(no subject)

[scarfman]

At home for music I've been listening most often to the Singers and Standards channel on the cable box. The recordings date from about mid-last-century to the present, but most of the songs were written, I'd guess, 1920-1960. I really love it, especially with the convention of the genre wherein the recording starts off with two bars of lyrics unique to that recording, before it goes into the first line of the same old familiar song you know so well, and your spine says, "Ah, this one. I know this one."

But it makes me worry I live in the past. Is this just nostalgia (for a time before I was even born*)? Do they really not write'em like that any more, or in another seventy years will there be forty-eight-year-olds who'll feel about Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Oops I Did It Again the way I feel about All of Me and The Way You Look Tonight?

*Actually the oldest recordings are of performers I remember from the tv variety shows of the 70s when I was a teenager, even if the recordings themselves may be older than that.

Comments

[dave-iii.livejournal.com]

Makes me think of this XKCD cartoon:

http://xkcd.com/318/

...and frankly makes me weep for future generations. One can only hope the Y2K bug hits retroactively and erases the past twenty years' worth of stupid.

[bodybag-pilgrim.livejournal.com]

Maybe not. But it may be the songs; I suspect that Run to the Hills, Enter Sandman, Beirut Moon, Disneyland is Burning, Cocaine Killed My Community and God is a DJ will be among the ones which'll do it for me.

On the other hand, the latter-day less-emotive outpourings of a group trying to ape punk and the entirely pop-money-machine stylings of early Britney won't handle it.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Ask me again in 70 years; I might have the answer for you then.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. A lot of the chart-toppers of my '70s youth and early-'80s adolescence are largely forgotten today, while other songs from the same period that didn't really stand out at the time are the classics and anthems.

My wife and I enjoy a lot of current music -- shoot, the soundtrack is one of the main attractions of Smallville (which doesn't have much to do with any character I'd call Superman). We also listen to the "classic rock" station, and have an affection for the Big Band era.

I'd be hard-pressed to tell you which of today's hits will still be getting played in five to ten years -- much less which ones will be part of the classic catalog in forty.

(I think it's a safe bet that, just as the old SF joke goes, the Beatles have, by this point, achieved the "nigh-immortal" status.)

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

And Elvis. I'm trying to think of any other rock acts that would also qualify for that status.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure Elvis DOES qualify, actually. Yes, everyone KNOWS about him, but you don't here his music casually mixed in on the playlists of stations that also play the latest stuff, like you do with the Beatles. At least, not around here.

[pedanther]

I think that probably they do still write 'em like that, but it's harder to spot them while they're still surrounded by the stuff that won't last.

On the other hand, I'll be very surprised if, once the ephemeral stuff has been lost in the mists of time, "Oops I Did It Again" will be among the songs still standing.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think "Oops, I Dit It Again" will be remembered. Partly for the title, and partly for how it has been applied to some of Britney's recent behavior.