked or ignored until the 80s when they became too successful to ignore (and younger writers started to come into the picture), and most developments in black music apart from the big R+B artists like Otis Redding and Al Green were ignored.

 

Interesting:

"Is Old Music Killing New Music?"

Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm. Those who make a living from new music-especially that endangered species known as the working musician-should look at these figures with fear and trembling. But the news gets worse: The new-music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-killing-new-music/621339/

 

Interesting:

"Is Old Music Killing New Music?"

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-killing-new-music/621339/

Isn't this to be expected? Isn't this normal?

There is far more old music than new music, there is an emotional attachment to old music that takes time to form with new music.

I see nothing here but what I would expect. Thoughts?

 

I’m late to the the thread so a few observations here
1) There is some irony to having this discussion on a Classical Music site. Everyone here has Musical Tastes that are more developed than about 95% of the rest of the world. Yes, we listen to other forms of music, but we have been conditioned to enjoy music that does things that would turn most listeners off in seconds.
2) The Music of the Sixties, from the British Invasion on, represented a fundamental break with the popular music that preceded it. Yes, Elvis, Chuck Berry and others were their progenitors, but when sixties rock/pop got rolling it crushed the previous forms of music, relegating previous headliners to the hinterlands or involuntary retirement. It was louder, brasher, rebellious, and claimed a social consciousness that popular entertainment previously lacked. Now, whether or not it was better than what preceded it is up to you.
3) After a decade or so we begin to see the rise of the Genre, where Pop, Country, Hip Hop, R/B, and all the different forms of Rock (Glam, Prog, Metal), and what many Rock Fans regarded as the Anti Christ—Disco- came to the fore. The audience was split in a way that it hadn’t been before. Personal portable players (a.k.a “The Walkman”) and car cassette, later CD players and now streaming devices, meant that the fractured listeners could take their music on the go and not be tied to a choice of a few radio stations at work or on the road. The fracturing of the listenership then makes it difficult to agree on quality. Metallica fans might be induced to stick their fingers down their throat than spend 5 minutes listening to Adele. In those bygone years, you frequently didn’t have a choice, and to a large extent, I remember to my horror as a teenager starting to like songs that I initially despised because you just heard them everywhere you went. We lack that today, which I think is a good thing, but it does tend to make consensus less likely. Thus many boomers are able to avoid anything after the Eagles and be content, and ossified in our tastes

 

I'm late to the the thread so a few observations here
1) There is some irony to having this discussion on a Classical Music site. Everyone here has Musical Tastes that are more developed than about 95% of the rest of the world.

How modest of you to think that.

I certainly don't think people who prefer Classical music have more developed taste than people who prefer a different kind of music.

You should check out the thread on elitism.

 

That Gioia article is the second or third thing I've seen that's brought up Pharrell Williams v. Bridgeport Music lately. Music lawsuit rulings have been going more and more in favor of the rightsholders, and I'm starting to hear people like Gioia cautioning that this is having significant knock-on effects where it becomes far more safe to invest in old licensed catalogs of music than potentially open yourself up to legal action by investing in new artists.


Possible that Pharrell v. Bridgeport ends up even worse for music than the Grand Upright Music v. Warner Bros lawsuit which highly restricted the use of samplers.

As always, never get lawyers involved in art.

 

to be fair, being interested in any music will probably make you have more developed tastes than the general population, just because a large amount of the population is simply not interested in music at all.

 

Do you have any numbers for us to ponder?

Based on nothing, I tend to think more music is consumed today than ever.

 

the difference is the financial investment in new music versus old music. More and more money is now going toward securing the licensing for old catalogs of highly regarded artists - as Gioia says here and otherwise, this trend started around the 2010s, right when the Williams/Bridgeport (the "Blurred Lines" lawsuit he mentions) lawsuit hit.

There's always been more old music than new music (well, maybe not when the second song ever written was made). but the financial peril of potential legal liability that new music brings to labels versus the stability of old catalogs isn't something that's always existed. This was something that happened when lawyers and suits get involved with art.

Gioia's thesis goes further than this, and touches on more elements, but he isn't the only one I've seen saying that the current state of copyright law has potentially reached a breaking point where new music is simply too risky in terms of liability to financially invest in.

I listen to new music a lot, but the vast majority of it is self-released, many without real copyright, many by artists who don't make a living from their art and are doing so as amateurs and enthusiasts.

 

I listen to new music a lot, but the vast majority of it is self-released, many without real copyright, many by artists who don't make a living from their art and are doing so as amateurs and enthusiasts.

What do you mean "without real copyright"? Newly created works automatically have copyright protection simply by attaching the (c) symbol, year, copyright holder (usually a publisher) and the phrase "all rights reserved" when it is made public in any manifestation. One can go through the registration process but it is not necessary, although generally a good idea to do so.

Making money from their work is iffy, and has been true for composers throughout history. Many of the composers we revere did not make enough to live on from their compositions and had to find other ways of making money. Charles Ives was an insurance executive. Does that make his music the work of an amateur enthusiast? If so, give me more of them.

 

Well, one thing I will say is that things may well have turned out differently if Dylan, Hendrix, et al had to run their music through an armada of highly overpaid lawyers in order to be sure that someone wouldn't sue the record label, given that the standards of copyright infringement appears to be shrinking, and the catalog of songs to potentially "copy", is ever-growing.

As you say, executives like easy money - and per Gioia's thesis, catalogs of old music are easy money, and investing in new artists is risky money.

 

Well, one thing I will say is that things may well have turned out differently if Dylan, Hendrix, et al had to run their music through an armada of highly overpaid lawyers in order to be sure that someone wouldn't sue the record label, given that the standards of copyright infringement appears to be shrinking, and the catalog of songs to potentially "copy", is ever-growing.

As you say, executives like easy money - and per Gioia's thesis, catalogs of old music are easy money, and investing in new artists is risky money.

Yeah but copyright conflicts have been around a long time. Think George Harrison vs the Chiffons.

 

also this is of course one piece of the problem, which fundamentally is that it's very difficult to make money as a musician these days. Gioia talks about it himself, and it's been brought up repeatedly, but streaming contracts give artists almost no money, which badly hurts artists who otherwise could have made a reasonable amount of money selling a relatively small number of recordings. Live shows attempted to make this up to an extent, but well, live shows have been a dicey proposition for a number of extra-musical reasons in the last two years.

like i said, the majority of things recorded in the last few years have been things like self-published amateur releases of music on Bandcamp and the like. these people are making music I love a lot, but have little hope of ever making a living from it, as even modest success doesn't pay much in the era of Spotify.

 

That I would absolutely agree with. Reasonable and fair ways to monetize a performing artist's output have not kept up with the technology that gives us this stuff 24/7. Also I think it's oversaturation. I'm old enough to remember lines forming outside record stores when a major star or group released an album. A release was a big event. Springsteen's Born in the USA was like that in my area. That's not the case anymore.

 

This sort of thing is anecdotal, but what it really hurts are the people who used to make, say, $15-20,000 a year from album sales now make borderline nominal sums from streaming. $15,000 or so isn't that much, but it can make the difference between working full-time, and working part-time and therefore having more time to devote to music.


A local newspaper profiled an independent hip-hop musician who used to make $10,000 a year from album sales to locals- he now makes $150 annually from streaming.

 

I've lost the trail of this thread. What is it about?

In any given year, the most popular music will be that which is made during that year or the one just previous. IN the 1970s Harry James was not recording, did not have a working band, and was essentially retired. I'm not sure what the point is in mentioning his name in this discussion.

Tony Bennett however remained popular throughout the 21st century because he released recordings with younger artists, duets, and continued to be a presence. No, his records did not sell as many units as Taylor Swift or other Pop artists, but he was still putting his music out there.

 

I've lost the trail of this thread. What is it about?

In any given year, the most popular music will be that which is made during that year or the one just previous.

But the Atlantic article I cited would seem to indicate that that may not be true anymore.

The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams. That rate was twice as high just three years ago. The mix of songs actually purchased by consumers is even more tilted toward older music. The current list of most-downloaded tracks on iTunes is filled with the names of bands from the previous century, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Police.

IN the 1970s Harry James was not recording, did not have a working band, and was essentially retired. I'm not sure what the point is in mentioning his name in this discussion.

But then the Beatles, CCR and the Police are also long gone. The distance in time between Harry James and the Beatles is also less than the distance between the Beatles and now.

 

Tha availability of music through streaming has changed the situation significantly, as I argued in some other thread about how popularity is measured.

It used to be true that the most popular purchased music was what was current, but we had no idea what people were actually listening to at home on their gramophone or Dansette or radio. My brothers and sisters were putting on The Beatles, but my Dad was still listening to Peggy Lee, Doris Day and Frank Sinatra, and the radio was tuned to 'light entertainment' rather than 'pop'.

Now, the availability digitally of almost anything and everything means that people aren't riffling through their precious vinyl or shellac as they once did (though there is a revival of vinyl), but switching on their phone and downloading that anything and everything.

Before I had my own disposable income, I used to record whole radio shows on a reel-to-reel so I could listen again to my favourite pop hits. How else could I hear them unless I waited for the DJ to play it (and sometimes they didn't).

 

Wow.

What an interesting thread.

It sort of jumped the shark for awhile, but eventually got close to being back on track.

There's been awful, and exceptional, pop music every year for the last hundred years. But Pop music in the 1960s really took a giant leap forward in terms of creativity.

Beatles. Right place, right time, right nurturing, right vibe, right personalities, excellent use of developing technologies, awesome appropriations (cover songs), great natural songwriting skills.

And while they always had contemporaries that were sometimes one step ahead for one or two steps, The Beatles remained one step ahead of Pop Music en masse from the very end of 1962 right through to September 1969 (they still had new songs being released for almost half a year, but THAT was when they were "done").

The Beatles inspired countless bands (and have continued to do so for the last 50 years), while taking inspiration from a widely eclectic breadth of others.

My favorite decade of Pop Music is probably 1966-1975. So much great music (and yes, there was plenty of awful music "Hits" as well).