Read on Twitter
Today when we were picking arbitrary "best 10 or 20 years of pop music," we all disagreed of course, but I don& #39;t think it& #39;s just that you pick the years of your youth. Rock was born in the 50s, and has had life stages. Not an expert, but will opine for a sec.
cc @dcherring
/1 https://twitter.com/DavidGohl/status/1386126842353102853">https://twitter.com/DavidGohl...
cc @dcherring
/1 https://twitter.com/DavidGohl/status/1386126842353102853">https://twitter.com/DavidGohl...
I totally get that people might point to 1955 to 1965 as the greatest period of ferment and change, going from Perry Como to the Beatles in just ten years. It& #39;s an amazing time. "She Loves You" still sounds ...revolutionary to me, as music. Dylan. Elvis. I get it. /2
But that music is still tentative and commercial and produced in mono by old guys. From 1965 onward rock goes from a youth yawp to a no-shit art form. Soon the acts that are big are guys who wanted to be the Beatles or Elvis when they were kids. It& #39;s the next generation. /2
There& #39;s also technological innovation by the early 70s that just wasn& #39;t around in the 60s. Stereo. FM emergence. Synthesizers, etc. Rock is no longer just packing the halls, it& #39;s a studio art form. To me, that makes the early 70s different and heading into a Golden Age. /3
I am not a music connoisseur and my taste kinda sucks, but music after about 1974 sounds "different" to me. It& #39;s not Bill Haley& #39;s kids, it& #39;s something else. Artists. Something like Becker and Fagan can& #39;t exist in 1967, imo. Yes, the 70s were awful, but also better in a way. /4
If you want a more textured view of the 70s, can& #39;t recommend the book highly enough by @davidfrum on this, who captures how the 70s, good or bad, become a deeper cultural experience. And the 80s, to me, with new wave and Brit Invasion 2.0, is immensely creative and interesting /5
So I& #39;d say popular music comes into its own in the late 70s and early 80s; yes, I turn 18 in 1978, but I didn& #39;t much like the time I lived in and I don& #39;t associate the music with good times. At all.
I just think it was the "maturing" of rock into something different. /6
I just think it was the "maturing" of rock into something different. /6
And that doesn& #39;t mean I think good music ends at 1985. (No, @jheil, I really don& #39;t!) But capitalism eats everything sooner or later, and the MTV video era - which drove a LOT of creative change - by the late 80s sort of collapses in on itself. Things, to me, feel derivative. /7
I think what happens going into the 90s, despite the upheaval of grunge and a new-new-wave and hip hop and the mainstreaming of urban is what other people have written about as a time of cultural stagnation in *many* forms of popular culture. /8
I still remember the young son of a friend telling me how much old music sucks and how much better songs like "Millennium" and some other song I can& #39;t remember and I had to point out that the riffs he liked were cannibalized from old songs. /9
To me, this was of a piece with a movie culture that was dredging old shows like The Beverly Hillbillies and managing to cast A-listers in them, and then making sequels about sequels. I think that period of stagnation has lasted a long time and I& #39;m not the only guy to notice. /10
Anyway, there& #39;s lots of great music out there from 1961 and 2021. Just seemed to me if I had to pick the time rock matures into the thing that makes it a lasting world culture rather than a flash in the US/UK pan, that to me is from the early 70s to the mid-80s. /11
But that& #39;s just an impressionistic view from a consumer, rather than a cultural historian. On this, I could be wrong. :D
/12x
/12x
