The movie American Grafitti, an ode to teenage life in 1962, was released in 1973 only 11 years after the year it is so nostalgic about. But even though it was such a short space of time it looked like a different world and sounded like it too, the gulf between Chuck Berry and David Bowie was just enormous — and you could say roughly the same about a movie made in 1983 about music in 1972. Today the equivalent would be a movie set in 2004 that got all misty-eyed about listening to “Hey Ya!” and “Milkshake” on an iPod Mini. While I’m sure there are people with reasons to be nostalgic for that time and those records, the musical gulf between then and now doesn’t seem nearly so wide. They certainly don’t sound over a decade old, a time-span which used to be an eternity in pop music years.
So is pop music not changing as fast as it used to, or am I just a clueless and out-of-touch old fart?
The 1960s were obviously a time of rapid upheaval, but the following 20-plus years didn’t exactly stand still either, giving us (off the top of my head) Prog, Metal, Reggae, Glam, Disco, Punk, Post-Punk, Hip-Hop, Synthpop, Shoegaze, Techno, and House. Pop used to change clothes as often as Cher playing a show in Vegas but I just don’t hear that quick turnover of ideas and styles anymore.
If I’m not imagining things and there is a notable down-shifting now, it could be due to music-biz economics and the internet. Downloading and streaming has destroyed the old business model and bands make more money from concerts than records now, so they spend longer on tour and try to milk an album as much as possible before moving on to the next one.
It used to be standard for an act to put out an album every year – or even two a year in some cases — but now two years is the minimum a major artist takes between long-players, often longer. Coldplay have made six albums in 15 years, if The Beatles had put them out at that rate Rubber Soul would have been released in 1978. The lifecycle of pop has gone from being like a Mayfly — cramming a lot into a very short time — to more like an elephant.
I loves me some Charli, Taylor, and even Miley, so I don’t have a huge beef with modern mainstream pop. But I do want pop music to be constantly zooming forward and discarding old ideas the way it used to. Maybe I should just be grateful that Coldplay have only made six albums.
Download: We Live So Fast (Extended Mix) – Heaven 17 (mp3)
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Really good article Lee, you make some valid points. The music industry is ridiculously cynical, always has been. However, now the artists seems to be taking back some of the control, we may see a change. Whereas the industry used to constantly change trends, it stalled somewhere during the 90s when it realised it had to milk every last drop out of everyt thing it held so dear. That’s when things got really band and progression halted.
It was the ‘outside’ influences that kept things moving – illegal raves brought dance music to the masses and the industry couldn’t avoid it. Grunge too, in a lesser way. But those huge shifts you mention – Berry to Bowie – will probably never happen again.
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You’re bang on the money, I reckon. It’s one of the reasons for the decline in chart sales too, I reckon, and the fading importance of the “single” – it’s not just that the business model has changed but the fact that mainstream music style has stopped changing. It’s a terrible shame. Hey Ya and Milkshake would waltz up today’s chart as quick, possibly quicker, than they did in 2004. Pity, that.
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Our ears have the wider view of music, having grown up through some of those rapidly changing eras but I think you’re right. I was listening to some 90s rnb recently that could have come out yesterday. And as for guitar bands, well, where are they? Even the big selling dance acts sound like 90s records.
Meanwhile, the rapid changes they may have been, but when you look at the detail, people that were hugely involved in Punk were floating around during glam, especially where Bowie was concerned, and were still floating around during the early 80s. Different wardrobe maybe, but the same faces on show for long periods.
The glam lot actually, most of them had been wannabes during the early to mid 60s, Bowie, Bolan, Alvin, Glitter, all of them.
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True, but they moved with the times and (literally) changed clothes
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Yup they did. Is it still the same behind the scenes do you think, a small bunch of people splashing around in an even smaller pool?
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Smaller. Pretty sure Max Martin has written or produced every big hit of the past 10 years
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Max Martin, you’re getting old fella, more like 15 years.
Max Martin though…3rd most number one singles in the US behind John Lennon and Paul McCartney…54 songs in the top ten – higher amount than Madonna, Elvis and The Beatles. That’s some output. And I can barely sing one.
Actually if you can sing one you can probably sing most of them….he has a formula. And he sticks to it!
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I wonder if the problem (if it is one) is that we were spoiled by being a tiny island with two, maybe three, TV channels so anything new was all over the place in hours. America has an inertia to it through sheer size, to the extent that by the time Punk reached the North West it was so old it could be repackaged as ‘grunge’ and sold to a whole new generation.
According to legend, Shakin’ Stevens got a cold and pulled out of Top of the Pops, so they hastily popped on a band who looked odd, had a single coming out and only lived a short taxi-ride from TVC, hence ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me’ getting national exposure and – crucially – everyone talking about Boy George the next morning. And I mean everyone.
The same month Channel 4 started so this sort of incident was harder thereafter simply because you couldn’t guarantee that everyone in the household was in the sitting room watching the same thing. I might extend this theory to account for the rise in jeans-ad re-issue hits but that’s more of a stretch.
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Musical style definitely seems slower moving now. Some of that may have to do with a natural sense of proportion– by which I mean, in 1973, 11 years represented well over 50 percent of the entire history of rock’n’roll to date (taking 1954 somewhat arbitrarily as the first year); whereas in 2015, 11 years is less than 20 percent of the musical history rock’n’roll can now look back on. So it takes many more years now to move through the same proportion of rock’n’roll history, if that makes any sense. Which maybe makes a difference?
Meanwhile it’s the technology here in 2015 that’s moving quickly. Music may sound relatively the same between now and 2004 (compared to the differences, surely, between 1962 and 1973) but what everyone’s listening to the music on has changed a lot, even from 2004 to today. Not sure what this means, necessarily, but it’s also true that younger generations often seem more interested in technology than music.
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” I loves me some Charli, Taylor, and even Miley ”
AWFUL.
That stuff makes me want to projectile vomit (God, I’m so graceful aren’t I). It’s so SO OVERPRODUCED.
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