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Best and worst years for popular music on the radio for you personally?

They say we like the music from our middle school and high school years by and large so I won't get into specific years. Mine go way before and well after that. Instead I'll just say I like real arrangements and instruments. Good sax, guitar, piano, keyboards, drums, strings, etc. What I've heard in the last few years sounds like it was turned out of a factory, no real instruments and it sounds so cheap.

Remember when an instrumental would get on the charts? Then somebody discovered what I learned a long time ago, little girls don't like instrumentals because they can't sing along!

At age 72 someone asked Dick Clark if he liked the music of the day. I thought his answer was great. He said he didn't think they were making records to appeal to the average 72 year old!
 
Mike Sheridan said:
They say we like the music from our middle school and high school years by and large so I won't get into specific years. Mine go way before and well after that. Instead I'll just say I like real arrangements and instruments. Good sax, guitar, piano, keyboards, drums, strings, etc. What I've heard in the last few years sounds like it was turned out of a factory, no real instruments and it sounds so cheap.
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I'd share that sentiment, and for me I'd expand upon the idea that we favor the music we heard in middle and high school to say I liked most everything that came before middle school and after high school! In my case that was roughly 1973 to 1979. Popular music had seemed to go into the doldrums during that time. There were a few exceptions of course but disco really got me down, though some of my best friends loved it. I spent my high school years listening to a lot of 50s and 60s music with a few then-current acts like ELO thrown into the mix. After 1979, alternative, new-wave and other genres caught my interest. By the mid 80s I began to get into country which had moved back towards a more traditional sound unlike the Urban Cowboy phase. (By the way, Boy George and Culture Club made some incredible pop music IMO but I just couldn't buy any of his albums. Let's just say I didn't like his cover art!)

By the 90s, my capacity to really get into popular music had reached its limit. My head couldn't really absorb any more. That isn't to say there's been good music made afterwards, there has. I think we reach the "been there, done that, got the T-shirt" phase and we become jaded.

I think a lot of today's music could be improved by de-cluttering the arrangements, not relying so much on synthesizers, and end the extreme over-compressing trend we've had to endure the last ten years.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
They say we like the music from our middle school and high school years by and large so I won't get into specific years. Mine go way before and well after that. Instead I'll just say I like real arrangements and instruments. Good sax, guitar, piano, keyboards, drums, strings, etc. What I've heard in the last few years sounds like it was turned out of a factory, no real instruments and it sounds so cheap.

Remember when an instrumental would get on the charts? Then somebody discovered what I learned a long time ago, little girls don't like instrumentals because they can't sing along!

At age 72 someone asked Dick Clark if he liked the music of the day. I thought his answer was great. He said he didn't think they were making records to appeal to the average 72 year old!
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Dick was always hipper than others his age.

Last night I watched a rerun of "Hot in Cleveland" that I had taped and not watched yet. The girls are all around age 50 except for Betty White's character who confesses to being close to 90. I couldn't believe they formed a rock band. All four of them! When Joy quit because they didn't like her attitude, they didn't have a good lead singer but the remaining girls came up with a solution. Auto-tune! They had fun with it but that is one of the most annoying sounds there is. I was pleased the contest they entered banned auto-tune. Joy felt sorry for them as they struggled and she went up on stage in the middle of the song. Now despite being about the same age as those girls, I never liked that loud rock and roll garbage. Get off my lawn!
 
Look at the mid 1970's and you will see so many epic artists putting out legendary music. In no particular order...

Paul McCartney and Wings
Fleetwood Mac
Eagles
Elton John
Bee Gees
Doobie Brothers
Earth, Wind, & Fire
America
KC & The Sunshine Band
David Bowie
Steve Wonder
Hall & Oates
Commodores

Of course most of these artists have been so overplayed the past few decades their importance becomes somewhat muddled. However, when the demos age out, they will become relics of the past until they are reborn as cult classics. (as in Patsy Cline, Dean Martin, Chuck Berry, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles).
 
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I'd go with 1985-1990 and would characterize my favorite sound as 'blue collar rock(pop)".

Bands like Bruce Hornsby and the Range, Huey Lewis, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, Clarence Clemmons too brief solo career and Starship were among my favorites. I really liked Springsteen at that time, but that has changed as time has gone on.
 
umfan said:
I'd go with 1985-1990 and would characterize my favorite sound as 'blue collar rock(pop)".

I really liked Springsteen at that time, but that has changed as time has gone on.
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Because of his politics or his music? I ask because I am much closer to Bruce than to you politically (based on your postings here), yet as much as I liked Springsteen in the '70s and '80s, I've found most of his music since then uninteresting. As something of a liberal folkie myself, I should have liked his brief obsession with Pete Seeger and the album that came out of it, but even that fell flat with me. So what changed your opinion of Bruce?
 
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