“Creative destruction is a process through which something new brings about the demise of whatever existed before it.”

By the mid-1960s, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, et al, had created a revolution in songwriting.  Though now we can see how tradition-based their songs really were, at the time most people heard only the differences from what came before.

The most influential ’60’s singers and bands mostly wrote their own songs, so artists of the day were inspired to do the same, thereby sending previous generations of ‘professional songwriters’ into eclipse.  Great songwriters, some of them geniuses, of the ‘First Golden Age’ of Songwriting were out of work and deemed irrelevant.

Understandably, at the time many observers (and songwriters) bemoaned what they perceived as the losses from the end of what we now call The Great American Songbook era.  Where now were the great melodies?  Where was the elegance, the sophistication of Cole Porter, of Rodgers & Hart (or Hammerstein)?

The answer to all those kinds of questions, we now know, is this: GONE. Never forgotten but, in the present tense, GONE.  A new breed had come in, taken over, and recreated popular music in their own image, one that we now call Rock ‘n Roll.  In the process, they destroyed, intentionally or not, what came before.

The unforgettable melodies of Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, etc. (which we still listen to and sing) would only be matched by a very few songwriters of the ‘rock era’  – Brian Wilson comes to mind.  Not that there weren’t many great melodies written in the second period.  There were.  But did the beautiful melodies flow like water, song after song, like they did from the greats of the previous era?  No.  And they were different kinds of melodies.

And did the ’60s-and-beyond songwriters ever match the clever, elegant, and witty word- and rhyme-play of Lorenz Hart, Cole Porter, Yip Harburg, Johnny Mercer, etc.?  Rarely, if ever.  It just didn’t suit the times.

However (and this is a big However), though the losses were great, there were great gains in the newer style of blues and r&b-based songwriting: rhythmic power; a new sonic palette, a move beyond (sometimes way beyond) the 32-bar form that had ruled popular music for decades; a great broadening of lyric topics and sometimes greater psychological depth in the lyrics.  Censorship – which had so restricted earlier songwriters (though the great ones made a virtue of that restriction) – collapsed, allowing for more realistic depictions of relationships and sexuality.

Where the previous era’s songs were described as “Ways to say ‘I love you’ in 32 bars'” (accurate overall, though with many exceptions), the post-mid-’60s songwriter could write about pretty much whatever they wanted, in more or less whatever way they wanted.

So… a beautiful musical ‘civilization’ was more or less destroyed, turned into nostalgia almost overnight.  Many of the most beautiful aspects of early-to-mid-20th Century songwriting really were gone; never to be topped; replaced by something equally beautiful but very different.

And, of course, this is not the end of the story.  Cut to the ’90s, cut to now.  People who grew up on the music of the ’60s, ’70s, & ’80s make the same complaints about songs now that their parents and grandparents did 50 years ago: “It’s noise!  It’s disgusting!  It’s all about sex!  Where are the melodies?!  You can’t understand the words!  All you hear is those loud drums!”  Only now we’re talking about Hip-Hop, which has replaced Rock at the center of the stage.

Even many people who grew up on ’90s Hip-Hop say, ‘Today’s music is crap!!”   And Hip-Hop itself  has been popular for over 20 years.  What’s next?

Rock ‘n Roll was scary to older people, in large part because it felt sexual and dangerous (it was).  Hip-Hop now scares formerly-young older people for the same reasons.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

And to me, the answer is the also the same: Yes, much is lost… We still have all the music, but those times (whichever past musical paradise we’re talking about) will never come back.  Guaranteed.  But much is gained too – if you’re willing to listen for it.

Most people brought up on Swing-era music, by hearing The Beatles and Motown everywhere, all the time; in delis, at weddings and funerals, came to love and appreciate that music too.  (And in fact, how many Swing-era Jazz lovers who at first saw Bebop as the destroyer of Jazz came to appreciate its beauty… and how it was Jazz?)

Many of the people who heard all Hip Hop-based music as ‘noise’ are starting to come around too.  As with any kind of unfamiliar music, to be able to appreciate it, you have to get used to listening to it.  If you grew up on a different style, it lacks the familiar signposts of beauty you’re used to.  But there are other kinds of beauty, if you can learn to hear them.

Just don’t expect them to be the same as what you grew up with.

Please let me know your thoughts in the Comments section below.