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'Ageing' in music?

arXter

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referring to when we say stuff like "so and so artist/genre/era have aged badly or sound dated", what does it really mean?

i think it's merely born out of a cultural pisstake e.g. when the media stereotypes the portrayal of the eccentric eighties, as opposed to a real meaning in a musical sense.

i'm guilty of using these terms before, but, to stick to my example above, is it fair to say that the eighties' music (with its prominent overuse of the robotic drum machines and ballad keyboards and synths) 'aged badly' and now sounds 'cheesy'?
 
It depends on the current music fashion statement. The 80s had aged badly in the 90s, but is now suddenly becoming more mainstream (with bands incorporating 80s style music into their songs), so it doesn't sound as dated as when the style wasn't trendy.
 
age has nothing to do witb music.music doesn't discriminate. the media makes the mistake of saying it does, but it doesn't. amy winehouse rocketed off of a song that sounds like it came out of the fifties. big ballads are still written. it's a mistake to say age is an issue with music as it is to say it is with artists, as depending on how u market urself, u can get into many facets of music at any age. and ur only accepted as age if u see urself as having old age. as MJ said, u become what u believe.

quincy jones waited till later in life to help produce thriller..an album accepted by people from 2 to 92 and beyond. so he's able to break into the spotlight as a producer, in a late stage in his life, and know what young people want.
 
The '80s were always a cool decade to revisit in musical terms. :yes:

Plus, older artists are still finding success in elements so it's not all a loss for older artists.
 
Oh and i think that Synthesizers are awesome and not chessy at all.
 
arXter said:
referring to when we say stuff like "so and so artist/genre/era have aged badly or sound dated", what does it really mean?

i think it's merely born out of a cultural pisstake e.g. when the media stereotypes the portrayal of the eccentric eighties, as opposed to a real meaning in a musical sense.

i'm guilty of using these terms before, but, to stick to my example above, is it fair to say that the eighties' music (with its prominent overuse of the robotic drum machines and ballad keyboards and synths) 'aged badly' and now sounds 'cheesy'?
Click to expand...

The two artists I primarily listen to are Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. Both of them were around long before and after the synth-craze of the 80's. Synths are fine, but in the mid-late 80's, they sounded terribly generic, like they were playing concerts with a children's toy keyboard. It's why despite MJ doing the Bad Tour tracks live, I sort of don't care for the tour as much as others because of the sped up and synthy sound of the songs... many of the songs sounded identical. It's another reason why despite me loving MJ's "Bad" album and Stevie's "Characters" album (both 1987 albums), I prefer their earlier and later work much more. Both of their follow ups, Stevie's "Jungle Fever Soundtrack" and MJ's "Dangerous" were better to me.

Take a listen to these two tracks by Stevie Wonder, both performed live in the 80's, and tell me which one you'd rather go back to:

That Girl - Live in 1982... Amazing.



That Girl (Live) - Stevie Wonder

That Girl - Live In 1988... Meh, it's alright.



That Girl (Live) - Stevie Wonder

Living For The City - The same 1988 Show. Again, it's okay...



Living For The City (Live) - Stevie Wonder

But nothing as good as this version performed just last year:



Living For The City (Live) - Stevie Wonder

I'd love to give an MJ example, but he hasn't performed fully live in such a long time that there's not much to go off of, and even the Triumph tour was really synthy, but I prefer it to the Bad tour.

Synths (or at least the overuse of them in the 80's) just caused music to lose a lot of its "bite". Living For The City's music is supposed to growl at you. It purs when done on the super-synthy instruments.

I can't really think of any other genres rather than the synthy pop stuff of the 80's that exlempifies an "outdated" or "badly aged" sound off the top of my head.
 
I think that if a song is truly good, then it doesn't matter what instruments are used in conveying it or brining it to life. An argument could be made that the 60s used too much aocustic guitar, that the 70s used too much electric guitar, etc... But if a song has great melody, rythem, a great beat, a great hook, whatever, it doesn't matter to me what instruments are used. Music is music. Instruments are just a tool to bring the concept of a song in to a tangible thing.
 
wannabestartinsomthin21 said:
I think that if a song is truly good, then it doesn't matter what instruments are used in conveying it or brining it to life. An argument could be made that the 60s used too much aocustic guitar, that the 70s used too much electric guitar, etc... But if a song has great melody, rythem, a great beat, a great hook, whatever, it doesn't matter to me what instruments are used. Music is music. Instruments are just a tool to bring the concept of a song in to a tangible thing.
Click to expand...

yeah..i agree with that, too.
 
on the subject of aging music, i played I Can't Help It to my mum last year (she had never heard it before :eek:) then i asked her to guess what year this song was recorded/released in, and she said late 90s or early 00s! she was shocked to learn that it was recorded over 20 years before that!! goes to show how timeless Michael's music is :wub:

but i have to agree that a lot of the late 80s stuff sounds a bit dated. it's the synths and those heavy drum beats :bugeyed
 
Yea I agree its really hard to tell when I CANT HELP IT was recorded.I'm also not a fan of synths, Motown released some of Marvin Gaye's unreleased stuff in the 80s and in my opinion it didn't sound good..
 
Interesting topic, arXter.:yes:

Is it fair? Hmm. Yes, I think so. Why? Because of the two items arXter mentions in particular; drum machines and synths. I think that the phenomenon is due to the fact that in those days, there weren't that many sound options. So the same KB sounds, drum machine sounds were used in a great many songs. As the sampling for KB sounds became more sophisticated later on, more varied and 'intricate'(?) sounds were possible. But around 1990, the novelty of using KBs had worn off to a large extent. Just over-saturation of the old 80's KB sounds; the fad was over.

Let's think of the piano. No one who hears a piano thinks "oh, that sounds so 200 years ago." Because the piano has been used in so many different eras and styles; boogie woogie, ragtime, blues, classical, pop, rock... Compare that to say, the harpsichord. One hears the harpsichord, one immediately thinks "baroque period". The harpsichord has not been used much at all in other eras/styles, (one notable exception off the top of my head; the Beatles song In My Life, which didn't even use a real harpsichord at all, but that's another story lol) so it has become 'equated' to a particular era in time and style.

Maybe it's a case of, a sound has to be used for many different styles, and/or a number of eras for it not to be identified with any one in particular...

I think the same could be said for effects in general; the overabundance of reverb on a voice is also often attributed to an 80's feel. A guitar sound/effect can also cause some 'datedness' by linking the sound to an earlier artist that used said effect. And now we have auto-tune and the likes, which will also fall into disuse once the novelty has worn off. It will take using it in a number of styles and eras to make it not suffer the same fate of causing 'datedness.'

What can often be really neat is when a sound from the past gets used in a new style of playing, or an old style of playing gets a new sound....

I think instrumentation matters. Not all instruments are good for the same purposes. It all depends on what one wants to convey with the song. Yes, one can replace one with another and sometimes it will work equally well. But not always.
 
Btw, just to clarify, I don't think of 80's music as cheesy, nor would I say it has aged badly; it just sounds dated. Which is normal. I see nothing wrong with sounding dated, that doesn't need to be a negative characteristic.
 
i think it is BS.

because the purpose of music is to be universal, for all people,for all time.

some may find some songs dated, others may find it evergreen...so...


nice thread man.
 
well its just opinion of ppl..I personally like 70's and 80's music..Its just many songs are not really timeless..I mean they are song for just a day or week or month but those songs dont live up long enough..But ofcourse there are lots of tracks out there which are really classic and timeless..But sometimes I dont feel same for the music out these days,dont know why but maybe its just me..lol
 
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