Do Songs Ever Age Badly?

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Sort of in response to "Films that Have Aged Badly."

My immediate response was "yes," but then it occurred to me that sucky songs are just sucky, and it doesn't have anything to do with how old they are. I'm still on the fence, though.

What say you?

― sugarpants (sugarpants), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:22 (twenty years ago)

Well,compare "Songs to remember" Scritti to "Cupid/Psyche"

Or, is that "Arrangement" rather than "song" ?

― MG, Friday, 25 February 2005 16:26 (twenty years ago)

excellent question. i would guess they do. in the mid-nineties people cringed at 'the '80s' and '80s drum sounds etc. post-'discovery' people shrug at the '90s. but this is about sounds more than songs, perhaps songs age less than sounds.

― NRQ (Enrique), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

Songs can call attention to themselves via tricks/slang/references of the time but can just as easily hold up in spite of/because of them.

Some songs, however, are just as easy to hate now as then.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

That was kind of my feeling, too, Ned. Songs can have cheesy 80s synth or awkward raps (C + C Music Factory, I'm glancing in your direction), but that doesn't necessarily make it "bad." Fer instance, Depeche Mode's "Violator" couldn't have been made in any other decade but the 80s (at least in my opinion), but its has some of the most perfect pop-synth music ever written.

At this point, though, I'm really racking my brain for a song that proves songs DO age badly... I want to find it, dammit!

― sugarpants (sugarpants), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:37 (twenty years ago)

Most anything by Survivor aside from "Eye of the Tiger."

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:37 (twenty years ago)

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" is a song that's aged terribly.

― Huey (Huey), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:38 (twenty years ago)

I remember there was an old girl group song called "He Hit Me (and It Felt Like A Kiss)" or some such nonsense — I can't remember the name of the artist now. I guess that didn't seem so bad at the time, but it sure as hell hasn't aged well. I guess that's only if you're referring to the lyrics, though.

― sugarpants (sugarpants), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:39 (twenty years ago)

"The King of Wishful Thinking" by Go West.

― Huey (Huey), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:39 (twenty years ago)

I think some of Kate Bush's music has aged a lot but I still like it.

― the other kate (ffs!) (papa november), Friday, 25 February 2005 16:40 (twenty years ago)

Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA has aged much more noticably than any of his other albums.

― Allyzay Dallas Multi-Pass (allyzay), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:00 (twenty years ago)

1980s to thread.

― o. nate (onate), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:03 (twenty years ago)

i'll get over you...i know i will...

― Chris 'The Nuts' V (Chris V), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:05 (twenty years ago)

Born In The USA rules! what the hell?

― miccio (miccio), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:06 (twenty years ago)

"King Of Wishful Thinking" sounds good too, and I hated it when it came out.

The answer to this thread is Fatboy Slim

― miccio (miccio), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:09 (twenty years ago)

The Crystals.

Also "Aint nobody's business if I do" by Billie Holliday, for much the same reasons.

― hobart paving (hobart paving), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:11 (twenty years ago)

dude I didn't say Born in the USA doesn't rule, I don't think being really dated is necessarily a mark of badness.

― Allyzay Dallas Multi-Pass (allyzay), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:14 (twenty years ago)

heyyyyyyyy yaaaaaaa

heyyyyyyy yaaaaaa

― ken c (ken c), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:35 (twenty years ago)

i may be the only person who has never gotten sick of "hey ya." ever.

― miccio (miccio), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:43 (twenty years ago)

"Aint nobody's business if I do" by Billie Holliday

By Bessie Smith, even. And I think those songs, including Joanie Somers's "Johnny Get Angry", have aged in perhaps the most marvelous way possible.

Nina Simone's "Young, Gifted and Black": Has that aged badly?

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:48 (twenty years ago)

[Sommers's, even.]

― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:49 (twenty years ago)

All of those arrangements from the 60's with the sounds of the swirling string orchestra sound very schmaltzy now. But I suppose they sounded stuffy then too to most people.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 25 February 2005 17:52 (twenty years ago)

I've mostly come to terms with the bass sounds Brian Eno seems have enjoyed in the '70s... but still.

― Aaron A., Friday, 25 February 2005 17:52 (twenty years ago)

I think they go through a period where they sound 'dated', but then many of them make it out the other end as classic. At least that's how I feel about a lot of eighties music. The recent past is harder to deal with, anything more than ten or fifteen years becomes nostalgia.

― Yr3k (dymaxia), Friday, 25 February 2005 18:05 (twenty years ago)

heyyyyyyyy yaaaaaaa

heyyyyyyy yaaaaaa

I thought he was singing Crowded House.

― S!monB!rch (Carey), Friday, 25 February 2005 18:24 (twenty years ago)

I don't think "Hey Ya" is bad; it just needs some time before it's not grating again.

― sugarpants (sugarpants), Friday, 25 February 2005 23:24 (twenty years ago)

"The King of Wishful Thinking" by Go West.

I've always liked this one. I think it's ripe for someone like D'angelo or Usher to do a sexed-up, downtempo cover of it. I'm dead serious.

― Tantrum (Tantrum The Cat), Friday, 25 February 2005 23:58 (twenty years ago)

I liked it right off, but i think that somehow Gwen's "What You Waiting For" has aged about five years in an actual span of only a few months.

― Kim (Kim), Saturday, 26 February 2005 02:30 (twenty years ago)

It could be because its source material hasn't had much of a chance to "refresh" — she's channeling, or at least trying to channel, mid-80s Madonna, but so have Britney, Xtina, et al.

― sugarpants (sugarpants), Saturday, 26 February 2005 02:36 (twenty years ago)

"Do They Know It's Christmas?" is a song that's aged terribly.

Awwwww, that's my absolute favorite Christmas song of all time. Though I do confess that I'm sorta horribly biased in favor of the original version of this song, what with it including so many of my '80s faves and being co-written by Mr. Lead-Singer-Of-Ultravox and all.

Anyway. As many of you well know, I ADORE the sometimes-cheesy sounds of the early '80s New Wave musical scene. Even when it sounds really dated. In fact, sometimes part of the reason why I love a song as much as I do is because of that "dated" sound.

― Surreal Addiction (Dee the Lurker), Saturday, 26 February 2005 02:36 (twenty years ago)

I didn't realise that St Etienne had nicked that "he hit me and it felt like a kiss" line. Which song do they use it on? I think it's one on Foxbase Alpha.

AS I was discussing with Markelby at Club FT, Aneka's "Japanese Boy" has aged badly. I am not sure that she could get away with it today - I recall the very bizaare sight of a very Ttall British woman in a kimono trying her best to look geishaesque on TOTP.

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 26 February 2005 10:16 (twenty years ago)

Prog-rock to thread.

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 26 February 2005 11:58 (twenty years ago)

I'd say a lot of early nineties rap songs have aged pretty badly; those songs with smooths jazz samples and shouted-out choruses - and often it's just not the rapper shouting the chorus, but his whole posse - sound quite old fashioned at least to my ear. This is why I have problems with a lot of so-called classic early nineties LPs, like Illmatic or 93 'til Infinity. Funnily enough, eighties rap rarely sounds as dated to me, but's that's probably because all the "back to the old school" recycling (in electro and big beat, for example), whereas jazz-rap has never had a proper revival.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:20 (twenty years ago)

i've posted this before (and w.difft numbers* too) BUT:
10 yrs = familiarity becomes disdain
20 yrs = obscurity becomes appreciation
30 yrs = unapologetic nostalgia surfaces
40 yrs = historical significance established

*but yo, difft cultural items have difft periodicity obv

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:45 (twenty years ago)

Who can now remember Zebediah Lane?
The great singing sensation of 1909
With his chicken and his monkey and his ukelele
He achieved what seemed like undying fame
But now his multi-platinum wax cyclinder rolls
Like his name, have crumbled away

One hundred years from now
Who will still be famous?
Scott McCaughey of The Minus 5
John Crist of the Dashboard Saviours
Or their collaborators
Pearl Jam, REM, Sonic Youth, Guided By Voices
The Walkabouts, The Posies (Ken and John)
The Presidents of the United States Of America
(Not them, the other ones)?

Massive popularity is never enough
Not even worldwide acclaim or universal love
Can guarantee eternities of honour
For our names

As Velazquez and Picasso will happily explain
History remembers the names
Of those who creep out of the shadows
And reposition the frames

Beam me up, Scott McCaughey
Let's take The Minus 5 at warp factor 3
To a planet just like Earth, to a city like Madrid
To a place just like the Prado Gallery
We'll spend the day just looking at Las Meninas
Asking ourselves 'Who was that king? What was his name?
The one who let his family get in the way
Of the self-portrait Velazquez was painting?'

Wearing shades at night is never enough
Not exceptional skill or below zero cool at Minus 5 degrees
Can guarantee eternities of honour
For our names

As Scott McCaughey and I have no doubt realised
History remembers the names
Of those who creep out of the shadows
And reposition the frames

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Saturday, 26 February 2005 14:52 (twenty years ago)

who gets to choose what the frame wz and what counts as repositionin = the collective of those w.archive-enhanced techno-memories (which others call the library)

this collective is now a population vaster than many whole nations

― mark s (mark s), Saturday, 26 February 2005 15:02 (twenty years ago)

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