Stretching Your Memory: What is the oldest song you remember when it was new?

[SolidGold16]

Yes, you're right.  A sober wake-up call to an otherwise amusing discussion.  Guess we can salvage a few good female vocalists; Carry Underwood for instance.  Maybe Kelly Clarkson too.  While Clarkson's vision of music isn't exactcly my cup of tea, she is very good at what she does.  I also would include Pia Tuscano.  But I'm afraid that the "flash" you bemoan has claimed the female gender even worse than male singers. 

And all of them are from AI, interestingly enough. I always get a kick out of these kids singing "oldies" on AI (although I don't watch AI anymore, since Simon left). I have to wonder what's going through their minds when they have to sing songs from the 60s or 70s. Do they like to sing them or are they forced to? Do they think it's "fogey-rock", or cool?

In any case, I don't think it's likely any truly good music is ever going to be given a chance on the radio again. Maybe it's just me, I dunno, but there's been only a handful of new songs in the past 20 years or so that I can stand to listen to. Rap music was pretty much the end of radio listening for me. Disco was the beginning of the end, and rap finished it off.

[jfrancispastirchak]

Yes, you're right.  A sober wake-up call to an otherwise amusing discussion.  Guess we can salvage a few good female vocalists; Carry Underwood for instance.  Maybe Kelly Clarkson too.  While Clarkson's vision of music isn't exactcly my cup of tea, she is very good at what she does.  I also would include Pia Tuscano.  But I'm afraid that the "flash" you bemoan has claimed the female gender even worse than male singers. 

And all of them are from AI, interestingly enough. I always get a kick out of these kids singing "oldies" on AI (although I don't watch AI anymore, since Simon left). I have to wonder what's going through their minds when they have to sing songs from the 60s or 70s. Do they like to sing them or are they forced to? Do they think it's "fogey-rock", or cool? In any case, I don't think it's likely any truly good music is ever going to be given a chance on the radio again. Maybe it's just me, I dunno, but there's been only a handful of new songs in the past 20 years or so that I can stand to listen to. Rap music was pretty much the end of radio listening for me. Disco was the beginning of the end, and rap finished it off.

Gloomy, but correct I'm afraid. Disco was my last straw, so I never even made it as far as (c)rap. I guess the bar of popular music has been lowered to the point where singers have to scrape their bellies in the dirt just to get a recording contract. 

[radioman148]

Yes, you're right.  A sober wake-up call to an otherwise amusing discussion.  Guess we can salvage a few good female vocalists; Carry Underwood for instance.  Maybe Kelly Clarkson too.  While Clarkson's vision of music isn't exactcly my cup of tea, she is very good at what she does.  I also would include Pia Tuscano.  But I'm afraid that the "flash" you bemoan has claimed the female gender even worse than male singers. 

And all of them are from AI, interestingly enough. I always get a kick out of these kids singing "oldies" on AI (although I don't watch AI anymore, since Simon left). I have to wonder what's going through their minds when they have to sing songs from the 60s or 70s. Do they like to sing them or are they forced to? Do they think it's "fogey-rock", or cool? In any case, I don't think it's likely any truly good music is ever going to be given a chance on the radio again. Maybe it's just me, I dunno, but there's been only a handful of new songs in the past 20 years or so that I can stand to listen to. Rap music was pretty much the end of radio listening for me. Disco was the beginning of the end, and rap finished it off.

Gloomy, but correct I'm afraid. Disco was my last straw, so I never even made it as far as (c)rap. I guess the bar of popular music has been lowered to the point where singers have to scrape their bellies in the dirt just to get a recording contract. 

My daughter who is now 32 was fed a steady diet of 50s & 60s music in the 80s & 90s because that's mostly what my wife and I listened to. She loved the music then & she still loves it today. There was a time when she was in her teens when she wouldn't admit to liking it because it wouldn't have been "cool" if her friends knew she liked it.
As for me, rap was the last straw. When rap started I gave up listening to anymore current music.

[deltas69]

Rap mad Disco sound great..   actually from a musicians standpoint.. a lot of disco is really well arranged and much harder to play than basic rock 1-4-5 chord progressions..I'm referring to what made the charts..not what was heard in clubs during that era..wouldn't have been caught dead in a disco club..

[jfrancispastirchak]

Rap mad Disco sound great..   actually from a musicians standpoint.. a lot of disco is really well arranged and much harder to play than basic rock 1-4-5 chord progressions..I'm referring to what made the charts..not what was heard in clubs during that era..wouldn't have been caught dead in a disco club..

I would allow you the benefit of the doubt; disco could make for a fun atmosphere, especially at a wedding reception perhaps.  Problem for me was the assemblyline marketing of that pounding homoginized disco "beat" on top 40 radio.  No imagination, no creativity.  Not to mention OFFENSIVE.

[deltas69]

I bet I played a thousand or more DJ gigs, as well as live band performances..and it never fails..if you want to get people dancing..you got to play something that has a beat..laugh if you will...(lol)...but Disco Inferno always packed the floor..now,the whole show was not disco only..but you have to do something to get the crowd loosened up enough to venture out on the dance floor..dim lights and booze always helps..

[CTListener]

The problem with disco was that it came about too soon after the era when many rock listeners truly thought their music could change the world. By 1970, "serious" rock was for listening, not dancing, and, truth be told, had drifted as far from the three-chord ideal as it could. Can you imagine Chuck Berry singing not about young lust, but about the search for cosmic truths the way the Moody Blues did? Or Fats Domino pulling a Rick Wakeman and composing a suite of "rock" pieces about the wives of Henry VIII?

Anyway, now it's 1974 and here comes disco and suddenly popular music is about dancing and sex again -- just as it used to be in the years the "serious" rock crowd had either forgotten or dismissed as "simplistic." And the Disco Sucks movement was born.

Me, I was fine with everything -- old rock, British Invasion, folk rock, country rock, Southern rock, soul, disco, New Wave, '80s power pop -- until rap came along. I understand its link to talking blues but try as I might, I've never been able to appreciate any of it. I am constantly amazed at its staying power and the way it has crossed racial, ethnic and socioeconomic lines the way rock never could. In fact, rap's ubiquity reminds me of ... disco.

[melan8tr]

my earliest recollection was 1951..my dad had the radio on all the time..probably
"Cry"-Johnnie Ray with the Four Lads..."Because Of You" - Tony Bennet and maybe "Too Young" by Nat Cole....

[BobSmolarek]

For me I would say Candy Girl by the Four Seasons. But maybe it was My Boyfriends Back by Angels. By the end of that year I was really remembering the songs. I was born late 1957.

[Corky Marlowe]

Memory is a funny thing. Most people's early memory cutoff is around age 4 or 5. I can (I think) remember hearing some songs on the radio when they were current from 1964 (I was 3) including "We'll Sing In The Sunshine" by Gale Garnett, and I specifically remember really liking the end of "She Loves You". Even earlier, I can remember hearing a couple of songs from 1963; Bobby Darin's "You're The Reason I'm Living" and "Lazy Hazy Crazy Days Of Summer" by Nat "King" Cole. Now maybe I only heard them a few times and my mind thinks I heard them a lot more, and maybe these memories actually happened a year or two later, but in my mind, they were current hits.