What Has Been Will Be Again (Old Music Redux)

Over a decade ago I published a playlist of old music that was in my rotation after a friend remarked how I listen to a lot of old music. I still do. If anything, I listen to even more, since getting too old to bother with hip hop anymore and new additions like Jimmie Rodgers, Carter Sisters and the Gaelic-influenced Americana.

My children are old enough to discover their own music. My boy recently requested one in the car that at first made me proud, and then contemplate scripture.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

The song he requested sounded like a 1950s country song. Maybe just popular ballad, but definitely 1960s, but it was a new hit by an artist who found fame via TikTok of all places. I like the song so much it’s still in my rotation after he has moved on.

Until I Found You

It was one of those songs that led me to read all about the singer/songwriter, Stephen Sanchez. He’s 20 years old, his career in its infancy. The video indicates he’s not just into the sound, but the look too.

Let’s hope he does well and makes a lot more beautiful old music like this.

Where We Are

Then my oldest daughter turned me on to this one by The Lumineers. Maybe this couldn’t pass for midcentury, but doesn’t seem typical for a (then) six-year-old to dig this.

I wondered if it’s nature or nurture. Do my children like music like this because it’s what I play, and that helped form their taste? Or is it something inside me that got into them?

It can’t be all nurture, because they have found music that I’d rather not hear. The boy has discovered Eminem, and this daughter is a proud “Swiftie” (not old country Taylor Swift, but the arena pop stuff).

There is new music I’d rather not hear, and then there is new music I’d rather never have heard in the first place. Like these two piles, only one of which the children like. Thank God.

Just Wanna Rock

The boy likes this one, by an artist I have featured here on Expat Chronicles. It served as the anthem for the local football team during their run to the Super Bowl last year. We were cheering for them over the Chiefs, who have become the home team since St. Louis lost its own team. They lost because this song is stupid.

If there is nothing new under the sun, this kind of rap song used to be called an “intro,” and you skipped over it. It became habit to start a rap CD at track 2. The only tracks worse than the intro were the skits, which could be hiding throughout the album or even inside a song. Before CDs hit the scene, you had to suffer all of it.

Pound Town

Speaking of dreadful hometown music, I was reading an article from a St. Louis newspaper and came across this passage: “If you don’t like Sexyy Redd, then you must hate St. Louis.” If that’s true, it makes sense that I left.

If this song is nothing new, I’d file it under a tradition of “sex kittens” from Lil Kim, Madonna, Donna Summer and Marilyn Monroe. There are a million of them in hip-hop today, I daresay they dominate the genre. But I haven’t heard anything from the last 10 years that is as high in quality as the old stuff. Maybe they made sex kitten music as bad as “Pound Town” back then, but I don’t know of it.

Maybe there is occasionally something new under the sun. The quality of culture in the smartphone / TikTok era is plumbing depths of dross previously unknown.

Or maybe (again) I’m just becoming an old cranky reactionary blowhard. But still, listen to old music.