Fifty Year Old Music Still Rocks

 

What music were you listening to fifty years ago.  If you’re about my age, your stack of rock albums might have included Eat a Peach (Allman Brothers), Exile on Main Street (Rolling Stones) and Foxtrot  (Genesis).

If you preferred your music on the lighter side you probably owned Honky Chateau (Elton John), Catch Bull at Four (Cat Stevens) and Harvest (Neil Young).   The top country album in 1972 was Will the Circle Be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.  Good Hearted Woman (Waylon Jennings) and Let Me Tell You A Song (Merle Haggard) followed on the top selling lp list.

Fifty years sounds like a long time ago but the music from 1972 is still in circulation and listeners of a certain age have their ITunes and Spotify playlists loaded with “oldies” from the seventies.

The term oldies is hard to define.  Top 40 radio station programmers in the 1970’s considered any music made between the early 1950’s and mid 60’s to be oldies.  Using that same standard, Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and Katy Perry’s Fireworks are now officially oldies.

The classic 1972 tune American Pie often pops up on playlists fifty years later.  Can you imagine listening to the radio in 1972 and hearing fifty-year-old music?  The top artists of 1922 included Al Jolson, Fanny Brice and the Paul Whiteman Orchestra. The answer to the question is “no way would you hear Al Jolson on a popular radio station in 1972.”

The fact is that old music is more popular now than ever before.  A recent article in the Atlantic Monthly magazine reported that old songs represent 70% of the U.S. music market and that number is increasing. The article went on to say that vinyl recordings are now outselling CD’s with a large piece of those vinyl sales in reissues of “old” artists and albums.

I would like to arrogantly declare that old music – my music – is better and that’s why it sells more. Of course, it’s not that simple.  New music still remains very popular with young people but it doesn’t have much of a shelf life.  Younger listeners want to hear new songs at dance clubs and on pop radio stations but they don’t stop by the record store or the App Store to buy that new music.  They are more content to accept the playlist that streams over their car speakers.

In contrast, I bought Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album in 1973. I then bought the 8-track in 1974 and the cassette in 1977. I had to have the pure compact disc version in 1982 and eventually downloaded it from ITunes in 2002.  Now I just yell “Hey Google play Dark Side of the Moon” and it happens. How cool is that?

I think much of the old music has survived because it is also good music. Old folks like me appreciate their quality and younger folks might discover their parents listened to some pretty cool music when they were in high school.

That doesn’t mean all 1972 music was good.  In the top five records of the year, we see Chuck Berry’s My Ding-a-Ling, Michael Jackson’s Ben and Melanie’s epic Brand New Key.  You just don’t hear those classics much anymore although I’m still waiting for release of the ten album Melanie retrospective. Maybe next year.

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