When the Mainstream was Sophisticated

Nowadays, the charts is dictated by the tastes of adolescent schoolgirls. The reason is simple. They are the only people who buy singles.
The charts is, by definition, a graveyard of tack, of songs to dance to at weddings, music to play in McDonalds, stuff that grates on your ears if you are over twenty.

Twas not ever thus



Before the three evil gnomes, Stock, Aitken, and Waterman emerged, you could actually hear sophisticated tracks in the charts, as opposed to buried somewhere on a Coldplay album.
The mainstream was still relatively cutting edge, moving forward, evolving, making use of new technology, until it fractured.
From the nineties onwards, new technology became the preserve of the DJ, The Mainstream either rejected it (The Britpop reaction), or remained stuck in a time warp (Steps, S-Club Seven, all that drivel).

These tracks come from the days when mainstream music still oozed originality and sophistication.

When music was still an art form, not just something played in the background.



People wonder why I hold this period as the high art period of musical development. I think it was. If the sixties was the classical times of modern music, the early eighties was the Rennaisance.



They just don't do tracks like these now.