JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum Top 100 Pop songs of 1967

Scott,

I'd go one step further. It is impossible to be objective about this. Taste is subjective, or, as the old saying goes, "There is no accounting for taste." We can look at things which are currently regarded as "mistakes" and find them in songs from every era.

As far as melody goes, that, too, is subjective. My daughter can hum the melodies and recite the lyrics of many of today's songs. She would say that you are unable because you are a dinosaur.

Musical styles seem to move in spirals. While penduluming back and forth between simplicity and complexity; rootsiness and sophistication; traditional and revolutionary, it also builds on what has gone before. Only now the spiral is quickened by the technology of recording and broadcasting. Two hundred years ago, composers flat out stole each others' melodies, but the composer's local fans didn't know it. Only people in the biz back then knew it. Nowadays, lawyers know it. Add to that, the fact that you simply cannot write a new melody...no matter how "new" or "exotic" you think your melody is, it has already been written.

The music of the sixties literally exploded from a cultural and technological revolution. That's over. It produced some great music, my daughter can hum many of the Beatles' songs also (that makes my daughter a more rounded and open minded listener than some of today's remaining dinosaurs.) As much as we'd like to say that we know, we actually don't know which or how many songs of today will be remembered. Anyone who tells you they know is a fool. The critics are wrong much of the time. Of all the endless parade of forgotten singer/songwriters hailed as "the next Dylan" only Springsteen was chosen by the public to wear the mantle. Bands thought of as "sell outs" and "commercial" back in the 60's, such as Creedence (they were a 45rpm, top forty AM band, if you recall) are now culturally and critically regarded above many of the hip elite of the day.

Then there are the times themselves. We remember music that came from interesting times. The songs of the depression, the songs of WW2, and the songs of the 60's-70's revolution take on iconic status.

Yes, these songs bring great memories for me, mostly because I was there. This was five years before I gave away my tv, radio and phonograph and spent eight years listening to great live music. Such great songs as "The Dutchman," "Delicate Balance," "Bicycle Wheel," "Mr. Arthur's Place," and "Crazy Mary." Now, those were really great songs from the 70's. I remember all those melodies, but I can't remember any of that radio fluff. LOL.

Yes, Spider had a point. I believe that running out of legal melodies, rather than the downloading problem, is what will end the copyrighting of music. Music is too limited. At that point, though, the marriage of music to lyric...the song...will still be copyrighted.

In the meantime. Instead of arguing improvable opinions, how about enjoying what we enjoy and delighting in the fact that others enjoy different things? Well, in my opinion, that will never happen