I’ve heard friends and music critics alike describe many an album as “timeless.” I more often than not agree with their selections; The Velvet Underground & Nico, Loveless and Endtroducing….. are just a few of the albums that still sound fresh when played today. But in the back of my mind, I fear that these albums just operate on a longer timeline, their relevancy decaying at an unnoticeable rate, but all the while still decaying.
Art is inherently of its time. To be inspired, an artist must see something external and process it in a way that resonates with their personal selves. Thus, art will always be a delicate mix of the artist’s personality and bits and pieces from their societies. When listening to Bach, you feel the essence of baroque Germany in every clang of harpsichord and stroke of violin.
These days, it’s tough to resonate with 18th century composers. It would be rare for a kid today to run to their room after a fight with their parents and throw on “Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565” to wash the angst away. While the work stands as a testament to the genius and mastery of Bach, its role as a historical artifact far outweighs its role as an accessible work.
What characteristics does it take for a song to outlast its time? Lyrics are, bar none, the biggest deciding factor when it comes to relevancy. If you rhyme about Twitter or Myspace in a song, you’ve essentially doomed your work to a life span of, maybe, twenty years tops. The Rae Sremmurd hooks of today are the wedding DJ’s tools of tomorrow.
In contrast, to extend the life of an album means touching something deep in the listener that resonates with most every human being. For most musicians, love is the go-to emotion. The Velvet Underground & Nico is full of hopeless romances, parties and heroin dazes. The lyrical mixture of beauty and depression is one of the reasons the album still stands on its own today.
Sonically, music can stand the test of time if it can achieve natural beauty. That universal feeling of appreciating a blooming flower, that deep soulful satisfaction of inhaling a full breath on the Lakeshore Path, is the ambiguous energy that “timeless” artists utilize in their works. Some of these feelings can even be described by science. Author Mario Livio regarded Mozart’s works as a blend of music and math in a piece with NPR, saying that his compositions are symmetrical “like a wallpaper.”
The basic human instinct to appreciate symmetry and ratios is why Mozart’s works still thrive today. In “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine, Kevin Shields’ fuzzy, thumping guitar is not just appealing in its chords. The rhythm outlined only by his strums is the same feeling you get in your heart when you know you’re looking at someone you love for the last time in a long while. It’s not the conscious mind that the music appeals to, but rather the instinct, the part of our brains we’re all too busy to address on a regular basis.
Sadly, whole genres are built on historical context and will one day succumb to the same ailments as music scenes before them. Punk and hip-hop are both founded on rebellion, and historically have been used to empower speech of the oppressed. It’s a lofty vision, but what if we live in a world one day where people are no longer oppressed on the basis of their backgrounds? Will Henry Rollins screaming over a D-Beat strike those citizens of utopia in the same way it did for the punks of the 90s?
Instruments have the unfortunate luck of also being wedded to history. A harpsichord in a song has the essence of being an antique. The rudimentary machines that originally produced avant-garde noise music were wiped away with the invention of faster and more complex computers. The rate at which electronic production is replacing physical instruments is alarming, and many don’t know how to deal with it. Having a fingerpicked guitar on a dance track sounds unbearably corny, a sign that the two methods of production don’t meld with ease.
There is no problem whatsoever with living in the now. Music can serve multiple purposes, and one of those purposes is being a voice of the youth and oppressed. Electronic music is grounded in a “Screw you, I’m going to be me” mentality, and that’s totally fine. But when those partiers, who are currently defining a scene and a generation, wake up one morning with no more energy, money or drugs to indulge in electronic mega-fests, they’ll abandon their music faster than humanity abandoned disco.
While EDM and hip-hop producers are measuring the pulse of contemporary America in the internet age, the artists who will be played far beyond now are away from the spotlight, measuring the pulse of human nature. The difference between Mozart and other artists of his time who composed works with Christian lyrics for church is the same difference between DJ Shadow and Metro Boomin. While both are incredibly talented artists, I believe only DJ Shadow’s work has the characteristics that will resonate with people long after he’s dead.
And after all is said and done with natural beauty and pseudo-philosophical ravings, I still have that same uneasy feeling as I did when I started writing this column, that even the albums I can rely on to always sound new and interesting will one day go the way of internet rappers and go-go boots. Maybe it’s because one day I know I’ll be in that same category, as old and lame as the music I’ll be ashamed to admit I indulged in.
But, as long as I still get that lump in my throat when I’m listening to “Femme Fatale” or that desire to drive through dimly-lit streets every time I put on “Midnight in a Perfect World,” I’ll take comfort in knowing that some classics still stand. At least for now.
