Thanks for this - it's a point I often go on about when people say there's some weird thing going on with people listening to old music now - people have always listened to older music! A few little points of contention: Music hall in the UK had barely even really ended by the 60s, and it was a big part of working class vernacular culture, so it's not strange the British Invasion brought it along. And pre-war music then was no further in the past than the 90s are today, so it wasn't such a throwback. Secondly, I disagree that people only listened to covers and not the originals. Sure, Brian Setzer (in the Stray Cats in the 80s) helped bring rockabilly back to the mainstream, but in fact rockabilly revivalism was a huge subculture adjacent to punk that involved people collecting the vintage recordings, the clothes, the cars etc. I was a teenager then and ended up listening to a bunch of old garage rock and rockabilly because it was so common in hipster culture. And people did go back and listen to old lounge music, jump blues, etc., during the neo-lounge/neo-swing times of the 90s - again, not everybody who listened to the Squirrel Nut Zippers etc did that, but a significant minority did. So I don't think that part is all that new either.
I shouldn't pose as an expert, but I think what happened is that it went into steep decline in the 1950s and the professional version was mostly dead by the early 1960s, but that provincial and amateur versions persisted in a scattered way even then.
Hah, I said that and then the next day I stumbled on this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06rhv2r - a BBC 4 series called The Good Old Days that "ran from 1953 to 1983 and recreated the atmosphere of the music hall with songs and sketches of the era performed by modern-day performers." It outlasted The Black & White Minstrel Show, another holdover from, um, outdated eras of entertainment, which ran 1958 to 1978.
I knew Louis Prima's Jump, Jive ' n ' Wail long before I knew Brian Setzer's (Love them both), so at least someone was listening to the original. Bear records released the complete Louis Prima on Capital in the 90s. Old music never dies completely.
I still look for hooks in my new music choices and generally find quite a lot of them via pop and independently released songs. I think the current number one song by Ella Langley is a good example of a current infectious hook!
Besides which, you only have to look at the actual printed Top 40 radio surveys from the 1960s to appreciate how incredibly diverse was this decade plus of radio music. Regions had their own big hits with obscure garage bands. Gospel hit it big with Oakland-based Edwin Hawkins Singers’ O Happy Day in 1969. You only get that with a small handful of radio stations in any city to choose from. Streaming services promoting the modern only do not get genre crossover.
While the 1996 telecommunications act led to a ton of radio consolidation, which ultimately led to homogenous programming, there is also a case that the Internet and streaming have broken down barriers. You can technically listen to almost anything now with little friction. That is powerful
Is it powerful to listen to almost anything and be left with hardly anything? You know that being exposed to everything does not mean that a person bonds with any of it. Just yesterday overheard a 21 year old say she liked country music but could not name a single artist. Old folks listening to AI genre slop on YouTube just the same.
You make the mistake of looking at the stats for streaming music. Isn’t it obvious that us old farts are not listening to much, if any, official streaming music? We still buy and collect the vinyl, occasional CDs, very often mix tapes on cassette. All from word of mouth, reading, or video discoveries from Bulgarian chant to Carl Perkins. We are our own streaming service. We are not slaves to the algorithm.
Not a mistake. The claim I hear floating around is that younger people are mostly listening to older music. This shows that that isn't the case. Even so, 30% of Spotify's users are over the age of 45. And most survey's I've seen show that seniors rely on digital music to some degree, even if they also turn to older methods more regularly. Because of that, I think the streaming data is very valuable https://www.carewell.com/resources/blog/the-soundtrack-of-aging-seniors/
Excuse me but one survey of 596 healthcare patients does not a truth make. It just shows those sampled were mostly of the MTV generation. There is no accounting for Live music attendance there either.
Yes, that is a single survey, but my point is that older people listening to music on the internet (ie streaming) is much more pervasive than I think you are making it out to be. Internet access has been ubiquitous for decades now. Even people in their 70s now likely have spent a good deal of time consuming media online. Music streaming is no longer a novelty just for young people.
I could be wrong, but I think the St Louis Blues (originating in 1967) wouldn't have been named that if not for nostalgia as well, since it's named after a song written in...
Thanks for this - it's a point I often go on about when people say there's some weird thing going on with people listening to old music now - people have always listened to older music! A few little points of contention: Music hall in the UK had barely even really ended by the 60s, and it was a big part of working class vernacular culture, so it's not strange the British Invasion brought it along. And pre-war music then was no further in the past than the 90s are today, so it wasn't such a throwback. Secondly, I disagree that people only listened to covers and not the originals. Sure, Brian Setzer (in the Stray Cats in the 80s) helped bring rockabilly back to the mainstream, but in fact rockabilly revivalism was a huge subculture adjacent to punk that involved people collecting the vintage recordings, the clothes, the cars etc. I was a teenager then and ended up listening to a bunch of old garage rock and rockabilly because it was so common in hipster culture. And people did go back and listen to old lounge music, jump blues, etc., during the neo-lounge/neo-swing times of the 90s - again, not everybody who listened to the Squirrel Nut Zippers etc did that, but a significant minority did. So I don't think that part is all that new either.
Interesting on both fronts. I really didn’t know music hall lived on for that long. When do you think it was really dead?
I shouldn't pose as an expert, but I think what happened is that it went into steep decline in the 1950s and the professional version was mostly dead by the early 1960s, but that provincial and amateur versions persisted in a scattered way even then.
It also would have lived on in spirit in the more old-fashioned TV variety shows of the period.
Hah, I said that and then the next day I stumbled on this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06rhv2r - a BBC 4 series called The Good Old Days that "ran from 1953 to 1983 and recreated the atmosphere of the music hall with songs and sketches of the era performed by modern-day performers." It outlasted The Black & White Minstrel Show, another holdover from, um, outdated eras of entertainment, which ran 1958 to 1978.
Gotta check this out
Ooo, a book about music+data!
My forte
I knew Louis Prima's Jump, Jive ' n ' Wail long before I knew Brian Setzer's (Love them both), so at least someone was listening to the original. Bear records released the complete Louis Prima on Capital in the 90s. Old music never dies completely.
I still look for hooks in my new music choices and generally find quite a lot of them via pop and independently released songs. I think the current number one song by Ella Langley is a good example of a current infectious hook!
Yes. Great song. Amanda Lambert cowrite
Besides which, you only have to look at the actual printed Top 40 radio surveys from the 1960s to appreciate how incredibly diverse was this decade plus of radio music. Regions had their own big hits with obscure garage bands. Gospel hit it big with Oakland-based Edwin Hawkins Singers’ O Happy Day in 1969. You only get that with a small handful of radio stations in any city to choose from. Streaming services promoting the modern only do not get genre crossover.
While the 1996 telecommunications act led to a ton of radio consolidation, which ultimately led to homogenous programming, there is also a case that the Internet and streaming have broken down barriers. You can technically listen to almost anything now with little friction. That is powerful
Is it powerful to listen to almost anything and be left with hardly anything? You know that being exposed to everything does not mean that a person bonds with any of it. Just yesterday overheard a 21 year old say she liked country music but could not name a single artist. Old folks listening to AI genre slop on YouTube just the same.
You make the mistake of looking at the stats for streaming music. Isn’t it obvious that us old farts are not listening to much, if any, official streaming music? We still buy and collect the vinyl, occasional CDs, very often mix tapes on cassette. All from word of mouth, reading, or video discoveries from Bulgarian chant to Carl Perkins. We are our own streaming service. We are not slaves to the algorithm.
Not a mistake. The claim I hear floating around is that younger people are mostly listening to older music. This shows that that isn't the case. Even so, 30% of Spotify's users are over the age of 45. And most survey's I've seen show that seniors rely on digital music to some degree, even if they also turn to older methods more regularly. Because of that, I think the streaming data is very valuable https://www.carewell.com/resources/blog/the-soundtrack-of-aging-seniors/
Excuse me but one survey of 596 healthcare patients does not a truth make. It just shows those sampled were mostly of the MTV generation. There is no accounting for Live music attendance there either.
Yes, that is a single survey, but my point is that older people listening to music on the internet (ie streaming) is much more pervasive than I think you are making it out to be. Internet access has been ubiquitous for decades now. Even people in their 70s now likely have spent a good deal of time consuming media online. Music streaming is no longer a novelty just for young people.
I could be wrong, but I think the St Louis Blues (originating in 1967) wouldn't have been named that if not for nostalgia as well, since it's named after a song written in...
**1914**!
More Lukather solos would definitely be a good thing for us all.
My dad and I went to see Toto, Christopher Cross, and Men at Work last summer and Lukather blew me away