Why Has 70's and 80's Music Remained Prevalent in Our Culture?

Cafe Society
21

Well, IF there is a real phenomenon of it, which I don’t think there is. I remember that as each new genre of music took hold as I grew through my teens and onward, that the immediately previous genre was declared “out” by the next micro-sub-generation, and it left the airwaves and was replaced.

But that was mostly because the BUSINESS MODEL that had been developed during the 1940’s and 1950’s, still controlled both the music promoters and producers, AND the radio stations they all used as tools to retain control and profitability. Throughout the entire time that artists were proclaiming freedom and rebellion, the same business people stayed in control of the actual main businesses supporting everything. They even turned rebellion into a new formalized fad, and started making money off of THAT as well.

Right now, we’re going through an expected cycle of 70’s era stuff being brought back. I think it might have to do less with the staying power of the material, than with the age and positions of power of the people who grew up with it as kids. But I don’t really know.
For myself, I went through a long period where I couldn’t STAND the 70’s stuff, even though I loved it at the time. Some of the stuff that was brought back recently (such as the soundtrack of Guardians of the Galaxy) was stuff I actually did hate AT the time it came out, but now I find I really like it.

Maybe it’s that there was a LOT MORE well-produced recordings of more kinds of stuff than ever before, in the 70’s. It WAS an era where more people had more spare cash to spend on entertainment than any previous generation, after all. And it coincided with advances in recording and reproductive technology, that made it possible for more people to enjoy it.

Something else to consider: seventies music ITSELF, wasn’t a single “sound.” It was, from beginning to end, produced by people who grew up on and built on the music that came before. There were throwback-type songs made back then, as there are now. So some of the reason why it seems to have “staying power,” is that it was built from other music that had "staying power.

Just rattling on at this point. There are lots of reasons why people like stuff from back then. Maybe it would be easier to try to figure out why we are NOT still hearing the stuff that you see as having dropped out of sight. Or hearing, rather.

22

What your hearing is culturely neutral, pretty much what you would hear in an elevator in the nineties, but your not hearing the outlying edges of what each decade came out with. So your hearing maybe the stones, but not judas priest for example. As a non musician, I shudder to throw this out, but what has come out in the past twenty years that a new musician would quote as an influence in how he or she writes and plays.

23

Somehow God came down and mass blessed many of the musicians in the late 60s through the 80s. And he hasn’t been back to do that so the artists tried to make it on their own but every one of them failed miserably. If you listen closely to the blessed music you will hear what heaven sounds like. All they could do after that sounded like hell. That’s the only explanation I can come up with. Your soul will verify the truth in it when it is immersed in those beautiful sounds.

24

One thing I really miss from the 60s and 70s is protest songs. CSN&Y, Steppenwolf, CCR, and many others could put a song out and it had political meaning. The same thing happens now from time to time, but it seems rare. I ask my nephews and nieces to name a political song relevant to the current environment and I usually get country performers that are going the OPPOSITE direction.

“What if you knew her and/saw her dead on the ground?”

25

Also, whatever happened to novelty songs, which were huge in the ‘60s and ‘70s?

26

Check YouTube. There’s a seemingly infinite variety of novelty songs (in video!) and you can easily stare zombie-like at them for hours on end. If the question is why they don’t have as much cultural relevance - well, very little does, there’s too much content and it’s all too easily available

And that seems to be the gist of the thread - wait 10 or 20 years when the current folks in charge retire and/or pass on and the new decision makers will ask why music wasn’t as good as it was back when they were kids in the 90s and 00s and not understanding the technology of the next generation.