What 'pop' music of the day did you find exciting / exhilarating when you were young?
Showing my age I have to say that the Beatles were really very exciting back in the 60's.
'Help me if you can I'm feeling down' was fresh and vibrant in those days and a lot of what has followed down the years has been captivating and interesting but doesn't seem to be quite so ground-breaking.
A lot of moody stuff, dirges and angst writ large, striking a chord with disaffected youths but like 'bubble-gum' the sensation soon wears off.
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Music when you were young
Re: Music when you were young
I think you will find it hard to get people enthusing about pop music. Every generation of course grows up with new developments in popular music - what was happening in the fifties and sixties was new, to some extent revolutionary, seemed alien to many at the time but became acceptable eventually for the simple reason rhat some of it was very good. The Beatles' music started out as quite simple, catchy songs but developed into more mature pieces with serious "messages" and some very beautiful melodies. The Stones were of course seen as more anarchic but I like some of the best songs and "Paint it Black" for some reason gets right into my blood! A lot of other other good stuff - Pink Floyd, Genesis - where does one even start in assessing the pop music of that era?
The big problem is in the nature of pop music itself. Pop is inherently transitory, for the moment, tends to be quite superficial. People enthuse about sixties music but forget that amongst the gems (fondly remembered and why not?) was an awful lot of dross, simple and mediocre songs which were quickly forgotten.
Modern pop has even more lost it's way. Enthusiasts will no doubt quote perennial performers like Taylor Swift but the fact remains that pop music still does not reach a majority of the population and there are many more traditional genres which people prefer. A lot of modern pop is struggling to say sonething really new and meaningful and it is all heavily commercialised.
Time seems to be the great testing factor. The best of sixties music is remembered well, revamped and liked even by modern young audiences and some of it is known universally. Will much of recent pop music last very long, be remembered after five minutes? It is difficult to even hear it except on a few pop radio stations!
It always amuses me that I-pods and other devices can store thousands of songs - after quite a short time, much of it sounds the same to me and merges into a nondescript blur of meaningless
noise!
The big problem is in the nature of pop music itself. Pop is inherently transitory, for the moment, tends to be quite superficial. People enthuse about sixties music but forget that amongst the gems (fondly remembered and why not?) was an awful lot of dross, simple and mediocre songs which were quickly forgotten.
Modern pop has even more lost it's way. Enthusiasts will no doubt quote perennial performers like Taylor Swift but the fact remains that pop music still does not reach a majority of the population and there are many more traditional genres which people prefer. A lot of modern pop is struggling to say sonething really new and meaningful and it is all heavily commercialised.
Time seems to be the great testing factor. The best of sixties music is remembered well, revamped and liked even by modern young audiences and some of it is known universally. Will much of recent pop music last very long, be remembered after five minutes? It is difficult to even hear it except on a few pop radio stations!
It always amuses me that I-pods and other devices can store thousands of songs - after quite a short time, much of it sounds the same to me and merges into a nondescript blur of meaningless
noise!
Re: Music when you were young
Without cheap forms of mass-production (broadside ballads, phonographs, radio) the 'popularity' of 'pop' music may never have occurred.
From Blues to Jazz to Rock and Roll (Bill Haley / Elvis) there seems a logical progression, music-wise, but the visual display used to pick out features in the music was typically exaggerated by a stand-alone act and taken to extremes and typified more recently by 'Glam-rock'.
Drug culture influenced pop music from early Floyd to 'raves' and I can't imagine what goes on nowadays.
There seems to be a rise lately in the cult of a female singer set on a pedestal as an icon for some reason, Madonna, Rhianna, Gaga, Swift, Aquilera, Perry, Beyonce.
A simple formula also to get a boy or girl band to stardom with sexy good looks and a mere trace of talent.
The power of a beautiful voice is captivating and melodies plus lyrics may charm and beguile but I suspect the ancient Greeks would have a thing or two to say about that as well!
Perhaps they were the first 'pop' culture?
From Blues to Jazz to Rock and Roll (Bill Haley / Elvis) there seems a logical progression, music-wise, but the visual display used to pick out features in the music was typically exaggerated by a stand-alone act and taken to extremes and typified more recently by 'Glam-rock'.
Drug culture influenced pop music from early Floyd to 'raves' and I can't imagine what goes on nowadays.
There seems to be a rise lately in the cult of a female singer set on a pedestal as an icon for some reason, Madonna, Rhianna, Gaga, Swift, Aquilera, Perry, Beyonce.
A simple formula also to get a boy or girl band to stardom with sexy good looks and a mere trace of talent.
The power of a beautiful voice is captivating and melodies plus lyrics may charm and beguile but I suspect the ancient Greeks would have a thing or two to say about that as well!
Perhaps they were the first 'pop' culture?
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