Older Music, And Why You Should Listen To It

There is an overwhelming amount of new music genres today, but how did these music choices come to be? There is so much that you might only listen to music from the past ten or even five years. Rap, Hip Hop, Pop, and so many other genres have dominated the current music industry. What bothers me is that people don’t know how this music came to be. While I have many problems with a majority of people’s musical choices, not knowing who some important older artists are is a big issue.

Now, I’m not telling you to go and listen to Mozart and see how that has influenced modern-day music. I’m talking about music that is much more recent, specifically from the 60s and 70s. This obviously depends on what genres of music, but I will only focus on a few.

Sean Lally, Jemicy Physics teacher and resident musician had some interesting perspectives on how music is influenced by the 60s and 70s. He believes that music is indirectly influenced by the 60s and 70s, that the artist may not know it, but is or was influenced to some degree. This is an interesting point. You wouldn’t say that your fast-talking, three-chord-loving, boy bands are influenced by Bob Dylan, right?

Well, maybe they are. Just by listening to some of Bob Dylan’s songs you can hear a weird resemblance. It’s not necessarily a resemblance between his singing or instrument playing, but his lyrical writing. Stop reading and go listen to “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, don’t pay attention to the instruments just pay attention to the lyrics. Now, If that was the first time you listened to that song you most likely didn’t catch much of what he was actually saying. The first part of the song was “Johnny’s in the basement, mixin’ up the medicine. I’m on the pavement, thinkin’ about the government. The man in a trench coat, badge out, laid off. Says he’s got a bad cough, wants to get it paid off. Look out kid, it’s somethin’ you did. God knows when, but you’re doin’ it again.” This way of writing songs was extremely different from what was normal back in the 60s and now fast and almost unpredictable song lyrics are everywhere in today’s music.

Now, The Beatles. Yes I know, of course, The Beatles, but there is a reason they are talked about so much. They have influenced many different types of music, with Helter Skelter arguably being one of the first metal songs, but that’s an argument for another time. I want to specifically talk about their relations to electronic sounds and music. Many Beatles songs experiment with changing the pitch of someone’s voice or the sound of the instruments. “Strawberry Fields”, “I Me Mine”, “Hey Bulldog”, and so many more introduced different ways of making sound. Half the time when John Lennon was singing, it barely sounded like John Lennon. Now look at today, everyone uses autotune. At this point, I am getting sick of it, but aside from that you also have some songs being made completely by computer. Musicians can be given parts of a piece and play all across the world and then it can be stitched together to be made into a cohesive piece. If the sound isn’t what the artist is looking for then it can be changed with a click of a button. 

Back to the point of how today’s musicians wouldn’t say how they are directly influenced by 60s music. “Anybody who’s influenced by current hip hop right now was informed by the last few generations of hip hop, which was heavily influenced by 70s funk, which was influenced by 60s soul.” Lally gave an example. The conclusion is that musicians today are indirectly influenced by artists from the 60s and 70s. It’s a shame to listen to other people’s music without them even hearing of these famous earlier musicians. You don’t even need to like the music but just listen to it in order to be more cultured.