That is definitely a lasting trend. I see it everywhere:
- Film soundtracks are now littered with oldies, my son discovered Redbone (hardly a name band to fleeting listeners of even their era of music) via Guardians of the Galaxy. I saw Cruella with Emma Stone a few days ago (a hoot of a film!), only to hear Hush by you-know-who. Now that film was a period piece playing in the Swinging 60ies in London (where Hush did zilch, it was in the US charts only, but never mind), but what do Redbone's Come And Get Your Love and Looking Glass' Brandy (You're A Fine Girl) have to do with a sci fi comic flick?
The use of older music is exacerbated by the necessity of many modern movies having to play in a cell-phone free past - otherwise many suspense scripts don't work. You can only show broken/lost cell phones or areas without reception that many times and be credible. And if you set a film in the past, it is only logical to use the music from that past as well, especially if lasting recordings of that past music are easily available in good quality. Think of Gone With The Wind, when that movie was filmed, there was simply no period-correct canned music from the Antebellum South available/existing, all you had was written music to recreate it.
- A friend and I listened to the new Rival Sons and Wild Honey CDs in the car on a longer ride on Friday and it occurred to both of us that bands whose members weren't even born when Led Zep were in their heyday almost 50 years ago use all their energy and skill to sonically get as close to Led Zep as they can. Now everyone has an initial template to work from, but did The Beatles actually go out of their way to sound like The Everly Brothers (no doubt a major influence on them) AND STAY THAT WAY?
- Depending on where you start counting, we've now had pop/rock music rule the airwaves (I use the term to include streaming and such) for 50 to 60 years at least. That is a huge body of work and it is omnipresent via media, it of course also includes tens of thousands great songs. And it grows every day. That is quite something new music is up against.
- I don't subscribe to the point of view that new music is automatically worse than old stuff. It does have a harder time to get itself heard though. Which is ironic as we all now live in an age where mass communication of not only music is as easy as never before in history.
One thing I do think, however, is that the streaming of individual songs has killed the album as a music-cultural concept. I guess albums like Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper started off the album culture, no longer viewing an LP as just a collection of previous and future singles plus some fillers. That survived through the CD era (with playing time becoming longer and longer), but stopped with the advent of streaming. But songs that are not anchored in memorable albums are often destined for oblivion. Hardly anyone I know - old or young - still listens to albums all the way through, individuality is determined by your playlist of individual songs, not by albums.
