History OnceOriginalNowCommon / Music

** Their sound, and in particular The Edge's guitar tone, is also something that may be hard to appreciate today. Their atmospheric yet rhythmic style that made heavy use of effects like delay was pretty unique back in TheEighties, but after inspiring so many other mainstream artists and becoming a stable of contemporary worship and stock music, they might come off as just another generic-sounding radio rock band to many modern listeners.

** Their sound, and in particular The Edge's guitar tone, is also something that may be hard to appreciate today. Their atmospheric yet rhythmic style that made heavy use of effects like delay was pretty unique back in TheEighties, but after inspiring so many other mainstream artists and becoming a stable of contemporary worship and stock music, they might come off as just another bland-sounding radio rock band to many modern listeners.

** And it doesn't stop there. When listening to the Kyrie movement from the D minor requiem of Music/WolfgangAmadeusMozart, have in mind he snatched the main theme from Händel's "Messiah", and the musical style from Music/AntonioVivaldi. To make it worse, Bach made a fugue on the same theme. Vivaldi was reckoned quite innovative in his day, but he stole a chunk of musical tropes from Giovanni Gabrieli, present in Venice even hundred years before his time. And so on...

** Music/RichardWagner is one of the best examples of this in classical music/opera. There was nothing like what he was doing at the time. He pushed at the boundaries of [[{{Scales}} tonality]] in a way no composer had done before; he invented the {{leitmotif}} (basically, a "theme song" for a character, object or concept), the staple of just about every film score ever; his writings about the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (the "total art work" that combined music and drama) had a huge influence on the development of not only opera but also musical theater. But these days, with over a century of increasingly weirder and more boundary-pushing work inbetween, Wagner's work sounds increasingly hackneyed and overwrought. Plus, pretty much every stereotype of opera in general - from fat ladies in horned helmets (though they were winged in the original), to the idea of opera as super-complex and daunting (previously, opera was divided into either lighthearted rom-coms or hammy melodrama) - comes largely from his work.

* Likewise, {{Music/NWA}}'s ''Straight Outta Compton'' album has fallen hard on this trope. In the late '80s, the group's brutally honest depictions of life in the inner city were ''groundbreaking''. They quickly became one of the most controversial groups in all of music, even being largely responsible for the development of the "Parental Advisory" sticker. However, thanks to the glut of rappers that have aped its style and one-upped its "edginess", plus the rise in subgenres like horrorcore, ''Straight Outta Compton'' seems relatively tame (and in some cases even silly/campy.)[[note]]You could make a drinking game out of the number of times the word "ding-a-ling" is used. [[/note]]
** The ''amount'' of profanity still remains pretty daunting, but the way it's used sounds like a middle schooler who just learned to curse for the first time, while later [=MCs=] would incorporate swear words in a far more natural and mature manner.
* The 2 Live Crew, when ''Nasty As They Wannabe'' came out, the overly sexually explicit lyrics caused quite a shit-storm, to the point where it was, for a time, [[BannedInChina considered legally obscene in Florida]]. Today, it's pretty standard and probably wouldn't raise the eyebrows that it did back in the day.

* Both averted and invoked by Music/ThreeSixMafia depending on their phase of their career. Their crunk sound in the 2000s is extremely dated and embarrasing. But their early mixtapes are very ahead of their time, predicting trap and cloud rap by well over a decade to the point where younger listeners would be shocked to find out that their earliest output is ''thirty years old''.

** Their sound, and in particular The Edge's guitar tone, is also something that may be hard to appreciate today. Their atmospheric yet rhythmic style that made heavy use of effects like delay was quite unique back in TheEighties, but after inspiring so many other mainstream artists and becoming a stable of contemporary worship and stock music, they might come off as just another bland-sounding radio rock band to many modern listeners.

** Their sound, and in particular The Edge's guitar tone, is also something that may be hard to appreciate today. Their atmospheric yet rhythmic style that made heavy use of effects like delay was quite unique back in TheEighties, but after inspiring so many other mainstream artists and becoming a stable of contemporary worship and stock music, they might just come off an a generic radio rock band to many modern listeners.

** Their sound, and in particular The Edge's guitar tone, is also something that may be hard to appreciate today. Their atmospheric yet rhythmic style that made heavy use of effects like delay was very unique back in TheEighties, but after inspiring so many other mainstream artists and becoming a stable of contemporary worship and stock music, they might just come off an a generic radio rock band to many modern listeners.

** Their sound, and in particular The Edge's guitar tone, is also something that may be hard to appreciate today. Their atmospheric yet rhythmic style that made heavy use of effects like delay was pretty unique back in TheEighties, but after inspiring so many other mainstream artists and becoming a stable of contemporary worship and stock music, they might just come off an a generic radio rock band to many modern listeners.

* Music/DireStraits' music video for "Money for Nothing" from ''Music/{{Brothers in Arms|Album}}'' featured some of the first ever CGI animation. It seems incredibly primitive today, but it was considered groundbreaking in 1985. Its parent album is also a case of this trope, in that one of its biggest selling points was the fact that it was recorded and mastered entirely using digital technology; the main reasons why this trait became an example are detailed further below in the "Technology" section.
* Music/GangOfFour's trademark sound to some extent; starting around the TurnOfTheMillennium, a lot of post-punk/New Wave-influenced bands like Music/FranzFerdinand and Music/MaximoPark started using minimalist, choppy guitar riffs and stiff but funk-influenced rhythms in a similar manner. This actually led to a resurgence of interest in Gang Of Four (and eventually, a partial reunion), but it also can make their debut album ''Entertainment!'' seem less innovative than it was at the time. The key thing that still sets Gang Of Four apart is that these newer bands usually lack their overtly political lyrics and occasionally ''really'' harsh guitar feedback.

* "Twist And Shout," for the same reasons. Nowadays it may seem to be a played-out tune that has been used for decades in everything from films to TV shows. But the song made history: it became a staple of R&B courtesy of the Isley Brothers, and later of rock and roll via The Beatles[[note]]The song was actually first recorded by the group The Top Notes, though it was not a hit for them[[/note]]. When it was released, everyone raved about how it captured an attractive middle ground between R&B and doo-wop as well as foreshadowing Phil Spector's sound (in the case of the Isley Brothers' version) and how it demonstrated the rawness of the new British bands (in the case of The Beatles' version). Bert Berns's arrangement of the former was produced to show a then-struggling Spector how to do this right.

** The idea of a mature album from an established pop star which manages to be more introspective without sacrificing hit potential was a rarity at the time. (Music/GeorgeMichael's ''Older'' was a contemporary example), but it's completely expected nowadays, with {{Music/Lorde}}, Music/TaylorSwift and {{Music/Rihanna}} releasing some very acclaimed albums in the late 2010s and early 2020s.

* ''Selected Ambient Works 85-92'' by Music/AphexTwin 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.

* Wendy Carlos' album ''Switched-On Bach''. In the 60s, many music producers saw the Moog as nothing more than a sound effects unit, so recording a classical album entirely with a Moog synthesizer was a novel concept, with the album serving as a technical showcase for what the analog synthesizers can really do as musical instruments. Even more impressive was that the Moog was a monophonic synth (in other words, only one note can be played on the synth at a time), meaning each overlapping note had to be overdubbed on top of each other, a monumental task at the time with reel-to-reel technology. As the 70s went on and synthesizers became increasingly popular in pop music before overtaking electric guitar in popularity during the 80s (with synths themselves becoming more advanced), it's easy to see ''Switched-On Bach'''s synth tones as dated.

** Just about ''everything'' associated with Zeppelin suffers from this. They practically created rock music as we recognize it today, and - without context - it's hard to imagine how revolutionary their entire style was in the late '60s and early '70s. While many British (and even some American) rock bands had dabbled a bit in Celtic folk music before, none of them had ever fused that style with hard rock, which is done on "Stairway to Heaven," "Over the Hills and Far Away," etc. Zeppelin also more or less invented the [[LooksLikeJesus "Jesus hair"]] fashion aesthetic for rock bands, which was pretty standard from the 1970s to the '90s; previous rock musicians may have had long hair, but it had not been as flamboyantly styled. The [[EightiesHair "poodle hair"]] of '80s HairMetal certainly could not have existed without Led Zeppelin.

** Even the Beatles' early ''songwriting'' was unusual. As self-taught composers they used techniques considered odd or even "wrong" - for example beginning "I Want To Hold Your Hand" with the riff later used to transition out of the bridge. They also wrote some songs in the minor key, when pop music up to that point was strictly in the major key.
** The use of synthesizers in ''Music/AbbeyRoad''. They weren't the first band to use them, but they were the first to use them as a leading instrument as heard in songs like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Here Comes The Sun". They arguably popularized the use of synthesizers in pop music as the instrument would become a mainstay in genres like progressive rock and disco throughout the 70's.

* 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 and quaint. Even the lyrics aren't that explicit (devoid of expletives as they are).

* [[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/RushBand 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/GangOfFour's trademark sound to some extent: Starting around the TurnOfTheMillennium, a lot of post-punk/New Wave-influenced bands like Music/FranzFerdinand and Music/MaximoPark started using minimalist, choppy guitar riffs and stiff but funk-influenced rhythms in a similar manner. This actually led to a resurgence of interest in Gang Of Four (and eventually, a partial reunion), but it also can make their debut album ''Entertainment!'' seem less innovative than it was at the time. The key thing that still sets Gang Of Four apart is that these newer bands usually lack their overtly political lyrics and occasionally ''really'' harsh guitar feedback.

[[folder:Rock 'n' Roll]]

* Music/{{U2}}. When they first arrived, they were praised not only for being the first Irish band to hit it very big abroad, but also for the pure defiance in their lyrics. To have a group from Dublin speak so convincingly about issues that affected them was unheard of. Their music was like nothing else around. Years later they have become better known for Bono's preacherman antics while their political lyrics seem tame compared to bands like Music/RageAgainstTheMachine.
** The ''sound'' of U2, and in particular the guitar work of The Edge, eschewing solos and rock guitar conventions for an atmospheric/rhythmic, textural, chiming approach relying heavily on delay and effects was equally influential, but it's hard not to find an Edge-infuenced guitarist in a rock band (or generally U2-inspired group) since at least TheNineties. The sound has become a staple of contemporary worship music and stock video music, since it is quite easy for even a local band to reproduce.

* Music/TheBeatles: Back in the early 1960s, their haircuts were actually seen as ''subversive''. Men with longer hair were seen as very rebellious back then, as shorter haircuts were really the only acceptable ways men could wear their hair. Nowadays, hair with the same length as the Fab Four has become so normalized among men and boys that most people don't even really consider it that long anymore, not to mention the fact that longer styles are now much more common among men than they used to be.

* Music/TheBeatles: Back in the early 1960s, their haircuts were actually seen as ''subversive''. Men with long hair were simply seen as ''rebellious''. Looking back on it now, their hair doesn't even seem that outrageously ''long''.

[[folder: Gospel/Christian]]

* Music/LudwigVanBeethoven: ''The Mark Steel Lectures'' profile of Beethoven focused on this effect since his work is so old that it can't help but be merely another part of the classical repertoire. Beethoven was one of the first composers to write autobiographical tunes, one of the first to be independent of royal patronage, was unprecedentedly ''loud,'' and in behavior was the spiritual ancestor of the moody modern rock star. Mark imagined the same thing happening to today's pop music: (In an affected very posh BBC Radio 3 accent) "It's fascinating to note how the composer Mr. Music/FiftyCent, blends the pianoforte with lyrics as they begin: "I'm a cop killa, gonna shoot you up the ass." And also notes how quickly the effect takes hold. Even now the kids can't really understand what was so different about punk rockers saying they were pretty 'vacant'.

** The use of synthesizers in ''Music/AbbeyRoad''. They weren't the first band to use them, but they were the first to use them as a leading instrument as heard in songs like "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and "Here Come's The Sun". They arguably popularized the use of synthesizers in pop music as the instrument would become a mainstay in genres like progressive rock and disco throughout the 70's.

* Gibson guitars as a whole got hit with this ''hard''. Guitars like the Les Paul and the SG revolutionized the rock guitar scene when players like Music/EricClapton realized that Gibson's humbucking pickups combined with solid-body guitar designs lended themselves well to high distortion, which led to the development of Hard Rock, which itself paved the way for the metal genre. However these guitars, especially the Les Paul, had some [[DarthWiki/IdiotDesign major design problems.]] The Les Paul's single cuttaway design limited upper-fret access and the maple cap weighed the guitar down. Meanwhile, the SG has an issue with neck dive, and Gibson guitars as a whole have issues with tuning stability. As Gibson's patent for the humbucker expired in 1976, it opened the floodgates for other guitar manufacturers to make their own humbucker equipped guitars, and [[Music/VanHalen Eddie Van Halen]]'s Frankenstrat led to guitar manufacturers like Ibanez and Jackson producing Superstrat guitars, combining the guitar tones of a Gibson guitar with the ergonomical design of a Fender Stratocaster. While the Les Paul and SG retain a devout following in spite of their design flaws with the former remaining the quintessential "rock guitar" in the public conscious, there's hardly anything about these guitars that set them apart from their contemporaries anymore.

* Gibson guitars as a whole got hit with this ''hard''. Guitars like the Les Paul and the SG revolutionized the rock guitar scene when players like Music/EricClapton realized that Gibson's humbucking pickups combined with solid-body guitar designs lended themselves well to high distortion, which led to the development of Hard Rock, which itself paved the way for the metal genre. However these guitars, especially the Les Paul, had some [[DarthWiki/IdiotDesign major design problems.]] The Les Paul's single cuttaway design limited upper-fret access and the maple cap weighed the guitar down. Meanwhile, the SG has an issue with neck dive, and Gibson guitars as a whole have issues with tuning stability. As Gibson's patent for the humbucker expired in 1976, it opened the floodgates for other guitar manufacturers to make their own humbucker equipped guitars, and [[Music/VanHalen Eddie Van Halen]]'s Frankenstrat led to guitar manufacturers like Ibanez and Jackson producing Superstrat guitars, combining the guitar tones of a Gibson guitar with the ergonomical design of a Fender Stratocaster. Meanwhile Gibson guitars, while still being produced, have fallen out of favor with modern guitarists due to their aformentioned design flaws (that, to this day, they are trying to correct), rampant quality control issues, and their high price tags (considering the aformentioned quality control issues). Metal musicians adopted Ibanez as the go-to guitar for the genre with their Strat-esque bodies, higher-output pickups, and tremolo systems that were designed with tuning stability in mind. Meanwhile with the Alt Rock crowd, they're likely using humbucker-equipped Fender guitars (a move popularized by Music/{{Nirvana}}'s Music/KurtCobain, who played a Fender Jaguar with two humbuckers installed) due to the fact that they are more customizable and relatively inexpensive.

** By the time Music/PearlJam released ''Riot Act'', quite a few younger music fans accused the band of being a Music/{{Creed}} ripoff. (It helps that Creed singer Scott Stapp has a voice which sounds ''exactly'' like Eddie Vedder's.)

** Music/RichardWagner is one of the best examples of this in classical music/opera. There was nothing like what he was doing at the time. He pushed at the boundaries of tonality in a way no composer had done before; he invented the {{leitmotif}} (basically, a "theme song" for a character, object or concept), the staple of just about every film score ever; his writings about the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' (the "total art work" that combined music and drama) had a huge influence on the development of not only opera but also musical theater. But these days, with over a century of increasingly weirder and more boundary-pushing work inbetween, Wagner's work sounds increasingly hackneyed and overwrought. Plus, pretty much every stereotype of opera in general - from fat ladies in horned helmets (though they were winged in the original), to the idea of opera as super-complex and daunting (previously, opera was divided into either lighthearted rom-coms or hammy melodrama) - comes largely from his work.

** Even the Beatles' early ''songwriting'' was unusual. As self-taught composers they used techniques considered odd or even "wrong" - for example beginning "I Want To Hold Your Hand" with the riff later used to transition out of the bridge.

* The 2 Live Crew, when ''Nasty As They Wannabe'' came out, the overly sexually explicit lyrics caused quite a shit-storm, to the point where it was, for a time, [[BannedInBoston considered legally obscene in Florida]]. Today, it's pretty standard and probably wouldn't raise the eyebrows that it did back in the day.

** The 1939 recording of "Body and Soul" by Coleman Hawkins" is one of the most famous in jazz history because it represents the first example of a soloist improvising around a melody instead of actually playing it. In subsequent decades, jazz became all about the improvisation, so it's no longer unique.

* The Compact Disc, introduced in 1982, was a revolutionary breakthrough in TheEighties, offering a cleaner, clearer way of listening to music than the phonograph record formats of the previous sixty or seventy years, without the surface noise, tape hiss, or playback degradation endemic to vinyl and cassette. It was the first digital consumer media format available when everything else was analog. It brought, even in its 16-bit sound, more intimacy and detail, and captured the whole of the record, uninterrupted by record or cassette sides, or weird formatting like the eight-tracks of TheSeventies. It may have influenced the way new music is recorded, mixed, mastered and produced, as well, as music grew in complexity and digital precision to cater to CD listeners. The difference in sound quality of CD from analog formats was so substantial that one of the first things many people would do when they got their first CD player was to buy CD copies of favorite albums they already owned on vinyl or cassette, because the improvement in sound quality was that good. The 78-minute storage capabilities led to longer albums. It was also possible for the first time to easily skip to desired tracks. This was possible on a phonograph, and some really fancy cassette decks had seek features that kind of worked, but a CD could play a single track instantaneously, as well as repeat tracks or play them in a different order. Nowadays, these features of digital audio are the industry standard without an intermediary physical formats on downloads and streaming, and the novelty of it seems lost to newer generations.

* The Fender Stratocaster. When it came out in 1954, it was an extremely revolutionary guitar for its day. Most guitars on the market during the '40s and '50s had bulky archtop hollow bodies with hard edges, one or two pickups, and a Bigsby tremolo system. While it wasn't the first solid-body guitar (the Gibson Les Paul and the Fender Esquire and Telecaster all came before it years prior), it was the first guitar to have ''three'' pickups, a spring tremolo system, and a rounded-edge contoured body designed for the player's comfort. [[AllGuitarsAreStratocasters While it remains one of the most popular and recognizable electric guitars of all time,]] there have been many guitars since then that took design cues [[FollowTheLeader (when not outright copying it)]] from the Strat, and today it can be hard to see what made it so revolutionary in the first place.

* 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, the album sounds much more conventional.

** Jazz is full of stylistic pioneers like Charlie Parker (the central figure of the style known as BeBop) and Ornette Coleman (one of the first pioneers of Free Jazz) who were ''extremely'' controversial figures in their day. Modern listeners, especially if they're approaching them from the perspective of what came afterwards, often initally find them relatively tame. A full appreciation of just how radical they were calls for comparisons with what was mainstream at their time.