My long-held theory of a

My long-held theory of a twenty-year cycle in popular culture (especially music) is hardly original, but I can find surprisingly little about this phenomenon online (brief mentions here on music and here on fashion). Essentially, each decade reviles the trends of the previous ten years and celebrates the ten prior to that.

So, in the mid-1970s everything started looking backwards to the 50s. The musical Grease was the biggest example of this, but think also of the teddy-boy look of pub rock acts like Showaddywaddy and Darts and the endless 1950s compilation albums. In the 1980s, retro moved on to the 60s and many indie bands of the period were heavily influenced by the avant-garde aspects of the Velvet Underground and The Doors (The Jesus and Mary Chain and Echo and the Bunnymen particularly spring to mind). In the 1990s the influence of the 70s was a little more subtle, but flares made a huge comeback (OK, not so subtle), the charts seemed to be an endless parade of re-hashed 70s pop; in fashion and decor, the wonderful 70s brown, orange and olive green colours resurfaced. Now in 2002 we're seeing all kinds of reformations of 80s pop acts (too many to list) and the influence of 80s electro-pop.

What causes this? Well, the nature of fashion is one of constant upgrade, so a way of differentiating a new style is to say that it is nothing whatsoever like the one that preceded it. To keep ahead of the pack, the more adventurous style-setters will eventually pick the previous out-of-fashion style and recycle it. Initially this happens as a left-field ironic statement, but it slowly moves towards the mainstream. Very regular, very predictable.

I'm not sure what to make of the current re-hashing of 80s electro-pop, it's a dilemma. This is the first cycle where I was actually in on the original sources. I cut my musical teeth on bands like early Eurythmics, Human League, Heaven 17 and Japan. I rarely listen to them these days, but I have fond memories. However, I'm also firmly against any kind of retro-music, because I believe that the most interesting stuff always looks to the future.

Tony Wilson has an alternative theory for popular music. He points to 1951 (the coining of the term 'rock and roll'), 1964 (The Beatles), 1977 (punk) and 1990 (Madchester) to support the notion of a thirteen-year cycle. This is admittedly a selective listing (it could be argued that rock and roll only really kicked off in 1954, for example), but nevertheless it's intriguing. If he's right, popular music should start to get very interesting sometime next year.

Posted by Hg on Tuesday 05 March 2002 at 15:27.
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