All music—and all art, really—is a product of its time and cultural context. Asking if a Led Zeppelin rock anthem would be as popular if released today is like asking if the original Planet of the Apes would be as popular if released today. It’s not really a fair question to answer, because both were so influential within their genres back in 1971 that we wouldn’t even be examining them through the same cultural lens today if they hadn’t existed back then.
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I agree, however some things are not popular the first time around but get rediscovered and become very popular (JS Bach and Vermeer are examples of this). This is because the old things speak to the current time. Another example is Hilma af Klimt who no one basically knew about both when she was creating her work and for a time after but is now quite popular.
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Right, that’s what I was trying to get at. Like if someone saw I Love Lucy for the first time in 2022 it would feel derivative of every sitcom they’d ever seen.
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Yeah, I realized that you said exactly the same thing and deleted my comment. It felt derivative in a world that already had yours
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to be clear, i think autotune has its place, but it seems to me that it has become a crutch, relied upon all the time now, instead of another artistic tool in the toolbox.
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As @anon52120741 @awfulhorrid and @MerelyGifted point out, technology is your friend here. Up until the iPod/Napster came out and people started amassing vast collections of easily-copied digital music, the only real mechanism for discovery was access to a cool record store and the (extremely rare!) patient and helpful employee or direct recommendations from friends (with, like a physical copy they were willing to lend/have stolen). There were a few decent publications like CMJ and Spin and Pitchfork (that was an actual publication once, right?), but good luck finding them on store shelves. Basically, it sucked and if the person recommending was a genre head good luck getting past the first couple of albums. Once digital music came along, I would rip massive amounts of files off of a friend’s iPod (thanks Senuti!) and shuffle the entire catalog. I’d not only be introduced to artists I’d never heard, but tracks from people I loved but didn’t have a complete collection of their music. When Pandora came along, it was possible to cast an even wider net by putting on the “radio” function and just waiting until something caught my ear. The trick is to not select an artist like The Beatles, which will stick to mostly top 40 stuff, but slightly more obscure artists in the genre. The Kinks were a great pick because they straddle so many genres and inspired so many bands, but their best stuff never got much recognition in the US.
I was once actually accused of not listening to any women rockers, which I thought was a bit shocking because I listened to Joni Mitchell, Cat Power, Lucinda Williams and Heart almost non-stop back then and considered them peerless in their genre. It made me realize that the issue was access; the misogynistic industry and the “culture” of gatekeeping criticism and fanboy-ism that dominated at the time utterly dismissed virtually all of the women in popular music (see also: the world suddenly taking Dolly Parton seriously as an artist in the 2020s).
This is a long-winded way of saying that because of the proliferation of digital music, the lower barrier to entry to recording and distribution and the ability to stumble upon things that I otherwise wouldn’t hear, the scales have tipped dramatically and I now find myself listening to mostly contemporary women artists. It’s almost as if refusing to take women seriously as artist has led to a real dam-break scenario where I find the most compelling modern stuff coming from women who would be utterly ignored in the past (shocking, I know). Plus, I can finally go through the back catalogue of incredible artists like Kate Bush whom I would have been mocked for even asking about 20 years ago. Another interesting piece of this is that many of the artists who didn’t get much attention have lower royalty rates and, therefore are more likely to show up on “radio” and “shuffle” lists. There has been an absolute boom in ‘60s-‘70s Ethiopian jazz and pop music and I’m 100% convinced it’s because Spotify recommends the Ethiopiques records in heavy rotation and almost certainly because they cost next to nothing (plus some select sampling in mid-2000s hip hop).
TBH, there’s never been a better time to be a music fan, but the paradox of choice has made it a bit more daunting than a friend’s recommendation. Use the tools in your favorite music player to discover more stuff you like, don’t let it default to top 40 and you’ll end up hearing tons of stuff both new and old that you wouldn’t have 20+ years ago. 
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people have short attention spans and aren’t likely interested in an eight-minute song
That’s what they said about Bohemian Rhapsody - songs had to be three minutes long or less to be successful.
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Rick has a video about that, too:
and a follow-up:
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Re the three solos, Rick’s Frampton impersonation was the best fit, and Eric Johnson’s own effort was by far the least complementary to that song/solo section track.
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She’s too young for that kind of music. I doubt hardly any
kids that age would have liked “Stairway” when it came out.
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The Billboard charts from Nov ‘71 seem to agree with you (though I am pretty impressed with the caliber of artists on that chart; not super common in any other era).
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Never a fan of Zeplin but for some reason in high school Stairway was a great make out song.
I did have tickets in hand for thier Detroit show in 1980. It was canceled of course so it’s one of the big ones I missed.
There is not much music made after the late 80s that I enjoy and even less made after the mid 90s.
My daughter keeps trying to drag me into the BTS fad. I’ll admit, not to her, that they are very good entertainers.
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I would love to hear Stairway covered by some modern artists. Not being snarky, I really would love it. I think we LZ fans might be surprised.
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I dunno - a lot of 13 yo boys owned it at the time (in my middle school music class friday was reserved for kids to bring in records and play a song off them - whole lotta love zep there) and most new popular music is purchased by teens…
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Black pink > BTS
She looks like she is about 6. Big difference between 13 and 6.
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Is that an early mashup at #81?
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My daughter’s husband agrees.
I used to think KPop was for the kids but my kid is in her late 30s and he’s 40 something.
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I think that you are experiencing the “God kids look young thing”, I think she is at at least 11, maybe older
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Let’s split it in the middle and call her 9. No way is she older than 11 - lol.
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