Ok, times change, but Oldies can’t. So a song recorded say 35 or 40 years ago may no longer ring true, not through any fault of it’s own, but because the world itself has changed.
So some songs become obsolete.
Obsolete Songs
“Back In the USSR” The Beatles (No USSR)
Possibly Obsolete…
“Please Mr. Postman” – Various artists
With cell phones and E-mail, who actually sends a letter to their SO in the mail? Maybe undergarments or something…
“Twentieth Century Fox”- The Doors
Well not quite obsolete now, but in say 2070, the song’s muse would be pretty old, wouldn’t she?
“Satisfaction”- The Rolling Stones
“ man on the Telly…tellin’ me I can’t be a man…cos’ I don’t smoke the same cigarettes as he”
No Tobacco Ads any more
Can any one else think of any songs that have become anacronistic?
radio radio by elvis costello althouhg i think its still the perfect song about talk radio … he refers to something as inches on the reel to reel tape player
And so I took it to the mailbox
And sent it Special D
While the Post Office still has alternatives for getting mail to people faster, I don’t think they call any of them Special Delivery any more.
The example the OP quoted from The Stones’ “Satisfaction” brings up an interesting point. Only those who lived through the era could know this, but this was one of two lines from two different Stones songs that made reference to contemporaneous American television ad campaigns The Stones caught while on tour in the U.S.
There was indeed a campaign for a certain brand of cigarette (don’t recall which) that basically implied that if you didn’t smoke their brand, you weren’t a man.
The second reference is from “Get Off My Cloud”:
When in flies a guy who’s all dressed up
Just like a Union Jack
And says I’ve won five pounds if I’ve got
His kind of detergent pack
One of the laundry soaps of the day actually did send some poor shlub around knocking on people’s doors. If they could fetch up a box of his brand from the basement and show him, he would pay them cash on the spot. (I think it was five dollars, not the equivalent of five pounds.)
One of my favorite Bad Religion songs is “Atomic Garden.” But one of the lines refers to Mikhail Gorbachev – “At least he’s got a garden with a fertile plot and a Party that will never stop.” The Party’s not looking too good lately, obviously.
Sewalk,
Still plenty of places the limit is still 55. And on the interstates in cities it can be even lower. LIE in NYC is 50, in eastern burbs it’s 55.
[sub] of course, at rush hour it could be 280, you’re lucky to get 30…[/sub]
Obviously, limits are lower in built-up areas, lurker, but Sammy was upset about the nationwide double-nickel, particularly about how it made road trips a drag.
Even in NY, it is65 on the Throughway, at least west of Syracuse (the only part of it I’ve driven).
“Sun City”, the anti-Apartheid record Little Steven put together. Um, there’s nothing there to get mad about anymore. Plenty of other things, but not Apartheid.
Sadly, things like “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” will probably be relevant until the end of time. I don’t see regional starvation ending anytime soon.
“Russians” by Sting, though I suppose we should just postulate that ALL songs referring to the USSR are gone.
Glenn Miller Orchestra, Pennsylvania Six-Five Thousand
Well, it’s an instrumental, so it works pretty good, but when was the last time a phone number only had what-five digits? Hell, here in Western PA, we now have to dial the area-code, even if we’re just calling someone next door.
Actually Pennsylvania 6-5000 is a seven digit phone number: PE6-5000, which makes it still valid for much of the rest of the country (area-wise, anyway).