History OnceOriginalNowCommon / Music

[[folder:General Stuff]]
* [[RockersSmashGuitars Breaking guitars (or any other instrument).]] In the 1960s, breaking your instruments on stage was seen as the epitome of badassness, rebellion, and edginess. Today, breaking guitars is so overdone it's a rock n roll cliche, not to mention very expensive and a great way to piss off your endorsers.
** There is an exception for Music/YoshikiHayashi and his drum breaks, both because his actions actually weren't cliche in UsefulNotes/{{Japan}} when he first started doing it, and because he managed to successfully invoke the RuleOfCool enough that it's actually a part of his show.
* The "shock" factor in older music tends to suffer from this a lot as time goes on. For instance, Music/ScreaminJayHawkins (who would be one of the biggest sources of inspiration for Music/AliceCooper, who in turn was the source of inspiration for just about everyone else) ''terrified'' people with his stage performances and the tone of his music. Nowadays, the most likely reaction from footage of Jay strutting around in a witch doctor get-up is laughter. This is largely from an audience that has been so "shocked" over the years that many musicians say that the only way anyone these days could be genuinely shocked is if the authorities let someone commit suicide on-stage.
** Part of the problem is that Hawkins's most famous song: "I Put a Spell on You," has been covered (and sanitized) so many times, most famously by ''The Alan Price Set'' and most notoriously by Music/BetteMidler for the movie ''Film/HocusPocus.'' You need to go back and hear Hawkins's original: Radically minimalist, and with [[HellIsThatNoise random screams and growls that are guaranteed to terrify anyone under the age of seven.]]
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* In 1980, Music/{{Prince}} released ''Dirty Mind'', widely considered to be his first classic album. The musical combination of synthpop and New Wave with funk, known as "TheMinneapolisSound," was a revelation at the time and inspired virtually all R&B acts that would follow in the decade. Similarly, the lyrical content was very explicit for its time, attracting significant controversy. Nowadays, it might seem as if the music is just "generic 80s pop rock," and the lyrical content doesn't even seem particularly racy compared to what would come later, the still-shocking "Sister" excluded.

* Blending R&B-style singing with hip-hop beats is considered standard today, but this fusion was initially its own subgenre in the late 80's-early 90's, known as NewJackSwing. The style was pioneered on Music/JanetJackson's 1986 breakthrough album ''Music/{{Control}}'' in an attempt to give her an edgier sound to set her apart from her [[Music/TheJacksonFive famous]] [[Music/MichaelJackson family]], and many urban music producers and artists took the inspiration and ran with it. By the early 90's, new jack swing became the dominant mainstream R&B styling, and by the mid 90's, R&B artists were regularly collaborating with rappers and hip-hop producers to the point that hip-hop and R&B became inextricably linked. In fact, ''traditional'' R&B is now considered the sub-genre, given its own category at the Grammys in 1999.

* Blending R&B-style singing with hip-hop beats is considered standard today, but this fusion was initially its own subgenre in the late 80's-early 90's, known as NewJackSwing. The style was pioneered on Music/JanetJackson's 1986 breakthrough album ''Music/{{Control}}'' in an attempt to give her an edgier sound to set her apart from her [[Music/TheJacksonFive famous]] [[Music/MichaelJackson family]], and many urban music producers and artists took the inspiration and ran with it. By the early 90's, new jack swing became the dominant mainstream R&B genre, and by the mid 90's, R&B artists were regularly collaborating with rappers and hip-hop producers to the point that hip-hop and R&B became inextricably linked. In fact, ''traditional'' R&B is now considered the sub-genre, given its own category at the Grammys in 1999.

* Blending R&B-style singing with hip-hop beats is considered standard today, but this fusion was initially its own subgenre in the late 80's-early 90's, known as NewJackSwing. The style was pioneered on Music/JanetJackson's 1986 breakthrough album ''Music/{{Control}}'' in an attempt to give her an edgier sound to set her apart from her [[Music/TheJacksonFive famous]] [[Music/MichaelJackson family]], and many urban music producers and artists took the inspiration and ran with it. By the early 90's, new jack swing became the dominant mainstream R&B genre, and by the mid 90's, R&B singers were regularly collaborating with rappers and hip-hop producers to the point that hip-hop and R&B became inextricably linked. In fact, ''traditional'' R&B is now considered the sub-genre, given its own category at the Grammys in 1999.

* Blending R&B-style singing with hip-hop beats is considered standard today, but this fusion was initially its own subgenre in the late 80's-early 90's, known as NewJackSwing. The style was pioneered on Music/JanetJackson's 1986 breakthrough album ''Music/{{Control}}'' in an attempt to give her an edgier sound to set her apart from her [[Music/TheJackson5 famous]] [[Music/MichaelJackson family]], and many urban music producers and artists took the inspiration and ran with it. By the early 90's, new jack swing became the dominant mainstream R&B genre, and by the mid 90's, R&B singers were regularly collaborating with rappers and hip-hop producers to the point that hip-hop and R&B became inextricably linked. In fact, ''traditional'' R&B is now considered the sub-genre, given its own category at the Grammys in 1999.

* In 1980, Music/{{Prince}} released ''Dirty Mind'', widely considered to be his first classic album. The musical combination of synthpop and New Wave with funk was a revelation at the time and inspired virtually all R&B acts that would follow in the decade. Similarly, the lyrical content was very explicit for its time, attracting significant controversy. Nowadays, it might seem as if the music is just "generic 80s pop rock", and the lyrical content doesn't even seem particularly racy compared to what would come later, the still-shocking "Sister" excluded.

* [[Music/VanHalen Eddie Van Halen.]] In his day, he was ''the'' rock guitarist. Every rock guitarist wanted to be him, both in playing style and in tone. The "brown sound" (a common colloquialism for his guitar tone) was the tone that everyone wanted, and his playing style set the stage for shred guitar (which was later expanded upon by the likes of Yngwie Malmsteen and his peers). His technique wasn't actually new. Tapping had been around since at least the 1950s, while a lot of the foundations for shred guitar had been established by the likes of [[Music/ScorpionsBand Uli Jon Roth,]] [[Music/DeepPurple Ritchie Blackmore,]] [[Music/{{Rush}} Alex Lifeson,]] [[Music/GenesisBand Steve Hackett,]] Jan Akkerman, Al Di Meola, and various others, he was the first to take what they were doing and create what could be called "guitar pyrotechnics" out of it. While he has probably shaped rock guitar more than anyone not named Jimi Hendrix, there have been so many other guitarists who have outdone him technically and creatively since then that newer listeners will probably wonder just what about him is such a big deal.

* Music/ElvisPresley: During the 1950s he was considered to be the coolest, sexiest and baddest rock star in existence. The sideburns, the sneer, and especially the swiveling hips were so fresh and provocative that one ''Ed Sullivan Show'' appearance only showed him from the waist up because his leg movements were considered to be too risqué for network TV. Parents feared he would corrupt the youth of America! Flash forward a few decades and Elvis has become nothing more than a national American icon, one too square to be hip. His once sexy dancing now looks innocent when compared to what music video-era artists get away with, and his music comes off as tame love ballads or corny easy listening sing-a-long songs compared to the aggressive electric guitar gods of later decades. As well, younger audiences associate Elvis mostly with the obese and campy Las Vegas clown who looked like a caricature of himself, so it's hard for them to imagine how suave and cool he once was.

* The Music/VelvetUnderground: ''Music/TheVelvetUndergroundAndNico'' and ''Music/WhiteLightWhiteHeat'' got terrible reviews at the time. People felt the music was too noisy and experimental, and the outrageous lyrics about heroin, male prostitution, transvestism, and S&M didn't help. Nowadays, they actually sound quite pleasant. Even the lyrics aren't that explicit (devoid of expletives as they are).

* Music/TheKinks. Known in America mostly for "You Really Got Me" and "Lola", at the time they were huge in the UK, pioneering not only guitar hooks, but intelligent songwriting that would eventually lead to {{Britpop}}. (Not to mention their riff for "Picture Book" getting ripped off by Green Day.) But the fact that they were [[BannedInChina banned from the Americas for most of the 1960s]] obscured this.

* Music/EricClapton. Although he was never as experimental as his contemporary Jimi Hendrix, Clapton was a major influence on all rock after 1966. He almost single-handedly resurrected the Gibson Les Paul, which remains one of the most ubiquitous guitar designs today. [[https://web.archive.org/web/20111025194114/https://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/Features/Get%20That%20Tone_%20Blues%20Breakers/ Not only that, he created (or popularized) rock guitar as we know it.]] His playing during this era inspired the "Clapton is God" graffiti. Hendrix himself was an admirer. Today, although he's still a skilled guitarist, Clapton is mostly known for the light pop he recorded from TheSeventies onward. His watered-down acoustic version of "Layla" is arguably more familiar to younger generations than the original (and with some justification, as it was presented in a much more pop-friendly and thus memorable format). He influenced just as many guitarists as Hendrix (usually both are cited), so his playing is often considered tired and clichéd. But he used to be kind of cool.

* Memphis power pop band Music/BigStar's debut album ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_1_Record #1 Record]]'' drew inspiration from Music/TheBeatles and Music/TheKinks. It now sounds incredibly conventional but was astonishing around its 1972 release.

* In 1980, Music{{Prince}} released ''Dirty Mind'', widely considered to be his first classic album. The musical combination of synthpop and New Wave with funk was a revelation at the time and inspired virtually all R&B acts that would follow in the decade. Similarly, the lyrical content was very explicit for its time, attracting significant controversy. Nowadays, it might seem as if the music is just "generic 80s pop rock", and the lyrical content doesn't even seem particularly racy compared to what would come later, the still-shocking "Sister" excluded.

* In an era where nearly anyone with a digital audio workstation like LMMS, a midi they downloaded off the internet and a halfway decent singing voice can put up a comedic parody of popular music on Website/YouTube, the appeal of Music/WeirdAlYankovic and similar musicians who were parodists by trade can be lost on a younger generation.

* In an era where nearly anyone with a halfway decent singing voice and a copy of Garage Band can put up a comedic parody of popular music on Website/YouTube, the appeal of Music/WeirdAlYankovic and similar musicians who were parodists by trade can be lost on a younger generation.

** HoYay fanservice. In TheEighties and until the middle of TheNineties, the YaoiFangirl was ''not'' seen as a target market for VisualKei (much less as specifically ''existing''), and quite a few of the artists engaging in most of the HoYay ''were'' actual bisexual or gay men using the stage as a way to express themselves and their sexuality in a culture and world that rejected it. The idea caught on as a [[FollowTheLeader bandwagon trend]] for {{fanservice}} directed at the fangirls ''only'' once some straight bandmen noticed how much the fangirls liked it and with it becoming somewhat socially acceptable (at least within the subculture) to be a YaoiFangirl. [[UnfortunateImplications Unfortunately]] this led to straight men using it as fanservice, and once some other fans found out about the {{Kayfabe}}, some fans insisting that no VK artist could actually be gay or bi for real.

* Music/YngwieMalmsteen, while still respected by a lot of shred players, is generally viewed as an irritating, tuneless, showoff who never grew out of the "cram in as many notes as possible" phase that most shredders go through and whose [[JerkAss obnoxious, repellent behavior]] is probably even more famous than his music. That being said, he created almost all of the tropes of shred guitar; while he definitely wasn't the one who laid the groundwork for it (and he'll admit as much), he ''was'' the one who took what his influences were doing and brought it all UpToEleven. With plenty of more focused, song-oriented peers like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Tony [=MacAlpine=], and Vinnie Moore, however, his proclivity for gratuitous overplaying began to grow tiresome, and with a new wave of modern guitar icons like Music/JeffLoomis, Music/ChristianMuenzner, [[Music/ScarSymmetry Per Nilsson]], [[Music/{{Revocation}} Dave Davidson]], and [[Music/AnimalsAsLeaders Tosin Abasi]], younger listeners will probably wonder why he's still seen as a big deal.

* Music/TheRollingStones: In the 1960s the Beatles won the charm and trust of parents, because they had a lovable image. But The Stones frightened them! They were basically the first band with a "bad boy" image. Riots broke out during their concerts, they wore their hair longer than the Beatles, and they were the first to be arrested for offenses like marijuana possession. For people who basically know them as a bunch of wrinkley-faced seniors, this may be hard to imagine.

* [[Music/VanHalen Eddie Van Halen.]] In his day, he was ''the'' rock guitarist. Every rock guitarist wanted to be him, both in playing style and in tone. The "brown sound" (a common colloquialism for his guitar tone) was the tone that everyone wanted, and his playing style set the stage for shred guitar (which was later expanded upon by the likes of Yngwie Malmsteen and his peers). His technique wasn't actually new. Tapping had been around since at least the 1950s, while a lot of the foundations for shred guitar had been established by the likes of [[Music/{{Scorpions}} Uli Jon Roth,]] [[Music/DeepPurple Ritchie Blackmore,]] [[Music/{{Rush}} Alex Lifeson,]] [[Music/{{Genesis|Band}} Steve Hackett,]] Jan Akkerman, Al Di Meola, and various others, he was the first to take what they were doing and create what could be called "guitar pyrotechnics" out of it. While he has probably shaped rock guitar more than anyone not named Jimi Hendrix, there have been so many other guitarists who have outdone him technically and creatively since then that newer listeners will probably wonder just what about him is such a big deal.

* On that note, Music/LadyGaga appears to have fallen victim to this trope. When her debut album ''The Fame'' was released in 2008, she was seen as a renaissance for dance music, taking the blueprint established by Music/{{Madonna}} and updating it for the new millennium while still having her own unique style. Today, with so many dance pop artists having risen to (pun not intended) fame in the wake of its success, Lady Gaga has become a bit of punch line among music fans. Her [[LargeHam stage antics]] and [[MoralGuardians constant media controversy]] certainly don't help matters.

* [[Music/VanHalen Eddie Van Halen.]] In his day, he was ''the'' rock guitarist. Every rock guitarist wanted to be him, both in playing style and in tone. The "brown sound" (a common colloquialism for his guitar tone) was the tone that everyone wanted, and his playing style set the stage for shred guitar (which was later expanded upon by the likes of Yngwie Malmsteen and his peers). His technique wasn't actually new. Tapping had been around since at least the 1950s, while a lot of the foundations for shred guitar had been established by the likes of [[Music/{{Scorpions}} Uli Jon Roth,]] [[Music/DeepPurple Ritchie Blackmore,]] [[Music/{{Rush}} Alex Lifeson,]] [[Music/{{Genesis}} Steve Hackett,]] Jan Akkerman, Al Di Meola, and various others, he was the first to take what they were doing and create what could be called "guitar pyrotechnics" out of it. While he has probably shaped rock guitar more than anyone not named Jimi Hendrix, there have been so many other guitarists who have outdone him technically and creatively since then that newer listeners will probably wonder just what about him is such a big deal.

* While Music/JenniferLopez's music has remained consistently popular for decades, it can be difficult for modern audiences to appreciate why she was considered an important and influential sex symbol in her heyday--and it can be ''really'' hard for some people to believe that she was once known for having a big butt. Lopez has been physically fit throughout most of her life, and she's fairly skinny by modern standards--but she had a noticeably curvaceous figure compared to most celebrities in the 1990s, when the so-called [[HollywoodThin "heroin chic"]] trend of the 1980s was still in recent memory. In the 2010s, wide hips and round buttocks came back into prominence as a "mainstream" female beauty standard, and the pressure to be skinny was largely supplanted by pressure to be curvy. Compared to more recent sex symbols like Music/NickiMinaj, Music/MeganTheeStallion, and Creator/KimKardashian, her figure may not seem particularly remarkable.

* The Tascam Portastudio. It was a groundbreaking piece of tech that finally allowed amateur musicians to record their music at an acceptable sound quality without the assistance of a professional recording studio. It accepted standard Type II cassettes and was an all-in-one solution for recording, mixing, and mastering home recordings. While it was mainly used for demo recordings, some professionally released albums like the aforementioned ''Nebraska'' by Bruce Springsteen were recorded on a Portastudio. However, the Portastudio was rendered obsolete when computers became more capable of recording high-quality audio, and these days it's so easy to record your own music with just your computer and a decent microphone that it's hard to see what was the big deal with the Portastudio in the first place. It's now so easy to create professional-quality recordings at home that many professional recording studios have closed.
** In the late 2010s, it became possible to record a polished, mainstream #1 hit in your bedroom, as Music/BillieEilish has demonstrated, and have it sound better than studio recordings from 20 years ago.

* Multi-track recording used to be something only reserved for the finest studios, but by the late 60s, it was widely available. Nowadays, you can record an infinite number of digital tracks on your laptop!

* Larry Graham. When he first came out, his bass style of slapping and popping was new and refreshing. Now people (bass players excluded) complain it's boring and flashy.

* ''Selected Ambient Works 85-92'' was absolutely unlike anything at the time. No album had ever been so textured and atmospheric while still being danceable. Nowadays, the "ethereal" sound has taken over virtually every genre.

* Music/JenniferLopez has an interesting relation with this. While her music hasn't aged particularly badly, Lopez's reputation as a sex symbol did suffer. Not because of her age, but because of changing norms. Lopez is actually very fit even in middle age, but the idea that her ass in particular was ever "absurdly" large only makes sense in an era of TheNineties that was just waking up from the [[HollywoodThin "heroin chic"]] trend of the 1980s. Towards the 2010s and 2020s, numerous singers with much larger butts such as Music/NickiMinaj and Music/MeganTheeStallion and socialites such as Creator/KimKardashian reached mainstream recognition as sex symbols. Not to mention the glut of models/influencers with large hips that have dominated Instagram since its launch in 2010.

* The lyrics of early Music/{{Eminem}} are still shocking and witty, but it is difficult to listen to ''Music/TheSlimShadyLP'' and understand why it was that he was subjected to such an intense [[TheNewRockAndRoll moral panic]] at the time his music came out. While his lyrics are violent, they are absurd, delivered with cartoon sound effects and PlayedForLaughs, when a lot of contemporary GangstaRap had similar themes taken seriously, and a lot of contemporary {{Horrorcore}} was just as satirical but far more graphic and violent than Eminem's Chuck Jones-inspired version. Part of the reason is that Eminem used a SubvertedKidsShow aesthetic and [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids was promoted heavily on channels popular with children]], like MTV (at a time when he was the only non-TeenPop thing on it), when previous controversial hip-hop artists had mostly been popular with older audiences. Part of it was simply that Eminem was the first hip-hop artist with violent lyrics who had been able to dominate the white pop mainstream. As a result, a lot of his critics at the time were white suburbanites who had not been exposed to hip-hop before, had no real understanding of what hip-hop was (other than a scary thing done by black people), and did not understand that its use of violent language in BoastfulRap is not meant as a literal death threat against the audience - a level of media illiteracy that would be pretty much impossible to have nowadays. This can be supported by the fact that, while "The Real Slim Shady" was, in 2000, considered so filthy that radio stations got fined for playing the Clean version, many of Eminem's later songs, like "Shake That", "Stay Wide Awake" and "Vegas", are ''unspeakably disgusting'' in a way that makes "The Real Slim Shady" look like children's music, but attracted little attention (beyond tutting over the [[BlackComedyRape joke about raping]] Music/IggyAzalea in "Vegas").