Take a genre of music as it stood in 1990, and compare it to the same genre 20 years earlier, and 20 years later. Which is it closer to? Did that genre even exist?
Rock (classic/hard) -
1970 - Part of rock’s golden age.
1990 - A little stagnant in 1990 specifically, but things were about to get more interesting in 1991 with the grunge breakthrough. The genre had reached maturity, but was still kicking.
2010 - If rock was “a little stagnant” in 1990, it had nearly evaporated by 2010. I’ve seen very little development in the genre since the mid-90s. There is still good music being released, but the genre as a whole has gone stale.
Regarding the above - please don’t think I’m one those people grumbling about how everything released today is crap blah blah. I’m not. It’s unfortunate that rock’s golden age is over, but if we hadn’t had that golden age, then we couldn’t regret its end. I’m grateful we had it.
I’d say, going by the music I mostly listen to, the music from 1990 is much closer to today’s music than it is to 1970. In 1990, you had shoegaze (My Bloody Valentine, Lush), alternative/punk (Pixies, Superchunk), hip hop, and electronic stuff like New Order, all of which are still around today (in many cases, still by the original artists). None of this even remotely existed in 1970. Thankfully, some of the music that was around in 1970 has mostly died out (bloated dinosaur rock, weenie folk music like Harry Chapin/Jim Croce/James Taylor), while some of the music that’s fallen by the wayside is regrettable (pretty much all soul and funk of the period, which was pretty great).
I know 1 thing taking a look at 1990’s goth rock like Manson didn’t exist
back in the 70’s it would be closer to 2010 .
however somebody can say Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper and Kiss is just as earthquaking
as Manson was in the 90’s.