Do you find some music dates badly?

NIMAN wrote: »

Last example, Pour Some Sugar on Me.....I used to love Def Leppard, but I found it a little cringe, terrible lyrics. But I suppose its not meant to be a deep meaningful song.

Do you find other music doesn't age well?

It was dubbed 'Cock Rock' for a reason.

I think most of Britpop has dated badly, with the exception of Suede who were never properly part of Britpop in the first place.

Anesthetize wrote: »

I think what causes some music to age badly is that it tries to immerse itself too much in current trends, current production techniques, or current political / cultural topics.

Take two contrasting metal albums released in 1986 - Turbo by Judas Priest, and Reign in Blood by Slayer:

It's painfully obvious what decade this song is from, and the promo video is one of the most hilariously 80's things I've ever seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhY9GOhFwN4

Reign in Blood on the other hand avoided much of the bad production techniques of the 80's such as excessive use of reverb and synths, and instead sounds lean, mean, and timeless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnRZhLRv6eM

To be honest after that the only thing I know for sure is that Turbo Lover is a better song than I remembered - absolute cheese of course - but I think it's actually a pretty good tune and layers of eighties effects only add to it if you ask me! If you want shit that's really aged badly try Priest's nu-metal phase around the turn of the century - yikes!

It's not better than anything off Reign in Blood of course - though you could make the argument that RIB, for all it's ferociousness, is also dated in it's own particular way - a pure eighties thrash kind of way. I think RIB is one of the best albums of time, but it is also of its time.

But, yeah, by and large, I agree with your main point - following trends and sounds and trying to sound too "current" runs the risk of your music sounding incredibly dated in times to come. The aforementioned nu-metal is a genre that time has not particularly been kind to and the absolute worst garbage of that era was from pre-existing bands that tried to incorporate bits of that "sound" into their own music.

It's interesting that you picked something so quintessentially eighties, because I think some elements of those synth overloaded times are present and correct across a lot of popular music again these days. I notice more and more bands incorporating synths and keys into their sound, where they wouldn't have done so before, obviously to sound current. Sometimes it works and then other times you wonder how it's all going to sound in ten years.