What are "Classics" of this decade?

Community Hub 🗨 Just Chatting
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I’ve been around for a long time. Each decade of time has its own ‘classics’ as far as music goes.
Unlike most of my fellow Boomers, I’ve never been stuck in one era or in one genre.

Example. I still know friends who are stuck in the 50’s and the 60s. Personally I pretty much embraced the classics from multiple decades from multiple genres. Each decade was rich in music that I now consider ‘classics.’

I left the US in 2009 and haven’t been back. And I seemed to have cut myself off from whatever passed as "popular music’ in the West from that time on. So I’m sort of interested. In 10 or 20 years from now, what will people look back on during the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s and call “Classics” from those times?

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:joy: :rofl: :joy:
And that’s been in my head all day now :dizzy_face: bad Brian bad

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Must confess I don’t really listen to contemporary music except when I have no choice but one song that has hit home for me is George Ezra’s “Green Green Grass”
Michael :notes:

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And there I thought you were going to post Dance Monkey

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Don’t forget Baby shark. :joy:

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Oooo craperdecrapcrap…WHY ? WHY Eddie ???

My last post just before closing and I have that @$BEEeeP%$BEeEP crocodile in my head right now,
whyyyyy :sob: :boom::crocodile: :boom:

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I think it got pretty cluttered after the nineties with the rise of digital music and the decline of physical music and MTV.

There are like dozens of subcultures (electronic, punk, rock, metal, indie, pop, hiphop, trap, edm, idm etc.).

So it’s hard to find these non-genre-specific classics that really spoke to as wide as audiences as older classics.

As radio and social media still existed there was and still is a pop culture, but it’s mostly pop and some indie youth stuff that often gets incorporated into the pop culture as fast as there is any sign of it being profitable

I always tried to be open-minded, but I seldom really saw a subculture blossom into pop culture without it being diluted or oversaturated in the last decades.

But one probably should find most songs on some best-of lists if you want them to be more or less objectively classified as classics.
I’ll try it as an exercise and pick the songs for each decade I agree most on after googling some best-of-decades lists, maybe add some personal favorites that come to mind:

2000s:

  • Gorillaz, ‘Clint Eastwood’
  • Amy Winehouse, ‘Rehab’
  • Aaliyah, ‘Try Again’
  • LCD Soundsystem, ‘Daft Punk is Playing at My House
  • Queens of the Stone Age, ‘No One Knows’
  • Green Day, ‘American Idiot’
  • The White Stripes, ‘Seven Nation Army’
  • OutKast, ‘Ms. Jackson’
  • Christina Aguilera, ‘Beautiful’
  • Daft Punk, ‘One More Time’
  • Britney Spears, ‘Toxic’
  • Rihanna, ‘Umbrella’
  • Gnarls Barkley, ‘Crazy’

2010s:

  • Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk”
  • Muse “Hysteria”
  • Adele, “Someone Like You”
  • DJ Snake feat. Lil Jon, “Turn Down for What”
  • Carly Rae Jepsen, “Call Me Maybe”
  • Sia, “Chandelier”
  • Luis Fonsi feat. Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber, “Despacito”
  • Daft Punk, “Get Lucky”
  • Lil Nas X, “Old Town Road”
  • Lorde, “Royals”
  • Kendrick Lamar, “Alright”

As said these are just the ones that I vibe with or think had a deep impact on culture from the two Rolling Stones list of best 100 songs of these decades. As said there are surely dozens of songs with way more staying power in their respective niche as long as it still has fans to rediscover it.

I’d say it’s too early for the 2020s to tell how it goes forward with music culture and what will be remembered. Looking at the top 100 of the 2020s on Wiki I also seem to have missed the last 3 years of pop culture as nothing really stood out that I can imagine having any staying power in these charts. As said, most number 1s today seem standard celebrity popstars from the 2010s just churning out even more soulless stuff than I’m used to. As said sometimes in retrospect it’s easier to tell.

I always like to be open-minded and try to see if “I’m hip with what the kids listen to”, but I also rather use my listening time to find the music I like in the vast sea of old and new music, which is normally not found on any hit lists.

Alright hope my ramblings made some sense, interesting topic. Let’s see if there are some users here who may know some better songs that have some staying power from these decades.

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After somewhat of deliberation… I guess… anything that Dua Lipa now puts out…

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Dua Lipa

Guess she does a lot right.

My one electronic music producer friend also mentioned her as the only thing in pop that seems to be really well produced and written.

I’m still skeptical there is enough profile to be memorable culture-wise, we’ll see.

What do you guys think about these savants and musically flashy young guys like Jacob Collier and Polyphia?

They seem talented and it feels like everybody in the “sophisticated” music scene seems to think they will write the next masterpiece. But they seem just too nerdy and niche to really get into that classic status anytime soon. Maybe someday…

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Man, I’m old. I didn’t recognize one of those songs.

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Not necessarily. Better. This means you weren’t exposed to pop radio like I was for about 7 years at my workplace. It was good for a few songs when they played the first time.

But oh boy I was about to mentally strangle Ed Sheeran after the gazillionth time he sings about how he is impressed with the shape of her body…

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Lol. 2000s, I know each one of them… 2010s… eh… sum… because they are in my classic rock radio repertoire for some reason (Adele, Sia, Lorde, Daft Punk).

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Have heard of Polyphia. Never listened to them, though…

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I like the one with the Steve Vai feature:

They have interesting signature guitars they use in this song at some points. Some thin nylon classical (sorry not quite sure about the terminology) Ibanez. Could be nice for people who like classical guitar sound but want that slim neck and more “shreddy” shape for playability.

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Terribly sorry for doing that to you Rogier! That one really gets inside of your head and melts the brain :slightly_frowning_face:

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My radio station is always playing the popular songs from at least 10 years ago. It makes me wonder if new songs are still released by popular bands and why the radio doesn’t play them.

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This decade is only 3yo, so really hard to say which ones are classics! Previous decade would be a much fair question :grin: I guess Eddie and Black Summer are bangers for me from this decade, and from previous many songs from Shinedown - these guys seem to mostly keep the rock genre alive.

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I bet you know a couple, just not by the title. I know I actually recognize a couple titles, and probably have heard more. I have to say I probably could name more titles by Beethoven and other “ancient” composers than the “new classical”. :sweat_smile:

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I think it’s subjective. In general I think the artist or his/her future “classic” tune has to transcend genres/tastes and appeal to a very broad range of folks. There are songs from the past that I can name right now that EVERYONE knows, from younger to older - probably because there was, and still is, something very appealing/catchy about those tunes. Then there are songs that only certain people will know because that’s the type of music they liked to listen to as a youngster or that’s what their parents played ALL of the time. Parents pass on these classics to their children through osmosis…LOL! My pa played Sam Cooke and others relentlessly, so I know every dang song, like or not…LOL!

My music tastes are far from eclectic, but to be honest, I get an earache from a lot of the stuff I hear today…LOL! If you want to know what folks love now a days, go to a Karaoke bar. The young folks (future old folks) define what the “classics” of the next decades will be, AND, there are “old” ladies like me in there singing “our” classics and keeping the old school alive… haha!

Thank you for the thought provoking topic. I found it to be very interesting.

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