A Revelation

I had an epiphany the other day. Not one of those life-changing, re-evaluate the value of your existence kind of things. More along the lines of a random observation of something quite trivial that nonetheless immediately struck me as true.

You know how disco music is instantly recognizable as "disco"? There is just something about the drum and bass lines that scream the mid-70s. Even if you've never heard the song before and know nothing about it, you'd instantly know when it was from within a margin of error of 2-3 years. Similarly, when you hear those horrible synthesizers masquerading as real instruments you instantly know that it's from the 80s. And with both of those, there is always this question (at least in my mind) of "did people ever really think this sounded good?" Don't get me wrong, I enjoy 80s pop songs, but it's almost all on a level akin to bad movie enjoyment. It's like, "wow this sounds so ridiculous that it makes me smile so I like listening to it." But even though I lived through it (the 80s at least) it's still hard for me to fathom that there was a time where everybody took that sound seriously. A time when million-dollar artists and producers spent hours in the studio looking to perfect their sound and said "yes, this is what I'm going for. This will announce to the world that I can make good, high quality music."

So what's my point? Everything that I've just said above - that's auto-tune in 5 years. We will look back on these dance/pop songs and will instantly know "oh, that's a song from 2008-2012" and that will instantly be followed by "why did we ever think that sounded good? Why did we think that making a human voice sound like a robot stuck in a paint mixer was a good idea?"

So that's my pointless epiphany. If only I could find a way to make money off of it.