The history and influence of popular music over the last 60 years: A critical and slightly academic perspective
In this series of articles I wish to study and understand the history and influence of popular music over the last sixty years.
The Sixties
Beginning with the nineteen sixties a decade of immense change politically and culturally on a global scale. All sort of amazing artists made their debut this decade and many genres, major world events such as The Vietnam war, nuclear testing and the assassination of a president as well the women’s, civil and LGBT rights movements gaining momentum and the British finally making their own unique mark on pop culture.
The British are coming…
Perhaps no other decade in recent history has such an intrinsically linked sound track. When you think of the sixties one band automatically comes to mind and that is the Beatles, signalling the British musical invasion of the decade no band in history has been so influential. From their first pop hit of “Love me Do” in 1962 all the way to Abbey Road they ushered in a wave of amazing and exceedingly influential bands. Starting in 1964 two years after the Beatles made their debut hit their popularity skyrocketed to the music centre of America as Rolling Stone States.
The term Beatlemania was coined to describe the phenomenal outburst of enthusiasm in England. But 1964 was the year of the Beatles’ American conquest, and it began with the January 25th appearance of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on Billboard’s Top Forty chart
What followed that year was an onslaught of throughly British bands invading the radio waves all around the globe, bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Animals and the beginning of Led Zeppelin a band by the name of The Yardbirds. The generation gap was throughly distinguished as a result and this version of Rock and Roll was evidently here to stay. What pushed the youth of America and the rest of the western world to embrace these gritty British men has been long discussed and attributed to everything from the shock of President J.F.K’s assassination in 1963 to all those damn hippies and their drugs but really what ever it was, times were a changing.
The Times They are a Changin
The other side of the music culture of the 60’s is the protest anthems from Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” which was famously covered by Jimi Hendrix in 1968 to Donovan’s “Universal Soldier” these protest song’s defined a generation who wanted not only an end to the Vietnam war but greater systematic and social change in the world. This link to music and cultural and social movement was unprecedented and almost unlike anything seen in previous generation as Jonathan Nathaniel Redman of Arkansas University
Anti-war music was the primary cultural manifestation of the movement and its ideas, and acted as the soundtrack for protest and other countercultural activities. It was created and altered within, and in response to, social movements and the ideas they generated, and was used by social movements to generate support and motivate action
One pill makes you Larger…
One aspect of the decade that is intrinsically tied to the music a youth culture of the time is drug use particularly LSD and weed psychedelic bands and artists such as Jefferson Airplane with their 1967 song “White Rabbit” is probably one of the most haunting and accurate portrayals of the feeling of oppression and need for blind escape from the restrictive society these young people were living in especially as it is sung by a woman, the throughly unique Grace Slick other examples are bands such a Pink Floyd, The doors, The Velvet Underground and artists like Frank Zappa even The Beatles took acid, as Ashley Parks of Texas Woman’s university says
The time period of the 1960s and 1970s was very unique. It marked an era called the “counter-culture movement.” This era was labeled as a time when people abandoned traditional, conservative ways of life for more expressive, rebellious, and non-conforming ways of living. During this time period, psychedelic drugs were on the rise.
The point….
So what did all these artists and groundbreaking counterculture musical expression lead to? Considering I barely touched the surface in this article these artists and many more lead the way for the glam rock, punk rock, new wave and goth subcultures of the next two decades and greatly influenced music and popular culture as we know it even today.
References and playlist
Psychedelic-Drugs-and-the-Fine-Arts-in-the-1960-and-1970 Ashley Parks Woman’s university Texas 2009
Music, Movement and Meaning: A Comparative Analysis of Cultural Narratives In Vietnam Era and Post-9/11 Anti-War Music, Jonathan Nathaniel Redman, University of Arkansas 2016
Playlist:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3VpDnefIWpVGPY95bdh26u?si=OuYFuX8XQoGvQb_eQrjweg
