For me there’s three styles in particular that have aged badly despite popularity at the time.
The first is a sort of 80s synthesizer pop-- but not all 80s synth pop. It’s brittle sounding. The best example I can think of is the Elvis Costello album “Goodbye Cruel World”. Not the best example as the album was a flop, but he was clearly following trends of the day. This is nothing against EC. He’s had many great albums since.
Some British psychedelic albums hold up; “Dark Side of the Moon” an example. Some were well received at the time but to me are unlistenable. I was pleased to come across The Small Faces “Odgen’s Gone Nut Flake” at the library as I recalled great praise for it. I returned it after one and a half disappointed listens.
The last is a type of early-60s American pop that causes involuntary sphincter puckering. The example I have in mind is a single called “Sugar Shack” by (it turns out) The Fireballs. The lyrics are trite, the vocalization plastic, and spurted over the top of it is a kindergarten organ hook. Despite its weaknesses, it was the number one record for five weeks in 1963. Little wonder the British were able to invade.
I bought most of their stuff about 10 years too late in the late 70s/early 80s! I can take or leave ‘Vida’ depending on my mood, but so many of their other songs are such great little psychedelic pop songs!
I’d say most disco hasn’t aged well, but I didn’t care for most of it the first time around, so it doesn’t bother me that I still don’t like it!
Danny Elfman
I used to think his movie/tv scores were great. His compilation CD “music for a darkened theatre” was one of my favorites. I was always excited if I saw his name attached to a film.
Now I can’t stand his stuff, new or old. It all feels either ham fisted or overly whimsical. After hearing Hans Zimmer’s Batman Begins score it made Elfman’s Batman score sound like something made for a cartoon.
Now if I see his name attached to a film I think either bad or forgetable score.
I find '70s Elton John to be listenable. It’s his later stuff that doesn’t hold up well.
I simply cannot listen to the Beatles any more, but I don’t know whether it’s because their music hasn’t held up or just because I overlistened to them in my teen years.
Music I find has not held up well – Chicago 16 and Chicago 17 and Peter Cetera’s solo efforts – very popular in their time, but now simply unlistenable.
The Monkees – I loved the show when I was 7. And now I find their recordings to be largely fantastic. For some reason it all sounds very fresh and well done.
I like a lot of old school heavy metal, but to me, a sub genre of that that I really used to like but cannot stand anymore is 80’s “hair metal”…bands like Dokken, Winger, Warrant, The Crue, LA Guns, etc, etc just sound so banal and contrived to me now.
:smack:You’re right, I did misread the OP.
Actually, the turning point for me was when I learned to play guitar in the late 70s/early 80s and realized some of the people I was listening to weren’t as talented as I originally believed … but I still love them today.
As far as someone that I can say “I can’t believe I liked this crap!?” maybe, The Bay City Rollers, or The Osmonds.
I am a huge audiophile, so I’m usually finding old stuff that I missed and wished I had listened to.
“Sugar Shack” always plays on this one radio station that actually has some music worth listening to where I live, (88.1 The Home of Solid Gold Oldies and SOULLLLLL!!!) oh do I hate that song.
I was there too! I didn’t know that was the source for the live album. Am I having false memories, or is that the show where Magical Mystery Tour was screened before IB performed?
For me, some of IB is godawful now but I still regularly listen to several of their songs:
Most Anything That You Want; Mirage; In A Gadda Da Vida, HON-nuh; Filled With Fear; Her Favorite Style; and my top fave then and now: Belda Beast.
One of my mentors (early 70’s, Piano Technician) used to take care of Doug Ingle’s parents’ piano in El Cajon.
The Dope has to have the highest concentration of Iron Butterfly fans in the fucking world! I’ve never run into more than maybe 12 people IRL who knew they ever recorded anything other than In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Damn, I love this place!
I didn’t see that. Since the Iron Butts were on home turf, they may have done more than one show at the arena that year. The one I saw was in December. The opening acts were It’s a Beautiful Day and a male-female acoustic duo called Too People. All I can remember about the latter is that they spelled out their name, and they did a version of “Mister Bojangles” with a funny ending. I’ve always wondered what became of them.
This is the first time I can recall responding to a post of yours. I had meant to post jokingly that Lawrence Welk’s music was stillborn, and thus did not age well, but had decided that was silly. And then I saw your name!
The one exception I can think of is Blood, Sweat and Tears. I loved their first, Al Kooper-helmed album Child Is Father to the Man, and I still do.
But when the second, self-titled album with David Clayton-Thomas came out, my friends and I all went nuts for it and listened repeatedly.
Today, I can’t begin to imagine why. I suppose part of the problem is the album had a ton of singles that were played to death, both when they were contemporary and on Oldies stations after the fact.
But this can’t explain all of it. I generally hate beefy-voiced singers like DCT, and the arrangements are just so sterile and…yucky. Why I thought it was anything good at the time it came out is beyond me.
I’m not gonna defend “Sugar Shack” as the greatest song in the world, but it doesn’t cause involuntary sphincter puckering in me.
I think so much depends on when you were born. I started listening to AM Top 40 radio in late 1962, so I went through not only the early pop phase, but also the coming of The Beatles, folk-rock, garage and psychedelic, and various other phases of the musical revolution of the 60s.
My take has always been, “different music for different purposes.” I have a great fondness for the Top 40 stuff that was my first exposure to rock ‘n’ roll. Sure, not all of it is great, but my tolerance for most of it is pretty high.
I embraced each successive wave with equal enthusiasm, right up until the time (roughly early 70s) when rock lost the spirit of youth and took on other aspects (uh, for example, the arty pretentiousness of Emerson, Lake and Palmer).
I see it all as of a piece up to that time, and I love most of it to this day, just as I did then.
The Doors were always lame, even if they had small moments of redemption. They seemed gimmicky to me but tried to play themselves off as very serious. (On another note, does “Touch Me” sound like a christmas song to anyone else? I’ve noticed this phenomenon with other people.)
Creedence depends on the mood…In all seriousness though turn up “Fortunate Son” and let it play. Bad Ass. Of course it’s been overused by way of Forrest Gump and Ford Commercials.
I disagree. They were lame in spots, it’s true, but I wouldn’t characterize their work as a whole in this way.
My take: I’ve never bought into the whole Morrison as shaman/Lizard King bullshit. I loved The Doors because they were one hell of a BAND who sounded like no one else who came before them.
Morrison was a good and different singer who could be very affecting when the pretense didn’t get in the way. He also wrote some great songs, although some of The Doors’ greatest were written by guitarist Robbie Krieger. Both he and Manzarek used their instruments in unique and effective ways, and Densmore is one of my favorite drummers, a master of dynamics.
So if you can get past the Morrison mythos, a high percentage of it is very good. As for the lyrics, I can go with the whole break on through/Dionysus business up to a point, and the rest of the time, I ignore it and just listen to the music.
