Ted Gioia: prediction

Transcript context

…As you well know, if you compare American popular music in 1963 to American popular music in 1968, over a period of five years, it sounds really quite completely different. And you can tell, upon hearing music from either year, which year it’s from. That doesn’t seem to be the case today. Is there still real innovation in American popular music? Well, what happened in the 1960s is an anomaly. I don’t think it will ever happen again. And what happened is — you must give credit to the Beatles because everyone was imitating the Beatles, and they changed their sounds every six months, every year. People always tell me, “Ted, do you like the highbrow music and the lowbrow music?” I say, “No, no. The real conflict is not between high and low. The real challenge in music is the formula, where formula emerges, and then everybody imitates the formula.” And that’s what deadens your musical culture, the repetition of the formula. And the Beatles, for a period of five, six years, made sure there was no formula. This is amazing. It never happened before. It probably will never happen again. If you tried to imitate the Beatles in 1964, ’65, you soon were out of date. For example, the Monkees tried to do exactly that. The Monkees imitated a certain Beatles sound. But by the time the first episode was on TV, the Beatles were already off to something else. I do think you had this amazing period for five, six years where there was no set formula in the music business. It was an amazing time. I think we should enjoy it for what it was, but I don’t think we should expect it to come back. What’s the most subtle Beatles song?…

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