A decade is a long time

[mousepod]

I remember having a conversation with Heather a while back about "millennial fashion". She explained to me (in a more articulate way than I'm about to say) that while every new fashion movement draws from the past, the trends that occur around the turn of the century are invariably more of a "borrow" from very recent past as well as other times in recent memory. I guess this doesn't surprise me - whenever there's a "landmark" date, we tend to spend a lot of time looking backwards.

This "instant replay" makes it easier for people like iSm to argue that there's not much to distinguish the past couple of decades, and for CP to associate Pop Tarts with the 80s. You're both right, of course.

For someone who's spent more than 20 years around the music business, I can honestly say that most "new music" in any decade is retro crap, and that the cream sometimes takes a long time to rise to the top, or at least for the masses to recognize it. Sure, to some ears, the Grunge scene sounds like generic 70s rock, but I'll bet that 46 years ago, there was an iSm complaining that Dylan was totally indistinguishable from the folk that came before him and that The Beatles were just ripping off American R&B. And he would have been right.