In the thread about the song that epitomizes 80s music, Lemur866 and I asked about other decades. No one else answered, so I’ll start this new thread. Here’s what we wrote in that thread:
I don’t really have one for the 2000s. For the 2010s, I have to go with “TiK ToK” by Ke$ha, even though I may be a little bit biased.
The 60s had an absolute explosion of music, including blues, pop, folk, Motown, psychedelic, surf, etc.
The 1960s is probably the defining decade for music. To name one song that epitomizes this decade is impossible and absurd. Not that I don’t appreciate “Somebody to Love” but there are at least 100 other songs from the 60s that could just as easily be recognized.
The Beatles owned the 1960s. To not have a Beatles’ song as the defining song would be ridiculous. “A Day in the Life” must have serious considerations, but there’s just way too much absolutely phenomenal music from that decade to choose one song, or even one song from a style of music.
How about the 1950’s?
I’ll nominate:
Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley and His Comets
Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
Personally, I’d pick the latter.
That one certainly gets played whenever I’m watching a documentary about the 60s. Usually while showing some skinny hippy chick dancing in a crowd of hippies.
I don’t know if it was very popular enough in its time, but “Time Has Come Today” by The Chamber Brothers epitomizes that era to me. It’s a damn good song.
1900s: Meet Me in St. Louis
1910s: Alexander’s Ragtime Band
1920s: The Charleston
1930s: Happy Days Are Here Again
1940s: Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
1950s: Rock Around the Clock
Hound Dog and Love Me Tender, by Elvis, but my favorite 50s music was by groups like The Platters and The Drifters, and single artists like Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins.
For the 60s, it’s almost impossible. The Hendrix rendition of All Along The Watchtower was a monster, and then there was Dylan’s Blowin In The Wind and Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth.
“Incense And Peppermints,” surely.
Psychedelia/Acid Rock isn’t “The '60s”, it is about the last 3 years (and first couple of the '70s).
If it has to be one song, I’d choose the one from the middle of the decade that explicitly applies to the whole era, and being young in those times: My Generation.
It typifies '60s rock pretty well too. Straight down the middle between the simplicity and naïvete of early '60s rock’n’roll and the baroque elaborations and complexities of late '60s psychedelia.
That’s why I stopped with the 50s. Even narrowing the 60s down to the Beatles, there are still too many.
60s - The Hills are Alive (The Sound of Music)
70s - Vincent
80s - That’s what friends are for
The 60s are easy – just pick something by the Beatles. “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” may be the best candidate, since it fits the stereotype so well.
Another vote for Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” Or The Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!”
Any documentary, film about the 1960s has either of these songs in it.
The 1970s? Nick Gilder’s “Hot Child in the City” or ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down.” Or TSOP-themed songs like the O’Jays’ “Love Train.”
60s Rolling Stones Gimme Shelter
I don’t know what the iconic 2000s song is, but I know it’s not some indie song that few people heard in the grand scheme of things.
Yep. When you’re showing Forrest Gump or whoever navigating through the 60s, and he hits Vietnam or wherever you’ve got to play a song. That song has to be one of the 60s-est songs of the 60s. Or when your protagonist hits New York or LA in the 70s, you’ve got to fire up one of the 70s-est songs of the 70s.
Except how is that going to work for period pieces set in 2007?
I guess the answer is that the iconic songs of the 60s weren’t universally popular and generationally defining during the 60s. It was only after that we picked through the rubble and decided that when someone steps off the plane in Vietnam you’ve got to play “Gimme Shelter” or “All Along the Watchtower”.
So in 2048 when people are making a period piece set in 2007 there are going to be musical cliches that define 2007 to the people of 2048, but we don’t know what those things are going to be.
I vote for Float On for the 2000s. Its guitar hook mirrors a lot of what the Big 3 emo bands were doing in the mid-2000s, and its general breeziness reminds me of the piano rock of Coldplay, Keane, and Snow Patrol. Between those two categories (not to mention the song itself), thats around half the popular rock of the 2000s.