When does a song become a classic?
 

A couple of days ago a co-worker in her mid-20s glanced through this playlist of mine:-

Killers – All These Things That I’ve Done
Surfjan Stevens - Chicago
TV on the Radio – Dancing Choose
Justice – DVNO
Lupe Fiasco – Daydreamin
Ms Dynamite – Dy-Na-Mi-Tee
Arctic Monkeys – Fake Tales of San Francisco
Flaming Lips – Fight Test
Doves - Pounding
WIlco – I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Richard Hawley – I Sleep Alone
White Stripes – In the Cold, Cold Night
Goldfrapp – Little Bird
Elbow – Mirrorball
Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)
Turin Brakes – Slack
Beck – Paper Tiger
Rufus Wainwright – Peach Tree
Pineapple Thief – Remember Us
Drive-By Truckers – Ronnie and Neil
LCD Soundsystem – Someone Great
Icarus Line – Spike Island
Animal Collective – Summertime Clothes
Nick Cave & Bad Seeds – There She Goes, My Beautiful World
Fleet Foxes – Your Protector
Mylo – Zenophile
Radiohead – 15 Step

Her comment - "Definitely some of the classics in there!".

So to the question in the topic subject - when does a song become a classic?

At my advanced age, I consider "classics" to be from the 60s to the 80s, possibly early 90s. After that, I tend to think of them as relatively new. Shouldn't a song earn the title "classic" based on its own longevity, rather than that of the listener?

Or is it simply a mark of quality, e.g. a great song from 2010 say could be an instant classic?

Suppose it depends on your definition of classic.

With apologies if this has been discussed previously.

A song can become an 'instant classic' if it really captures a moment in time - eg Three Lions in '96, the obvious ones like Band Aid etc. Those are few and far between, and not on your list.

To earn the classic title the traditional way, the song needs to endure, naturally, and either represent a band (Smells Like Teen Spirit), an era (Puple Haze), a sound (Bohemian Rhapsody), an emotion (Layla)..... It can be anything, but its a connection that sets it on a pedestal above its peers. Newer songs struggle, as time is what gives it its gravitas (that and most stuff nowadays is **** in comparison!), but its faesable if it really captures the heart for something new to be a classic.

Half those songs would struggle to be classics in that artists own back catelogue, not like its the big name songs you've been listening to

imma get so riled if you're being serious

In some ways, it's a pointless discussion. Songs that are known as 'classics' generally have been made so by sweetheart royalty deals signed decades ago which guarantees they appear on commercial radio playlists. They form a default brick wall of songs which get played to death and, in the cracks of that wall at specific timeslots, only then does new music get played which, again, are all subject to the deals signed by majors with radio stations to get them on playlists. Only on small community radio stations do playlists not apply in a blanket sense and some of the bigger ones do use them. It means guaranteed airplay according to the whims of the record companies.

The point; what are 'classic' songs has been largely manufactured. Play something often enough and it'll start to be regarded as a 'classic', regardless of artistic merit. Not bagging the system, it is what it is.

If he's talking about pop music, it's quite a popular school of thought in music circles that, even accounting for hipster bias, the quality of modern pop music is unusually poor, superficial and transitive.

I, personally, would argue that market and industry conditions have changed so much to render pop music comparison between now and even a decade ago pretty much moot. The comparison is harder the further back you go. Superficial sugary crap purely to play to the masses is absolutely nothing new. There's a lot more of it, absolutely, but there's also just more music in general to choose from. A lot of niche genres now would have been niche one-band genres in the 70's. It's a tough thing to quantify, though. Yes Stairway to Heaven was on the pop charts but, well, there was nowhere else for it to go. Would it even chart now? Doubt it. Got nothing to do with the quality of the song but how the industry gets songs on the radio/TV these days.

One thing I do remember seeing was an experiment a few years back where several examples of songs with artistic merit scored by the experimenters were sampled from multiple eras. The same songs had their sonic quality changed via equalisation, volume boosting, degradation of bitrates, multiple file formats, etc. to give various good and bad quality recordings of the songs. The songs were played to people, the quality of the recording was the experimental manipulation here.

They found that, broadly speaking, songs which were considered pap scored highly with the best quality recordings but the crap quality meant the scores dropped off heaps. The 'good' songs, their scores weren't affected much at all. Being cautious, you could say the quality of the song does matter to people but what people get exposed to on a regular basis now is what's vastly different.

The country of exposure matters too. My band's album got some great reviews and airplay in The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Poland. In the US, we got some college radio play and a couple of quick mentions elsewhere (e.g. http://www.goldminemag.com/blogs/pro...new-label-home), in OZ we got one review and absolutely zero interest from independent record companies so we had to sign to an American one just to get any distribution. It changes drastically too; every indie band with a glockenspiel/melodica gets killed to death on JJJ now whereas the same bands were playing to 5 people in the 90's. Conversely, every angsty garage band which would have dominated then is working their arses off to scrape together 20 people for a show now.

Can't help but feel a bit rejected....

In my opinion the concept of universally agreed "classics" no longer exists because there's such an enormous variety of popular music completely off the radar of the whole "record label and charts" system. In the past, however, people were comparatively force-fed music in a narrow stream which meant it was possible for good music to attain incredible status.

Yep, indeed. The notion of "classic" is now very much genre-dependent; and often knowledge of said 'classic' outside its genre is minimal.

I'm old. music is too hard now

call me maybe is already classic

Some absolute quality stuff in ctd's playlist, but personally then only one I'd have in consideration for "classic" status would be All These Things That I've Done. & this from someone who's choked back tears to I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

The former was one of those opening shots that immediately makes one sit up and think "woah, who the **** is this?" :wub: Some songs have such an immediacy and such a (wholly ironic, given the first quality) depth to stand up to repeat playings that they act like an adrenaline shot. Mind Over Money by Turin Brakes was another, as was Newborn by Elbow.

Neil Tennant (him out of the Pet Shop Boys) described what makes an immediate classic best, he bought the 12" version of Blue Monday with no great expectation because he'd quite liked Everything's Gone Green and when he played it he said it was so perfect and so close to what his own nascent band was trying to do that he went away and binned two album's worth of material because he knew nothing he'd written was in the same ballpark.

Classics are different, for different people though. I post a bit on Digital Spy, and it certainly gives me interesting views for music. Tends to be very pop orientated. I read a serious long post, not txt spk or anything about how the Spice Girls and S Club (FFS) were the classic groups now, because they were on the radio all the time, and were a decade or so old, so they've stood the test of time, and the likes of the Beatles and the Stones were invisible. People agreed with her.

Presumably she only listens to Heart and Heat FM, yet it's amazing how venerated these "bands" are in some places.

So I dunno really, and I can't judge coz I think Hersham Boys & Echo Beach are "classics".

I like pop now more than I ever have in the past, despite getting to the age where I should really have grown out of it. I'm not sure why. "Better" music just feels a bit pretentious to me lately.