WHY DO YOU LIKE SO MUCH OLD MUSIC?
July 14, 2009,
Written by Will Slater
Whether you find yourself befuddled as you often ask people this question, or you stammer with embarrassment and a bit of rage as you are often asked this question, You might want to carry on reading. Music that stretches past the mark of ten years, usually even less than that, tends to get looked down on as dated, a novelty, something that just isn't worth the time and devotion given to today's music. It's understandable for some minds to think that; come on, what's a song written by someone who is now pushing 50, 60, or dead got to do with the way things are now? How can a musician from a different era in anyway understand our generation, who are now so far ahead of them? Those are the questions that at least I think cross people's minds, but it is more likely that they just think: how is any of it cool? As a nineteen year old who could be mistaken for having the tastes of a sixty year old, I'll give you my explanation on why sometimes it's not just okay to explore older music, it's essential.
Let's go back to the question, 'how can a musician from a different era in anyway understand our generation, who are now so far ahead of them?' On the contrary, we should be looking at this question the other way round. There is a world of knowledge that we are still yet to match up to, left by musicians old and long dead, who were too far ahead of their times for us to fathom, and still are. Take a look at some examples:
The most obvious and most talked about figure in rock music is the man above who I need not name. We may have the Mars Volta who take guitar playing to a level of musical masturbation, we may even have our countless innovators of effects pedals, and those who over develop them so they can get away with playing the blandest riffs (Edge from U2), but they'll all tell you that we're still trying to catch up with the man who was at his prime decades ago. His music is still just as fresh as it ever was and you are guaranteed that exciting quiver of the first time listen if you look past the hits that are constantly played on TV and radio to explore albums like Electric Ladyland, Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love.
We'll talk now about vocal talents. Look no further than Sam Cooke. It's because of singers like Sam Cooke that new soul will never match up to standards of his era; there are many singers of today with outstanding talents, who can do great things with their voices, but they will always be following the example of vocalists of Sam Cooke's time without possibly taking it further. The sad thing is that there are singers in the Pop industry who try too hard to match up to the great soul and blues singers, and you can hear it in their voices; the endless trills, the melodrama in their wailing that also shows in their faces. To put it simply, they over-soul it, or even worse, they X-Factor it. What separates Sam Cooke from all of them is that he didn't even have to try when he sang, it came to him more naturally than it did for anyone and he sang on his terms, which makes him more of an advanced singer than anyone today who likes to call themselves a soul singer.
To a great extent Leonard Cohen is more of a poet with a guitar than a musician, but that works out well considering I'm bring up the subject of lyrics now.
"Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild he'll never need to deal another"
This piece of songwriting was introduced to me by a friend about a year ago and now I realize that it is just a minute fraction of Cohen's remarkable lyricism. All methods of songwriting are used these days; what is proving successful is the simple form of storytelling or love notes. What I'm really into right now is Wild Beasts' bizarre rhythmic alliteration. There is still no one however, who masters better analogies and imagery; it's a simple, yet profound idea in 'The Stranger Song' to compare a game of poker to men who muck about and use women. Leonard Cohen's melancholic sound has earned him many titles such as 'Bard of the Bedsit' and 'Godfather of Gloom', but as an acclaimed poet he makes nearly every word of every love song today seem like a fluffy pile of tripe.
For my final example I'm bringing up a musician who's mentioned on a surfeit scale in my writing, so I might as well bring him up once more. Tom Waits is very much an acquired taste, some may listen to one second of his voice, or even take a glance at his picture and decide that his music is absolute bile. Valid opinions of course, completely ignorant, but valid nevertheless. In terms of catching up and understanding his music, critics like to think they've got him sussed out, calling him a junkyard poet and so on, but I think we haven't scraped the surface of his creative processes. Tom Waits is decades ahead of us on all levels. His voice has the power of a tsunami, which he uses like an obscure instrument. His songwriting is masterful, containing stories that can tickle your ribs, chill your bones and break your heart all at the same time. His compositions draw the influences of legendary jazz and blues music, and put a genius avant-garde twist on it all. It's taken me about a decade to get to know four of his albums, which means it will probably take me a lifetime to explore the rest.
On no account am I saying that all new music is inferior to old music; I relish new music, there's no better time than the present to experience it, and if I didn't think this I would be a very bored individual. I just treat every old song I hear for the first time like a new one because I know that there's still so much we can learn from the previous eras, and they can still apply to our lives and feelings. So the next time your mate tells you the Doors are their new favourite band, ask them if Strange Days is worth a listen, and the next time you're asked what the most exciting album you've discovered recently is, don't be ashamed to say Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti.
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12 responses so far...
Candace
I have a hard time believing that anyone that truely loves music would even question why anyone would embrace any era of music, old or new, or any genre of music for that matter. Albums that were great twenty or thirty years ago are still great. Just because there have been advances in what we can technically do with sound, doesn't mean that what we do now is better. Or worse. If it rocks to you...love it, there ain't no shame. For me, there is no such thing as a guilty pleasure when it comes to what I listen to.
Will
I agree with you 100% there, but the sad truth is that there are some who are incapable of embracing music that came before their generation as much as the contemporary stuff. I encounter it a lot and it's the sole reason why I wrote this article.
samantha
Im the other way round! I ask people why they listen to new music... eeeergh!
Wade
I know what you mean Wil. Some people just refuse to consider something that they instantly assume is inferior because it was recorded before they were born.
Bizarely it is kinda hard to juggle listening to a lot of new and old music...i find I tend to get locked into either rooting up the past for a few months or keeping abreast of all the modern develpments. Maybe it's because i'm a guy and I can't multi-task, i dunno.
Well considered article!
Marilyn Roxie
This is definitely a good topic to bring up- I actually think is what is the matter with a lot of current artists; they don't have roots in the past. An understanding of music history tends to lend itself well to musical progress! And then there are people (even some young people) that kind of listen to 'classic rock' almost exclusively, and that can be limiting as well...for me personally, I'm just trying to find all the fabulous music that exists out there! Looking at music of the past, there are albums and songs that are very much 'of their time', representing a certain sentiment and the like, and then there are those with timeless, universal qualities.
nico
yeah i often find the inverse of what will writes, i used find it really hard to get enthusiastic about new music, and know people who are fascistic about the origins of the music they appreciate and scorn anything and everything else. its a loss on both sides - there are a lot of bands whose emergence has restored my faith in contemporary music, but you could never ever diminish my appreciation of the 'classics': the beatles, hendrix, even nirvana, whose music is now about 20 years old! ageism would be crippling to a love of music - embrace everything!
Dan
That is my favourite line in my favourite Cohen song. Cheers for reminding of it!
mike
I like older music and I cant seem to get into modern music. some times i think im missing out on some kind of movement in my generation. every decade has had some great musical movement and its so close to the end of our decade, but nothing really happened.
Brenda
I totally agree with you. Music, no matter when it was made is influencial, but I believe that music of my mother's and grandmother's generation is much more focused on talent and not just sound. I overheard one of my co workers say this afternoon, " I don't like any music older than me." She's thirty. It broke my heart into pieces to hear that. That people aren't willing to open their hearts to music from a time when life was much simpler and lovelier.
alex
thanks for helping me find that leonard cohen song i had it in my head and i couldnt remember the name :)
about mike's comment: I think personally this decade has been the most disapointing for music by far, even more than the 80s which everyone loves to hate :D Theres been stuff i liked of course, but compared to the 90s where there was so much innervation in underground music, I just dont see it happening at the moment.
TheBooklovers
Alex:
You're just looking in the wrong places. Mostly because all the innovation nowadays has been happening where you'd least expect it, right under your nose in Pop music. The Neptunes and Timbaland have, almost single handedly, managed to make both mainstream Pop and Hip Hop one of the weirdest, most forward looking genres of the last 10 years.
Compare ...Baby One More Time with Toxic. Whilst ...BOMT is a slice of pure pop gold, it still bears all the hallmarks of some geeky Swedish engineer perfectly crafting everything. Toxic, on the other hand has screeching cinematic strings, extreme distortion, wobbly bass effects that wouldn't sound out of place on Warp, a watery falsetto bridge, the clanging surf guitar ... it's just BIZARRE! Yet it doesn't sound of place in todays pop charts at all.
Outside of Electronica and Metal (though not in a good way) I'd say the 90's were a pretty dull time overall for innovation. Rock still sounded like the 80's underground, just with better production. Pop was still a bunch of stupidly attractive people singing songs about lost love. Blues, so far as I can tell, was just a bunch of Clapton clones and I haven't heard anything interesting coming out of Jazz or Classical (aside from Supersilent and minimalism/serialism) for coming on half a century now. There was also a huge sea change in Hip Hop away from sampling and towards the minimal electronic backings of G-Funk, but that wasn't so much innovative as simply different.
Jake - 10/03/10
The link is available by clicking on my name for this comment. Not overly happy with the sub-editing, just to cover my own back... :P [view article]
danny - 10/03/10
Yo Jake, where your review at, i'm curious! I think for me what made it stretch to 9/10 was teh fact it's really accessible and just occupies it's own little niche so well right now, I really can't think of a band with another recent release that I could compare them adequately to. Anyway, glad you liked it! [view article]
Rob - 10/03/10
I love how everyone always forgets that this isn't the full lineup by a long shot and a good chunk of the best bands aren't usually announced straight away. [view article]
Jake - 10/03/10
All three are worth a listen to be fair. I wouldn't have stretched quite as far as 9/10 (in fact, I didn't when I reviewed it elsewhere), but it is very good. Dusty Fruit is probably my favourite track (the early version of it, "Don't Trust the Dusty Fruit", is also very good!). [view article]
danny - 10/03/10
Jake, I know what you mean, but if i'd have admitted that it wouldn't have fitted my whole 'difficult second album' bit now would it? ;) [view article]