The Music of Our Generations

Big boom boxes on their shoulders, recording music off other people’s cassettes, and guys making mixtapes for the girl they love defined the way teens approached music in the 1980s.
Like the 1980s, music is constantly surrounding students at Highland. Whether it is headphones, earbuds, speakers, or even the one-minute bell soundtrack that urges people to class.
But the way music is consumed has dramatically changed.
Music has been around for thousands of years, but its popularity didn’t begin to speed up until new technologies were developed to make music more accessible and high quality. Society went from using cassette tapes and CDs, to high-speed streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music.
Ted Sierer, a psychology teacher at Highland, grew up with many different forms and types of musical technology. One of the first music technologies that he remembers was the 8-track tape.
The 8-track tape was a big musical device that was popular in the 1970s. Unlike records, listeners could jump around and continually listen to music. After the 8-track tape, music technology improved in the form of cassettes.
“By the time the ‘70s ended, 8-tracks were kind of gone, and cassettes became more popular because cassettes sounded better,” Sierer said. “You could fast forward and rewind and all that stuff.”
Cassette tapes allowed people to have portable music and to personalize what they listen to. Cassette tapes are similar to how cell phones are portable music devices and how each phone has individualized music libraries and apps. According to The New York Public Library, cassette tapes created the gateway to the music technology that people have today.
“We thought you couldn’t get any better than cassettes,” Sierer said. “When they came out, we thought, ‘this was the be all end all.’ You know, we could just pop them in and listen. When CDs came out, I was hesitant to go out and leave the cassettes.”
Although cassettes tapes were a big breakthrough, but came with risk: it wasn’t uncommon for a cassette tape to get stuck in the stereo systems, which could result in the tape ripping and the cassette being useless.
CDs were the next big technological development in music. They refined the sound of music and are still popular to this day. They created the ability for people to skip to the exact song they wanted, rather than listening to the exact spot and having to time the cassette correctly.
Alongside developing technologically, music has developed socially, creating different environments for human interaction and communication.
Sierer explained that now people can quickly share and send songs to their friends, but when he was in high school, they had to find the cassette and meet up to share the song.
One specific example of musical culture during Sierer’s high school and college years was making a mixtape. When a boy liked a girl, one of the most romantic gestures was to make her a mixtape. Sierer ended up making a mixtape for his girlfriend, who later became his wife.
“You’d have to get your blank cassette tape, and then you’d have to push record, play it at the same time, and then it would record over. Then you’d have to stop one and stop the other,” Sierer said. “It was a production, so it really showed how much you loved that person.”
Music back in the ‘90s could be used to show love, but it could also be used for making lots of money. CD clubs like Columbia House and the BMG Music Service sold different CDs very cheaply. A common Columbia House deal was eight CDs for one penny.
Although these deals seemed ideal, there were many strange rules and expectations. If people did not follow the rules, they would have to pay full price for every CD. These clubs became bankrupt in 2015 with the emergence of different streaming surfaces.
With the emergence of streaming services, new music and genres have spread rapidly. Before streaming services, listeners could only discover new music if their friend had a cassette or if it was on the radio. The radio was a big part of listening to music, especially if they wanted to hear their favorite song.
“You’d have to sit and just listen and hope that sometimes they’d played it (your favorite song),” Sierer said. “You’d have to call the radio station and request songs. You can still request songs today in radio, but that was really the only way to hear your favorite song then.”
Besides musical technological and social aspects of music, genres of music have also evolved and changed since then. When Sierer was in high school, there was new wave music, rock, and heavy metal rock. Some of these genres are still being listened to today, but alongside them is major pop music and the resurgence of rap.
“The best album is Def Leppard’s Hysteria. There were so many number one hits off that album,” Sierer said.
The development of new music and new musical technologies has continued since before the 1900s. As different technologies like Artificial Intelligence progress, music will adapt to work with this technology and could potentially improve alongside it.
But one thing will never change: teens will always love music, and it will partly define their generation. The only question is how the next generation will listen to their favorite songs.