This has almost certainly been discussed before, so if a mod wants to merge it into an existing topic, no worries.
I’ve been playing as a hired-hand bass player in a Modern Country band for quite a while.
And it seems that a lot of new songs come out from Nashville all the time.
They’re well crafted, often have a good sing-along chorus, literate and even sometimes witty lyrics.
But they seem to be ephemeral: this month’s hit, played on this year’s tour.
We have to keep learning new songs because they don’t… last?
In contrast, the best showtunes by (say) Gershwin and Cole Porter are probably going to be played for many decades to come.
Likewise Classic Rock: the Beatles being the obvious example.
On the other hand… there’s Rap? I don’t really get that… will anyone be performing ‘classic rap’ in 50 years?
When I go to block parties in the summer and they have cover bands I notice that, even today, the vast majority of their music is from the 70s/80s and a little 90s. Same seems true of wedding bands too.
There seems to be little in the way of music from post 2000. And the crowd is not all Gen-X or Boomers. Far from it.
I won’t say never…I expect some Taylor Swift will survive for a long time.
This is what I’m thinking. There’s a bunch of 80s one-hit wonder songs that get played in bars or by cover bands. But often it’s less that the song is seriously “good” than that it’s a nostalgia hit. I’m sure there’s tons of songs that today’s youth will say “OMG Remember…” and get that same rush of youthful memories in their older years but I wouldn’t trust this board to have its fingers on that pulse given its demographics.
I guess that’s like our grandparents who in the 1980s still listened to music from when they were young during the Second World War. There are a lot of songs us old people might remember that a lot of younger people never heard. Back around 2017, a few coworkers and I introduced C.W. McCall’s “Convey” to one of our younger coworkers in her early 20s. She couldn’t believe such a bizarre song was so popular and even inspired a movie.
It’s tough to predict what people might still be listening to a 50 years from now. I just heard “Chevy Van” by Sam Johns on the radio today and it was released in 1973. I can’t remember the last time I heard that song. Will Guns ‘n Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” still get play time in 2084? Who knows. A lot of the old music that was popular when I was a kid doesn’t seem so popular these days. I can’t remember the last time I heard “White Rabbit” on the radio. I hardly ever hear Elvis except around Christmas these days, but then the radio stations in Little Rock stink on ice. Will Queen still be popular? By 2084, Mercury will have been dead for just over 90 years. It will have been a while since Queen was putting out any new music.
Rap has been around for 50 years at this point. There are certainly covers, but rap songs to me are the songs that least lend themselves to covers since the lyrics are usually the most personal, and for most of rap’s existence being outed as using ghostwriters or performing words written by someone else would be extremely odd if not outright shunned. Country, Pop, and country-pop songs being written by someone else (and in modern times a whole team of sometimes a dozen plus writers) and the performer/singer not having a co-write or so much as a single artistic input whatsoever seems pretty common.
But as of now, I would guess almost everyone I would associate with around my age or a little older could at least rap a few bars from “Rapper’s Delight” or “The Message” or perhaps completely recite something from the end of the golden era or the mid-late 90s commercial heyday. Heck, my friends and I (mostly middle-aged white folks, fwiw) regularly reference or recall rap lyrics (usually from the '90s or maybe early 00s) in the course of normal daily conversation.
Thinking along the same lines, my son and daughter-in-custom-and-practice seem to listen to much more music from my era than from their own, to the extent that I frequently suggest to them songs or artists that they may not know. Yeah, I know it’s just one datapoint. I guess everyone regards the music scene of their youth as a golden age; but I’m not yet willing to discount the possibility that the music of my youth actually was that of a golden age. I’m aged mid sixties, for the record. (No pun intended.)
French rap is perhaps the most creative and vibrant genre on the current French-speaking countries music scene.
It started out has a lame and cringey imitation of American gangsta rap but has evolved into something much more interesting in the past 15 years or so.
I’m pretty sure there are several other successful local appropriations of the genre in other parts of the world.
There’s a lot of selection bias at work here: When we think back to music of past decades, we think, of course, of the stuff we remember - the other stuff that has been forgotten has, well, been forgotten. There was a lot of garbage back then too, but that’s not on people’s mind when they discuss the question whether the music of yore is better than today’s.
As to rap, there definitely is potential for some of that to develop into “classic rap”, but my guess is it’s not going to be 2020s rap. The genre is not that young anymore; it developed in the 1970s and had its heyday in the 1990s and 2000s. Eminem’s major hits were released around 2000, and people still remember them after that quarter century. I’d say this is what will be considered “classic rap” at some point.
my kids (teenagers), also listen to a lot of what I’d think of quality 60ies and 70ies music (Beatles, stones, who, Billy Joel, Elton John, Abba, and even a good bit of Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Rainbow,…)
which does not mean they don’t listen to a lot of 2010s-20s stuff as well - but lots of it is also somewhat acoustic (girl/guy w/ a guitar stuff) …
so, yeah - there might be something in the 60ies-70ies pop/rock that was lacking in the 80-90-00ies
If we were to ask Americans about the best songs of 1968 we’d probably get answers like “Hey, Jude,” “Mrs. Robinson,” “Harper Valley PTA,” and “Dock of the Bay.” A lot of people might be surprised to find “Love in Blue” was the #2 single in 1968 according to Billboard magazine.
I only know this song because of an episode of a show called Millennium created by the Chris Carter and starring Lance Henriksen that aired in the late 1990s. There was an episode with a serial killer who kept people locked up underground and ran this song on a loop forcing his victims to listen to it continuously.
“Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro was the #3 single for 1968. It’s possible I heard this song when I was a kid, but I just listened to it and nothing about it rang a bell.
Each time this sort of thread comes up, there’s a number of anecdotal reports of “kids” who only listen to hits of the 80s or high school kids in Pink Floyd t-shirts, etc. While I’m sure this is true (and have witnessed this myself), the evidence points to the unsurprising fact that most young people are, in fact, primarily listening to modern contemporary young-people music.
The list of the top played artists on Spotify doesn’t include a “classic” act until #51: Queen. The next one is #67 with The Beatles. Nirvana #154, Pink Floyd #210, etc.
Sure, you might still be hearing songs from the olden days played in bars, movie soundtracks, etc but when today’s audience is in their 50s, there’s no reason to think that the media soundtrack won’t be including Taylor Swift, Drake, Ed Sheeran, Bad Bunny, Post Malone, Billie Eilish, etc because that’s who is being listened to today by a wide margin.
You’re right of course: depending on the venue or environment, the playlist will be very different.
As a boomer, any social events I get to are usually mixed age and the DJs ‘play it safe’ with generic crowd pleasers, I think. I don’t listen to a lot of recent music on streaming platforms, though I’ll sometimes check out a new name that someone recommends.
As a musician, I’ve been playing in bars & clubs that feature Modern Country… just a gig I happened to fall into. Not absolutely my favorite genre, but the band members are nice folks and the pay is welcome…
There is perhaps a technical reason why older music is more common with live bands: it’s easier to play. More guitar / bass / drums oriented; less dependency on particular synth sounds?
But they are still played regularly after 70 years. That bodes well for them. Modern versions have a much shorter shelf-life, in my opinion, and may not even be remembered in 10 years.