The Early Years, 1903-1940 by Gary Giddins, reviewed by James Marcus. In fact, the oldie aesthetic explains the persistent appeal of a lot of classical music, particularly opera, as well as of popular songs. Though we associate the classical category with instrumental music, its prestige is a recent phenomenon, barely a hundred years old and fading fast. Even in the heyday of classical music, symphonies, usually in individual movements, were used to usher people in and out of the theater for concerts that featured operatic favorites. For most of musical history and in most societies music has meant song, with the essential pleasure of music coming from the way a singer, whether a Callas or a Crosby, brings words and music together.
Oldies are mini-operas.
Of course, this works only if you were somewhere between the ages of thirteen and twenty-five in 1964. The minimal appearance of classics is on the face of it harsh evidence of the irrelevance of the concert hall to American culture. Not surprisingly, when I showed the list to classical musicians, they were outraged. But I think the NPR 100 shows that many kinds of popular music now perform the functions once exclusively associated with art music. It may not be too late to start.