9 Likes
That is most certainly an opinion.
7 Likes
Maybe. Some of what I grew up with sounds like absolute garbage now, while things I didn’t like as much have kind of grown on me, usually not quite like a fungus. I think it helps that my parents actually had a wider range of musical tastes than I realized at the time, but even more importantly, I discovered the Dr. Demento show in my mid teens around 1985. I already had a love of funny music, but he also brought a much wider range of style into my life that I just wasn’t getting anywhere else in that small Southern town. (Shocking as it may be, no one was playing Tom Waits, Frank Zappa, or Spike Jones on my local stations … even Dr. D wasn’t local, really. I could only pull in the station at night with the help of a high gain antenna I’d rigged up from a leftover TV setup.)
8 Likes
It is also true that none of us in this thread represent an *average" listener. We all know more about music and care more about music than most or we would not be here squabbling 
I was just trying to say that musicians being around for decades or life long careers is not unusual. It’s been going for a long, long time and will continue to - it is def not a phenomenon restricted to acts from the 70s and 80s.
Hell, if you believe Ray Kurzweil (Narrator: You shouldn’t) Taylor is about the right age to become one of the first IMMORTAL POP STARS!
5 Likes
Well Mariah Carey still tours. Probably so will Swift in another decade.
6 Likes
And Madonna… Dolly Parton… Toyah Wilcox… etc…
Oh! Cher!
7 Likes
Dammit! Forgot we already have our first immortal popstar!
6 Likes
Madonna, Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey, Cher all a different era.
I also wonder where Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles, BTS, etc… will be 40+ years from now. I used Taylor Swift and Adele as examples because they are two of the biggest if not the biggest superstars out there at the moment.
My point was more how our society decides who to raise to super stardom when bars and churches and touring companies of various musicals are just filled with talent that never get anywhere near the recognition they deserve.
Same goes for actors and athletes.
To be fair, in order to talk about your original point only performers from a different era can be used be used as examples, ipso facto
You seemed to be making an “End of History” claim in your original post, not talking about how hard it is to get famous you said that the stars of today were unlike the stars of the past. That is patently untrue
4 Likes
Not sure what that means. My original comment was about the staying power of today’s music.
Cher, Madonna, Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey, are all examples of performers that did and do have staying power.
I wonder if today’s performers, men and women, will stand the test of time and only time will tell.
That it is impossible to make anything but a very prejudiced and speculative guess about the longevity of today music. But we can bring up examples from the past of music and stars that were considered disposable and “not serious” who remain incredibly successful.
The claim that “today’s music will never last, not like the music of my generation” has been made since the beginning of music, and has never been correct. Do you think that people will just be listening to the rolling stones in 200 years* because nothing after that was good enough to last?
All of that said I would be in favor of Ed Sheeran going into the memory hole. He won’t though, he will be around forever too
- The JJ Abrams documentary Star Trek tells us it will actually just be The Beastie Boys
4 Likes
Yeah. My point. They are ALL still working artists, despite a whole bunch of self-important rock critics sneering at them.
Oh, Tori! Don’t forget Tori…
Many of them choose NOT to go into the commercial music industry, because they don’t care about becoming rich and famous.
But to assume that Taylor Swift or Adele are only the result of their marketing machines, but the pop stars you prefer is not is just wrong on it’s head. It’s never been about pure talent and always been about the machine. Any punk worth their salt with tell you that.
And we were told back in the day that they were not. And Tori. Don’t forget Tori.
9 Likes
Marketing people knew this long ago. Supermarkets choose their target market’s age group and pipe in music that was a hit when those people were 15 years old.
My love of humanity makes me wish it was more complicated than that.
3 Likes
I’ve always been a little baffled by this commonly quoted bit, I can’t be the only person who associates those miserable years with bullying, and thus have little desire to hear music that brings back those memories. Not that there aren’t things I go back to, but what I do or don’t revisit has less to do with engrained musical taste than what sort of memories I associate with it, or if I notice new qualities that my then-more-limited musical taste didn’t notice.
3 Likes
Maybe some people who were bullied found solace in music. It was for me. There is probably some music I’d associate with being bullied, but music that I liked at the time were more of an escape for me.
7 Likes
It sounds old fashioned, but form a relationship with the staff at your best local music shop. List a couple of things you like and ask for suggestions of new things. Come back and have discussions about what worked for you and what didn’t. Lather rinse and repeat. After a while they’ll start recommending based on your taste.
3 Likes
yep they were all flash in the pan no talent starfuckers at some point. It is the way.
6 Likes
The Golden Oldies radio stations are playing Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.
7 Likes
Something that made a big impression on me back in the aughts was popping into a grocery store and the teen girl at checkout was singing along with REO Speedwagon on the in-store audio. I thought nnnnnooooooooooo! how can we do this to these kids, someone needs to tell them how lame and uncool this was and no one under 40 should ever listen to it again. Now they are going to grow up with this mediocre song in their memories of their first job because they had to hear it day after day, and this is how things that might be better off dying continue to be passed down through the years.
3 Likes
I ran across a Rolling Stone article on Tori Amos from the 1990s not so long ago, and it really leaned into the manic pixie girl BS, playing up her talk about spirituality, and ignoring her enormous talent. Not much changes about how women are treated by the mainstream music press, honestly. One reason why I love The Big Takeover, as they treat artists with respect.
Maybe they liked it? I’ve known quite a few millennials who like 80s easy listening pop… Not my jam, but hey… 
7 Likes
