Streisand, Dylan, Wonder, Jagger, and So Much More

When Does Popular Music Become Classic?

Barbra Streisand’s ‘Live at the Bon Soir’ Debuts in Top Ten on Album Sales Chart

Billboard, November 17, 2022

Barbra Streisand in the Top Ten on Billboard’s list is not new -- her first album, released in 1963, reached #8. The songs on her latest album, including “Cry Me a River” and “Happy Days Are Here Again,” were recorded live at the Bon Soir club in November 1962, her first set under a new contract with Columbia Records. This is the album’s first release.

What has become clear over the years is that music generally called “popular” has a shelf life that is astounding, comparable to books by Salinger, Roth, Morrison, and further back, Hemingway and Faulkner.

At what point can this music be correctly considered “classic”?

How long did it take for Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, and Puccini to enter the pantheon of eternal genius?

With data, analysis, and judgment, experts can address that question. My view is not formal. It is based on having gone from my teenage years in the mid-1950s to grandfatherhood listening to these performers and discovering that they have real fans among listeners born after the millennium.

“Who is that?” I asked my eighteen-year-old grandson, Ben, about the song he was listening to as we sat over tacos in Eugene, Oregon, on a recent weekend. Bill Withers was the answer. Withers started recording songs in 1967 and stopped in about 1985.

Here is a personal and incomplete list of musicians whose work has endured for as much as sixty years and counting. They are active, semi-active, retired, and RIP. It doesn’t include jazz and crooners (Lady Gaga’s duets with Tony Bennett of the last few years are brilliant), because that is a list unto its own.

Aside from Streisand, there is Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, the Beatles, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, the Motown groups, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Paul Simon, Ray Charles, Donna Summer, Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Cher, Linda Ronstadt, Laura Nyro, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bono, Springsteen, and lest we forget, Elvis.

When I read about the Streisand album, I wondered how many of us in 1962 were listening to popular music from 1902? I certainly was not.

So why has music become so enduring and even, dare I say, revered?

The way it can be heard is one major reason. In 1962, there was AM radio, the beginning of FM stations There were 78s, 45s for singles, and 33s for albums. There was Ed Sullivan and rock-and-roll shows at places like the Brooklyn Paramount. There was American Bandstand with Dick Clark, the British invasion, the Nashville stars, Detroit, folk music, and R&B (mainly Black). In New York, there was Tin Pan Alley and the Brill Building.

Decades later, radio -- now on devices of one kind or another -- is still a major factor, but it includes stations, streamers, and SiriusXM. Every one of us is a disc jockey, choosing what to play, when, for how long, and where. There are still discs and a revival of vinyl. We can pay by the song, the album, or the month. Concerts and tours are a huge business, from Taylor Swift and the catastrophe at Ticketmaster to Joni Mitchell’s surprise return to Newport, which became a sensation. Billy Joel’s monthly appearances at Madison Square Garden have gone on for years and still sell out.

Not to mention TikTok, which, to be honest, I have yet to try.

Rap is a powerful and relatively recent genre. Will these performers and songs be around in sixty years? Someone else will have to answer that question.

So, what is my conclusion about why popular music is so much more than merely momentarily popular?

(1) The music is great, melodic, accessible, and connects with listeners of all kinds -- uplifting, mood-setting, and memorable.

(2) It is available in so many different ways that do not irritate. Muzak is largely gone, except for dreary customer service playlists. When I was in a doctor’s office recently for a minor procedure, the nurse asked what music I’d like. Bossa Nova was my answer. “Alexa,” she said, “play Bossa Nova.”

As it has been forever, music is one of humanity’s creative gifts, and over the centuries it has evolved with one constant, the pleasures that come from encountering it. May that always be so.

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I sent this piece to my friend Matty Goldberg. He is a bona fide expert on music, whereas I am merely a fan. Here are his thoughts:

A topic near to my heart!

You make two points:

Music from the ’60s and many of the artists of that era is/are very much still with us.

Technology, and specifically how we can find music, has a great deal to do with its sustained popularity.

Yes, technology is part of the reason. But there has to be more to it than that. There is, if you will, some kind of alchemy to those Beatles songs, some magic to the great Motown tunes, etc. Whatever passed for popular music in 1902 plainly did not have that. My sons have absorbed a lot of the music I love, along with rap and other more recent stuff. There’s an amazing amount of common ground and shared tastes.

There is even more to be said about the multitude of ways music can be experienced. A year ago, I sold most of my vinyl collection: 2,500 LPs collected over forty-five years. As much as I loved that music, those albums and artists and a great deal more are all available to me through Spotify, YouTube and a number of other outlets.

The days of dropping a needle on a track are fading