I heard Metallica on the classic rock station in like 2002. Weird to think about. I wonder how muddied the lines will get.
My roommate is reading Chuck Klosterman's latest book he has an essay in it about time travel and he has an interesting related footnote:
"Before Fox plays“Johnny B. Goode,” he tells his audience “This is an oldie—well, this is an oldie from where I come from.” Chuck Berry recorded “Johnny B. Goode” in 1958; Back to the Future was made in 1985, so the gap is twenty-four years. That’s almost the same amount of time. Yet nobody would ever refer to Back to the Future as an “oldie,” even if he or she were born in the 1990s. What seems to be happening is a dramatic increase in cultural memory: As culture accelerates, the distance between historical events feels smaller. The gap between 2010 and 2000 will seem far less than the gap between 1980 and 1970, which already seemed far less than the gap between 1960 and 1950. This, I suppose, is society’s own version of time travel (assuming the trend continues for eternity)."
full essay hereI don't disagree with that opinion, but I also think there are some other factors. There is not as great of a gap in audio and video quality between the decades between say 1980 and today, and the 1950 - 1980. This makes older music still listenable to ears grown up with current technology.
And two, my opinion, which seems to be more vocally shared even by teenagers today, is that today's music sucks. With Youtube and mp3, they can find older music they can connect to which doesn't suck as much, but is older.