Music was better in the 1970s than it is now

"When looking at originality, we find that the 70's was a time where musics where unique and when different genres where formed. What makes the 70's music better than ours is the fact that during those periods, a revolution concerning the variety of music occurred. This revolution created a situation in which music during these times showed noting other than share originality, creative imagination, as well as the incorporation of emotion into your music. The fact is no matter how much we try, every music we create seem to be similar with other musics." I really question the notion that the basis for these styles of music lay in the 1970s. Every style of music from the 70s sounds like something that came earlier, or a mix and match of things that came earlier. Punk bands sound a lot like garage rock and surf rock bands in some cases, and bubblegum pop in others. The heavy blues sound of groups like Led Zeppelin was literally taken from electric Chicago blues folks, like Howlin' Wolf. Progressive rock groups like Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer were literally borrowing song structures from art music of the baroque era. The German krautrock groups like CAN and Neu! were essentially popularizing avant-garde sounds that had been pioneered by avant-garde composers like Iannis Xenakis back in the 1950s, and free jazz pioneers like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman in the 1960s. No matter how they tried, musicians in the 1970s were simply tying together sounds they had been exposed to. We are indebted to the 1970s because their music and the music they influenced is in the catalogue of sounds we can draw from, just as they were indebted to those who had come before them. We are no more indebted to the 1970s than we are to the 1950s or the 1990s. "Meaning: This topic deals with the message that music itself sends out to the public Every music is rated based on its message. During the 70's not only was there a wide variety of music as well as music types, but there was also the incorporation of emotion within your music. [...] In our current day, the message broadcast ed in music itself is so limited that a majority of our music deals with "love" or how had ones life was. An examination of the top ten music of 2011, shows us that not only do these message fail to broadcast the morals of life or the importance of been a good citizen, but they also broad cast a wide variety of violence and bad morals." The problem with this sentiment is that you're looking specifically at top 10 music. Looking up a random year, 1974, we see that the top 5 hits were: 1. The Way We Were - Barbara Streisand 2. Time in a Bottle - Jim Croce 3. (I've Been Searchin') for So Long - Chicago 4. I Honestly Love You - Olivia Newton-John 5. Haven't Got Time for the Pain - Carly Simon (http://www.mbgtop40.com...) Here's a sample of the #1 song's lyrics: "If we had the chance to do it all again tell me would we? Could we? Memories, may be beautiful and yet what's too painful to remember we simply choose to forget So it's the laughter we will remember whenever we remember the way we were." Clearly, a love song. I can't imagine the lyrics to "I Honestly Love You" are much more enlightened. Certainly, there were politically conscious songwriters in the 70s. For example, the band Crass advocated for animal rights. And of course, there were plenty of politically active folk musicians, though they were often drawing heavily from music people like Woody Guthrie had done in the 1950s and earlier. Today there is still plenty of politically conscious music. The entire straight edge genre of hardcore punk emphasizes sobriety and the dangers of substance abuse. Bands like Atari Teenage Riot and Rage Against the Machine have become icons of political action. My opponent also mentions the emphasis on violence in modern music, but I'd like to point out that the violent imagery utilized by these bands often exists to make a political point itself. A genre that often gets criticized for its emphasis on violent imagery is gangsta rap, but let's examine one of the pioneering songs of this genre, "Sound of da Police" by KRS-One: "The overseer rode around the plantation The officer is off patroling all the nation The overseer could stop you what you're doing The officer will pull you over just when he's pursuing The overseer had the right to get ill And if you fought back, the overseer had the right to kill The officer has the right to arrest And if you fight back they put a hole in your chest!" As you can see, the violent imagery in this song is used to illustrate the hardships of inner city life, to address the issue of police brutality, and to address racial inequality. Most of the politically conscious music made in the 1970s was not in the top 10, and the same goes for 2011. The problem with the list of song comparisons my opponent has made is that they are poorly matched. Every song shown from 2011 draws from R&B-influenced pop music, whereas his sampling of music from the 1970s draws from everything from new wave to folk-rock. Let's take music with greater comparisons. Instead of comparing new wave group The Knack to R&B artist Usher, let's compare them to the very popular post-punk influenced group Interpol, a band that often focuses on alienation and depression. Instead of comparing sensitive singer-songwriter Don McLean to dance music producers LMFAO, let's compare him to Tom Morello's folk project, The Nightwatchman, which focuses on economic hard times and political struggles. Instead of comparing peace icon John Lennon to reggae-influenced pop diva Rhianna, let's compare him to Peter Doherty of The Libertines and Babyshambles, who writes about his observations of youth culture and life in England. And let's compare pop-rapper Drake to one of the original pop-rap groups of the 1970s, the Sugarhill Gang, who sang in their top 10 hit of 1979, "Rapper's Delight": "I said a hip hop the hippie the hippie to the hip hip hop, a you don't stop the rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat" "The fact that the 70's was the pinochle of music variation itself, simply shows that it presents excitement that can't be found today. Every music presented in the 70's seems to take root from basis that haven't been explored before them [...] Predictable lyrics also adds to the blandness-if you will-of the music." The idea that the 1970s are a pinnacle of music (pinochle is a card game, I think) seems completely subjective. The music of the 1970s ties together what came before; it does not explore completely new territory, because that's not how imagination works. Anything you come up with is a synthesis of what you've been exposed to. You can't pull anything out of thin air. If we have bland taste for borrowing certain elements from their music, a flawed notion in itself as it assumes that everything made in this day and age is just a rehashing, then I would say that by that standard people in the 1970s must have had bland taste themselves, given the fact that they were listening to what was essentially blues music played by bands like Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, garage rock played by the bands of the punk movement, etc. As for bland lyrics, see the Sugarhill Gang lyrics above. "This statement simply supports my point that we copy so much from the 70's that we tend to lack originality. The fact that there was such a small number for each genre simply adds to the excitement." The small number of bands simply means that fewer people were creating, which means it had less creative input than today. "The 70's not only drew their* inspiration from unusual sources" Many drew from popular blues musicians. Bands today still draw from the avant-garde, as well as recent developments in art music, like chance music. Today we have drone - very unusual stuff, I must say. Today some rock groups play with pure noise. Thank you for debating me!