Music: then and now

October 21, 2024 • 9:30 am

There’s not much new this week, and certainly nothing to inspire me to comment on science, current events, and so on. So it’s time to go back fifty years and compare the Billboard Top Ten Songs from then with the current ones.  It turns out that the comparison isn’t as dire as it has been the last few times.

This may be for two reasons. First, rock had already reached its apogee before 1974, and while there are a couple of classics on the 1974 list, and certainly some great musicians, the list in general is not inspiring.

Second, it seems to me that pop music is getting infused with a soupçon of country music, and, given how bad recent pop music has been, this can only improve it.

First, the list from this week in 1974.  I’ve put a link to the performance of each song.

The best songs on this list include #1 (the Spinners were underrated: “I’ll Be Around” is one of the great soul songs), and the addition of Dionne Warwick makes for a creditable tune.  The Stevie Wonder song is okay, but not close to his greatest efforts (viz. “Isn’t she Lovely?” or “For Once in my Life“, etc.).  I have little use for Bachman Turner Overdrive, but “Jazzman: is an excellent effort by Carole King.  The Elton John song is an 8; I can dance to it.  Bad Company’s song rates a 5 out of 10, and it’s downhill from there, save the classic “Sweet Home Alabama”.  Ergo, I’d rate #1, #4, and #8 as music that will last. We shall forget about Tony Orlando, Mac Davis, and the Osmonds.

Here is the Billboard Top 10 from fifty years ago: October 21, 1974:

1.) “Then Came You”  Dionne Warwicke and the Spinners

2.)  “You Haven’t Done Nothing”  Stevie Wonder

3.)  “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet/Free Wheelin'” Bachman Turner Overdrive

4.)  “Jazzman” Carole King

5.)  “The Bitch is Back”  Elton John

6.)  “Can’t Get Enough” Bad Company

7.)  “Steppin’ Out/Gonna Boogie Tonight” Tony Orlando and Dawn

8.)  “Sweet Home Alabama” Lynyrd Skynyrd

9.)  “Stop and Smell the Roses” Mac Davis

10.) “Love Me for a Reason” The Osmonds

And the latest Billboard Top 10 from October 19, 2024.  

The music on the list below is surprisingly good given that it’s from today.  I’m not a fan of “A Bar Song” as it’s too rap-py—but note the country tinge to it!  My favorite on this list is Billie Eilish’s song (#2), which is quite lovely.  #3 is largely a country/pop hybrid. It’s okay, but the melody and words are rather trite. We shall leave aside the talentless Sabrina Carpenter, which eliminates three songs off this list. The Bruno Mars/Lady Gaga duet has the trappings of country music (cowboy hats and boots, and big hair on Lady Gaga), but it’s just okay: neither catchy or memorable. Chappell Roan appears to be a phenom these days, but I wasn’t impressed with this effort, which in the end is a standard love song, and the melody is trite.  Skipping over Carpenter to Swims, we find a song that’s beginning to sound of a piece with much of modern music, but it’s okay (note the country intonations). Skipping Carpenter for the last time (yes, I listened to all the songs), we finish with Benson Boone, performing a countrified pop song, but again the tune is boring and the lyrics uncompelling.

1.)  “A Bar Song” Tipsy

2.)  “Birds of a Feather” Billie Eilish

3.)  “I Had Some Help” Post Malone featuring Morgan Wallen

4.)  “Espresso”  Sabrina Carpenter

5.) “Die With a Smile”  Lady Gaga with Bruno Mars

6.) “Good Luck, Babe!” Chappell Roan

7.)  “Taste” Sabrina Carpenter

8.)   “Lose Control” Teddy Swims

9.)  “Please Please Please” Sabrina Carpenter

10.)  “Beautiful Things” Benson Boone

All in all, the lists are pretty much tied, but 1974 wins (you knew it would!) because it has a couple of classics. The latest list, in my view, is redeemed by Billie Eilish‘s song, and I should sample more of her music. I see she’s only 22 and her full name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell. (Note that Wonder’s “For Once in My Life” was recorded when he was just 18.)

Here’s “Birds of a Feather” by Billie Eilish, co-written with her brother, Finneas O’Connell

39 thoughts on “Music: then and now”

  1. Ok, so BTO & Bad Company are still out, and Dua Lipa is IN the ROCK Hall?
    In the words of the immortal Chester A. Riley, “What a revoltin’ development this is!”

  2. 👍

    What I really like to hear with any music is the sound and how that sound reverberates.

    So if it’s a poor recording of Dizzy and Monk in a club in the 60s, the poor quality doesn’t matter – I can hear the club – the noise, clinks of glasses, Diz’s voice shouting and everything of course in a tight, tiny room in NYC/Harlem (e.g. Monroe’s?).

    In the studio, I delight in the squeak from John Bonham’s foot pedal, or the telephone ringing by accident in D’yer Maker(..?). Or the guitar cabinet wood resonating e.g. Hendrix’s sound (And The Wind Cries Mary) and maybe even interfering with the snare.

    How ’bout James Brown’s call/response and on-the-spot direction with his band – this cannot be faked.
    “Can we hit it and quit it?!” — “Yeah!”

    The grandest expression of this idea are the churches or symphony halls. No substitute for being there, the vibrations entering the airways (nose, mouth) one can feel it in full – and of course the mega-concert halls too.

    The sound of the room.

    /satisfying music rave

    1. As you may know, fans of the Grateful Dead have been swapping recordings of live performances for decades. There’s a subcult of ‘tape’ traders (now mostly digital of course) that prefer audience-made recordings to the now-widely-available direct soundboard recordings, in part because they can better capture the sound in/of the room.
      Frank Zappa once said he enjoyed playing in hockey rinks because he liked to think of music as ‘air sculpture’ and hockey rinks held a lot of sculptable air.

    1. Ah, Redbone: a one-hit wonder, but what a hit!
      And “Bennie and the Jets”–a great song.
      The Way We Were is especially good when it’s played in the movie, which stars Barbra and Robert Redford.

      1. Redbone? Leon? I searched on “redbone 1974” and listened to Come and Get Your Love, and of course I knew the song (and liked it) but had no idea who sang it, and they’re a group of Native Americans and their live performance was fantastic!

      2. Back in the day Redbone played our local dance hall and we very much enjoyed him. He plays lots of oldies with his own special style. I still listen to him once in awhile.

    2. I had a look at that list and saw that #49 was Waterloo by Abba. It was their first hit, I believe. I recently became a raving fan of ABBA and can’t help gushing about them. During the band’s heyday, I dismissed them out of hand as too pop and too disco. Then I actually listened to their songs a while ago and realized what an arrogant fool I was. They were singing, song-writing geniuses.

  4. I can’t comment on the 2024 list, but the 1974 list seems particularly weak to me. “Then Came You” is passable soul, and “You Haven’t Done Nothing” has a tinge of the social activism that powered some of the best Stevie Wonder songs. But, IMO, the songs after that are simply not very good. Victims of their own success here are Carole King and Elton John, represented here by two of their weakest songs (again, IMO, of course).

    I wonder what this week in 1964 looks like. Dollars to donuts there are some gems there!

    1. You should look up 1964, which I was tempted to do but 50 years is a more even number than 60. I bet the 1964 hits are much better! But I would be considered self-aggrandizing to choose a year when I KNEW the music was great.

  5. From my point of view, as somebody with different tastes to you, a top ten with You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet and Sweet Home Alabama in it is very hard to beat.

  6. I find it strange that my ‘best time for music ever’ was from around 1966 to 1971. Now clearly this means that my ‘music of the 60s’ is less than half a 10 year category, and ‘music of the 70s’ mostly passes me by.

    Perhaps because the ‘music of a decade’ is really a marketing ploy rather than a respecter of genres.

  7. Funny.. as someone born in the early 80ies, the BTO song and Sweet Home Alabama are the only songs I could immediately replay in my mind.
    I’m more fond of 80ies music (though it’s SO hit or miss) as well as turn-of-the-millenia EDM and hip hop.

  8. “Sweet Home Alabama” was one of only seven or eight songs of that year to make it into the Grammy Hall of Fame. One of its peers is making its climb at #50: Cat’s in the Cradle. There is much that is forgettable in that Top 100. I tend to forget that when I listen to greatest hits on the radio.

  10. Have you read about this new exhibit, Measuring Difference, at Harvard Museum? Measuring things might be a bad idea:

    “In the Americas, colonial powers aimed to take control of the “New World,” cementing European measures as tools of authority. With a new interpretation of historical items from the Collection, partner museums like the Peabody Museum of Archaeology & Ethnology, and numerous other cultural organizations, visitors can find out how tools, ideas, and policies have influenced what—and who—were measured.”

    More:
    https://hmsc.harvard.edu/2024/09/25/measuring-difference-exhibition-illustrates-what-and-who-was-measured-in-the-new-world/

  11. Yech. IF that is the among the best that today’s rock has to offer, I am so glad that I stopped listening around 1990.

    Listening to the Billie Ellish song for a minute (couldn’t take it) made me think of the Beetles. Mostly guitar, bass, and drums with voice (that has not been f-ed with or “synthesized”) – some harmonica and tambourine on some tracks. Give me that raw musicality any day, all day.

    1. Hasn’t some DIY punk band called themselves ‘The Beetles’ yet?
      Would be pretty funny.

  12. I am pretty sure I was alive in the 1970s, and the only song title I recognize from the list is “You ain’t seen nothing yet”, though I recognize all the band names. What WAS I doing?

  13. Why, today, does the word “music” mean only pop music? Does anyone on this list ever listen to classical music? Pop music comes and goes but classical music has a history of over a thousand years, and a variety of music experiences and expressions that convey in musical content some of the most profound and beautiful experiences humans are capable of. I pity those whose lives have never included the classics, most of which are accessible and highly enjoyable even if one is not trained musically. I cant imagine life without classical music. It is an intense and rewarding experience that defies words. My condolences. If you are too lazy to listen, then make sure you expose your children to classical music as soon as they are born. Turn on the radio. Play good CDs. Take them to children’s concerts. Start them on piano lessons. Right now!!!!Their lives will be changed.

    2. I am sorry but I never got a good education in classical music so cannot speak with any knowledge about it. It is a lacuna in my education, and I really DID need an education–just like I got in art and literature. I have listened to it and do have favorites, but do not know nearly as much about it as I do, say, about art and literature.

      Actually, I find your comment rather arrogant given that I was comparing changes in pop music; it is as if you are saying that we are pitiable creatures.In fact, you directly say we are pitiable.

      And of course classical music itself has gone seriously downhill. There are no Bachs, Beehovens, or even Richard Strausses around any more.

      You owe us an apology, I think, for saying we are pitiable. In fact, many readers, though not I, listen to lots of classical music.

      By the way, I listen to a lot of jazz and have written about that. does that complex music also make me pitiable?

      Condolences, indeed. If I were you, I would apologize. What you like, by the way, doesnt have to be shared by everyone else. I do not give condolences to those who dont like Ulysses or Anna Karenina or find them pitiable.

    3. Exactly! I was a child in the 70s and I remember all this pop and rock music people are talking about here, which is burned into my brain, but I could never get excited about it. It wasn’t until I discovered classical music as a teenager that I appreciated the experience that music can provide.

    4. I have an extensive list, which I play while driving. But they are not my go-to.
      But my taste for the classics comes from the sound tracks of Looney Tunes cartoons (!) I am sure I’m not the only one!

    5. Oh I had piano lessons. They did not make me a classics lover though.
      Charlie Parker liked Bartok.

    6. Dear Lorna,
      I am a huge fan of classical music and appreciate your enthusiasm. Condescension or impatience though, however mild, towards people who aren’t listeners plays into the worst stereotypes of the classical music world.
      I also have a great appreciation for various “rock” artists of the 60’s.

  16. A bit of a dissent on1974. I think that “I Can’t Get Enough” is a terrific rocker and that Paul Rodgers is a great singer, perfect pitch, pre-autotune. Also have a soft spot for BTO, in part because Randy Bachman was a schoolmate. He won our high school talent contest with some impressive flamenco. An early version of Guess Who played at our dances.

  17. There is some excellent music being written and performed today but most of it is spread via word of mouth. Not to knock your Billboard comparison, just as an aside, most really good, creative music never makes it to Billboard. There are some truly eclectic community radio stations around the country where you could have your faith in modern music restored.

    1. People keep telling me this, and sending me links to songs that are supposedly great, but only very rarely are they better than mediocre. I’d be glad to have my faith in modern music restored, but I doubt I can be convinced that it’s better than the music of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Fleetwood Mac, and the like.

      I am afraid that modern pop and rock music has reached its apogee, like classical music did many years ago, and now both are on the way down the drain. Of course the young people need a soundtrack to their lives, so new pop/rock will keep appearing. As for classical music, why do symphonies draw crowds by featuring the great classics, but throwing in a Stockhausen piece as a duplicitous ploy!

  18. I agree with you about Sabrina Carpenter, especially since I’ve been cursed with a couple of earworms of her repetitive songs. Another annoying trend is singers mumbling their lyrics so that it is very difficult to understand what they are singing. Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Feather’ is an example of this, as at one point she says “I’m so sorry for your loss”, with a laugh, that out of context sounds like a weird thing to say (the song is about leaving her ex-boyfriend). Tate McRae’s “Greedy” is another song that you can barely understand every third word.

  19. This is a very late comment. I was in the UK over the summer (my daughter went to see Taylor Swift). It was taken for granted (in the UK) that the apogee of music was in the 60s/70s/80s. Many fields have an apogee followed by a decline. Consider the common phrase “the age of exploration”. I actually like the music of Taylor Swift. Does she really surpass the greats of another era?

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