I got Sirius Satellite Radio for Christmas, and flipping around the dial has been loads of fun - I’m finding old music I’d forgotten about, new music I’m excited about hearing more of, and lots of genres to play in. For the last three days, I’ve been listening to a station called Standard Time. They’re playing Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Diana Krall, Harry Connick, Danny Aiello (! - and he’s pretty good, too), Glenn Miller… you get the idea? Mostly pretty old songs - probably the most recent composition I’ve heard on this station is a Billy Joel song from maybe the 70s?
I’m enjoying it immensely, but it’s got me wondering - who’s writing music like this now? In, say 30 years, what songs from today might be playing on this station? I’m not talking about artists who will be “classics” in the sense that Aerosmith or Queen are today, or young artists like Peter Cincotti covering THESE songs. I’m thinking of songs that will have the kind of timeless “cool” that gives these songs the status of standards. Songs that everyone will cover, that everyone will have some awareness of through their lives.
My personal pick for this category would be Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved.” What do you all think will make the cut?
Unless the music industry were to change dramatically over the next 30 years, I really don’t see any “musical standards” being written like those before–say–the 1960’s. Right now, artists are more strongly identified with their songs then they were in the days of Tin Pan Alley since many write their own material rather than rely on a staff of tunesmiths. Singers and bands who do covers of recent popular songs are largely limited to the local bar and lounge circuit. This is not to say artists will no longer cover songs done by somebody else but often the practice is to wait until after a certain amount of time has lapsed before the remake comes out.
I phrased my question wrong (as usual.) Although your point about artists being identified with their songs does make sense. I’ll reference the song I was talking about - you and I probably will always identify “Just The Way You Are” as a Billy Joel song, but there’s something … maybe nicely generic? about it that means almost anyone can sing it and it’s a nice song.
As for artists whose music is deeply identified with them, I’m not ruling that out. Bobby Darrin’s song “Mack The Knife” comes to mind. Lots of people have recorded it, but his recording is sort of the definitive standard and it gets played on this type of musical standards station. Likewise Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” and Dean Martin’s “Ain’t That A Kick In The Head.”
So - other nominees for timeless standards our grandkids might find on this type of radio station?
Well, I wouldn’t care to nominate specific songs, but Elton John comes to mind. His music has made the cut for at least the last 34 years and his latest album, Peachtree Road, is said to be excellent. I would nominate him.
I think that over the next several decades, the music of Stephin Merritt will come to be widely covered, interpreted, and associated with other artists in that way that faceless but ubiquitous songwriters like Jimmy Webb have been.
Stephin is the singer/songwriter that’s released music under the name The Magnetic Fields for about 15 years, and it is with no sense of hyperbole that I estimate that he’s probably the greatest living songwriter (yes, I’m aware that Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, and Brian Wilson are still alive). He seems to be able to write songs that feel instantly timeless, as though they could have been written 100 years ago or 100 years from now. He seems able to do so within any genre with incredible aplomb - when he writes a country song (“Papa was a rodeo”), it’s like the best Cash or Cline song that never was. Likewise, he’ll take on techno-pop and turn out something that puts the best work of Erasure or the Pet Shop Boys to shame (the entirety of the album “holiday”), only to write a piano ballad (“busby berkely dreams”) or epic cabaret piece (“promises of eternity”) that would make Cole Porter or Irving Berlin turn over in his grave with envy.
The thing about Merritt is that he’ll never be “huge” on his own - he’s far too idiosyncratic, his voice far too deep for regular fame. Instead, artists are already catching on to him - he’s been covered far and wide in the indie scene from which he sprung, and Phil Collins recently covered “The Book of Love” for the “Shall we Dance” soundtrack. Singers as disparate as Bjork, Meatloaf, Rufus Wainwright, Johnny Cash (before he died) have been covering his songs, and I think that more will continue to do so.