Websites like Pitchfork. They can sometimes seem too hipster douchebag-y. But there’ll be worhtwhile artists being discussed. Even things like Amazon recommendations or “other customers bought” can lead you to new stuff. You can also check out the lineups of festivals like Bonnaroo & Coachella.
And once you start finding new stuff you like, it’s easy to keep coming across more new stuff.
Do you think that they’re also the pinnacle of musical achievement, and that no Brazilian artist since has equaled their brilliance and none in the future ever will?
I mean, I get that people especially enjoy the music of their own adolescence. It’s just staggering that so many people can’t separate their own personal trajectory from that of humanity.
What a hopeless selection of poll options …
If nothing else, he missed
c - The music of the late 60’s early 70’s wasn’t the best music produced at the time
d - There has been better music produced since then
e - The question is meaningless because music cannot be ranked on a list
This! However, one can note that the late '60s were, qualifiably and quantifiably, a moment of unusually rapid change in much of the world’s socioculture. The most innovative popular music style of its time, then, was bound to be bundled with the other creative and evolutionary facets.
Did something similar happen with the music of some other time/place of rapid sociocultural change? 1890s? (Ragtime and 12-tone serial?). That was more technological than sociocultural. How about the Reformation in Europe? Maybe not rapid enough, and not much change in family structure, racial attitudes, role of women, etc.
Better examples might come from other cultures. How about contact-period Americas? (1500-1550). Amidst all the dying Indians, was some incredible music being made? I doubt it…but maybe there’s an analogue in some offer creative endeavor from that period. Textiles? Poetry? Painting?
Yes, but it’s also a mistake to deny that some periods in the history of an art form feature more invention and are more creatively vibrant than others, leaving us with more work of an enduring quality. There are such things as “classic” periods in art history.
As for Brazilian music, I’ve seen and heard enough young people influenced by or trying to play Brazilian music of the '60s - people not even born in the '60s - and I’ve noted the timelessness of the music whenever I hear it, such that I have no problem recognizing that time and place as special in popular music. Bossa Nova was certainly well marketed in the US during its heyday, but that fact shouldn’t count against our appreciation of it.
Sure. Phrased something like this–“Were the 1960s the period of music history in which there was greater innovation than in any other period in Western music?”–the answer would be a bit clearer: of course not! Look at the early 1900s with the emergence of jazz, or the early 1800s with the emergence of the symphonic orchestra: are we really gonna claim that the Beatles represent a more vibrant change in musical traditions than either of these?
I’ll bow to your knowledge of Brazilian music :).
I graduated in the late 80’s and still think the 60’s and 70’s music is superior overall. I think the big factor is it wasn’t as easy to make music back then, and it was mostly all real instruments and not electronic. Not that electronic music can’t be good, but there is something special about music played on actual instruments by live musicians. There was more real talent and less auto-tune.
Right, you have to compare like with like. That’s my problem with the OP: the question depends too much on our prejudices about what makes music good, which is colored by what modes and styles we’ve been acculturated to.
But consider this statement:
“British rock music of the 1950s was less interesting than British rock music of the 1960s.” Now that’s just a fact. Only someone with extremely specialized taste would deny it, and it has nothing to do with when someone’s adolescence was. There’s always a macro/micro-view balancing act that must be done when making these comparisons.
Smells Like Teen Spirit was a transformative moment for me, and I rushed out to buy all the Nirvana albums when I heard it. The novelty wore off fast, though. Kurt (like most grunge singers) was not a very good vocalist and his lyrics were repetitive. His talent was writing hooky riffs with lyrics that sounded deep and introspective.
Not me either. I was listening to a lot of trance, trip-hop and nu-metal in the mid- to late-1990s (when the record shows I was doing my formative sexin’.) Today I mostly listen to hard rock and metal made between 1980 and 1994.
I think this is it. The mid-to-late sixties was when popular music in general, and many of its biggest acts in particular, kept upping their game with every new release.
With that many qualifications, I almost agree with you–with the caveat that I wouldn’t say it’s “just a fact” so much as I’d say it’s an extremely-widely-held opinion among people who have an opinion on the subject. “Interesting” is an opinion word, not a fact word.
You could change it to something like “British rock music of the 1960s has had a greater influence on later musicians than British rock music of the 1950s,” and now you’re veering more into factual territory.
Shifting to Cafe Society.
And you know it’s mine.
I’d agree Rock music peaked in the 60’s and early 70’s. A lot of those songs are the gold standard. A few were hits because of other circumstances and really aren’t that good.
Generally I’m disappointed with todays music. A lot of it is overly simplistic. 3 chords, No bridge.
I can’t say the musicians today couldn’t make great music. But I dislike the stuff currently released.
I’m not sure Bands today get the road experience they need. A lot of the best original music comes when its written independently. Tested by years of touring bars and clubs. They have a full album of material before they get signed to a label.
Hell I’ll take her if you don’t want to go and I’ll keep the boys away with a stick. I’ll even fly her there (will probably take longer). But I’m getting old so it will have to be a seated area.
Put me down in agreement that the 60’s and 70’s were great years for rock. There’s plenty of good stuff out since but nothing as productive as those years. I doubt anybody is going to top the Beatles in creativity. I wasn’t their biggest fan as a kid but I now think they will never be bested. The new stuff’s good. I listen to StainD and Metalica and Cracker and I like the different directions rock split off into.
As a kid I listened to bands like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd, and Aerosmith. When I realized I was listening to blues rifts I started listening to traditional blues music. From there I started listening to my parents music. I love a good swing band. There was some serious bands back then that were every bit as creative and hard hitting as early rock and they did it without amplifiers.
Today music has evolved into genres without borders. Johnny Cash covering Nine Inch Nails says it all. If we don’t see another band like the Beatles there is certainly a lot of creativity out there to fill the void they left.
I was born in 1964, and my favorite rock music is from the late sixties and early seventies. My favorite music is acoustic blues, and there’s plenty I like from the twenties through the new millennium. The music that was big when I was in high school and college? Mostly hated it, and I’m pretty sure I would have still disliked it if I hadn’t been in a deep depression most of the time. Grunge I mostly liked ok, and there’s plenty of music I hear on “modern rock” stations I like well enough. Well enough to change to those stations when Pink Floyd comes on, anyway.
I’m 53. The other day I downloaded Perfect Animal by Becca Stevens Band based on a song called Tillery I heard over the PA system at Barnes and Noble. My pre-teen daughter taught me how to use Siri on the iPhone to identify songs (It’s pretty amazing). Either that or a few lyrics entered into Google can ID a song. I pick up songs from movie soundtracks, stores, favorite musicians playing with other artists, all different kinds of places. Something catches my ear and I track it down as best I can.
I’ve actually found a fair bit of music just by watching TV. A lot of TV episodes end with a bit of music these days, or have it in the background, and I’ll go out and find who it is and hey, presto, new group I like. Commercials, too. That’s happened for me with Linkin Park, 3 Doors Down, Keaton Simon, John Grant, Radical Face, Melanie Fiona, Scars on 45, 5 Finger Death Punch, and The Features. Used to be able to do that just walking into Borders, too (hello, Combustible Edison). I’m only a year or two younger than you, btw.
While it’s true that there is still good music being made today, there was just so much good music made during that timeframe that even the second and third-rate bands were good.
And basically all the pleasing combination of notes were used up during that era and there’s very little left to write that will be any good. (Which is why you hear so many songs being redone now.)