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Songs that sound older or newer than they are

Started by George White, June 29, 2017, 02:42:52 PM

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George White


Baby I Love You from the Ramones (which sounds as if could have come from 1970, the Phil Spector production, it being a cover of a 60s Spector song, the orchestration)
Fern Kinney's 70s disco Together We Are Beautiful, which was beaten by the Jam's GoingUnderground, yet the two do not sound like they are contemporaries.

The work of Raymond Scott -electronic clubbing music that sounds incredibly modern, from the 60s by the man who did many of the Looney Tunes backing music jingles.
The Guess Who is 90s indie music but from twenty years earlier.
Roy Wood's Wizzard stuff was 60s pop-homages to the likes of Phil Spector done in the 70s

The Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun". Recorded in 1983, it successfully masqueraded as a nineties indie slab, getting lots of attention on radio, TV and soundtracks during the latter decade.

Loverboy'ds Working for the Weekend sounds late-80s but is from 1981.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLiL-tRxhkE UK Eurovision entry from 2010, by Pete Waterman and Mike Stock. I honestly believe that Pete took the money from the BBC, with Mike, dusted down an old abandoned track from someone like Sonia or Brother Beyond, sent it off, and while he should have been writing a new song, he was actually playing with trains.

It doesn't sound like some 80s tribute a la Daft Punk, it sounds like a genuinely 80s song, being written by the "Hit Man" himself, and to be honest is an 80s hangover released in 2010.
Pulse and Thunder by Day V Lately, a house tune created for a Yellow Pages ad in 2011 that has had people convinced they heard it before in c.1992.


SteveDave

Any Velvet Underground song when it was played on Sounds Of The Sixties.

Hearing "Venus In Furs" inbetween Peter and Gordon and The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown (or whoever) made it sound like it was made last week.

holyzombiejesus

Tommy James & The Shondells' Crimson & Clover. Sounds so much more 'modern' than 1968. I think it still sounds incredibly fresh today.

Phil_A

Quote from: George White on June 29, 2017, 02:42:52 PM
The Violent Femmes' "Blister in the Sun". Recorded in 1983, it successfully masqueraded as a nineties indie slab, getting lots of attention on radio, TV and soundtracks during the latter decade.


Similarly, the Meat Puppets' "Meat Puppets II", recorded the same year, sounds like something that could've come out a decade later at the height of grunge. It's not surprising they enjoyed a resurge in interest after getting the Nirvana seal of approval.

purlieu

Bowie's Ashes to Ashes always sounds contemporary to me. The bass is a bit of its time maybe, but the rest of the track never dates for me. The rest of Scary Monsters sounds very 1980, which makes it even stranger.

Brundle-Fly

Opening track Prelude by The Millenium (1968) sounds like a downbeat track recorded thirty years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXZnW_wzROY

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on June 29, 2017, 06:01:16 PM
Opening track Prelude by The Millenium (1968) sounds like a downbeat track recorded thirty years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXZnW_wzROY

I thought of posting that but I think your/ my thinking is inexorably linked to the DJ Shadow/ Future Pilot tracks that sampled it.

lazyhour

Bonnie & Clyde by Mr Gainsbourg predicts downtempo/triphop stuff about 25 years earlier.


Dead Soon

Song of a Baker by Small Faces sounds like mid-1990's Britpop. It was indeed covered by Ocean Colour Scene and there was very little to suggest that it wasn't an original work if you weren't in the know.


Dr Syntax Head

BJM's halcyon period really did sound like lost 60s music.

purlieu

This Heat's 24 Track Loop channelling the breakbeat mangling of late '90s IDM twenty years in advance.

Avril Lavigne

Pretty much every track from Lilys' album 'Better Can't Make Your Life Better' always sounded more '60s to me than any other post-'60s band I heard trying to capture that sound.  They're best known for Nanny In Manhattan from the same album.

Cambridge California:
https://youtu.be/DQrJq8Xdb_4

Can't Make Your Life Better:
https://youtu.be/5h0cNbbd3Ag

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on June 29, 2017, 07:47:03 PM
I thought of posting that but I think your/ my thinking is inexorably linked to the DJ Shadow/ Future Pilot tracks that sampled it.


You're probably right there.

Ok, also from 1968. This sounds very much of that era but quite possibly the very first mash-up ever?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUV-WghBifc

Mr Banlon


Brundle-Fly


Sin Agog

Like that This Heat track, Emmanuelle Parrenin's Topaze from 1977 is gottdamned dark Trip-Hop decades too early.  Plus it was coming from an airy-fairy folk singer not too dissimilar from your Pentangle and the like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dwaFOF8FFo

Billy

Quote from: George White on June 29, 2017, 02:42:52 PM
Pulse and Thunder by Day V Lately, a house tune created for a Yellow Pages ad in 2011 that has had people convinced they heard it before in c.1992.

Bloody hell, they've done a brilliant job with that. Even sonically it sounds pretty perfect for '92.

Toddla T's Take It Back manages to sound older and newer than it is. Released in 2011, it obviously throwbacks to the early 90s, but in a way that didn't start to become fashionable until around 2013-4. The result was it flopped and missed the top 40, but released twenty years earlier - or three years later - it would have been huge I reckon.

Both Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl and Paolo Nutini's Pencil Full Of Lead I thought were old songs from decades ago that had been reissued or something, particularly the latter with its claymation video that reminded me of the one for Jackie Wilson's Reet Petite.

Dance music wise, Lil Louis's French Kiss (1989) feels like the 90s arriving early, Mr Oizo's Flat Beat (1999) feels like noughties electro arriving early, and - with a huge quality drop - David Guetta's Sexy Chick (2009) is a 2010s dancepop track released just at the end of the noughties, although all of these aren't that impressive as they only basically sound 'newer' than they are by a few months.

Does it count that when I first heard Weezer's Buddy Holly, in 2003, I thought it was a new song? Despite the intentionally retro video...

greenman

The Lafayette Afro Rock Band's Darkest Light always sounded like a more modern take on 70's jazz funk to me with the looped sax line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piF-ObPhQPc


Funcrusher

Miles Davis 'Rated X' sounds like drum and bass but was recorded in the early 70's. Manuel Gottsching's 'E2 E4' is house music before it's time.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: Funcrusher on June 30, 2017, 12:54:10 PM
Miles Davis 'Rated X' sounds like drum and bass but was recorded in the early 70's. Manuel Gottsching's 'E2 E4' is house music before it's time.

There's some reggae that sounds a lot like drum and bass as well.

Charanjit Singh made music that sounded a lot like acid house the best part of a decade before acid house became a thing.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

I'm not sure when it sounds like it should be from, but it's bizarre to think that The Stooges debut was released in 1969.

greenman

Obviously a great deal of Krautrock but if I had to pick just one track...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9NARUOhbeA

poodlefaker

Eno's Third Uncle sounds like it was made at some point between 1978 and 1985, not 1974

Another one for Down Tempo stable. Recorded in 1967 Donovan's - Get Thy Bearings. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyxfCQG1t4w

doppelkorn

Early hip hop track Beat Bop sounds like it could be from the start of this decade.

Brundle-Fly

Cromagnon - Caledonia from 1969 sounds ten years previous with its radio samples and industrial noise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8jOhqOsouM

kngen

This Rich Kids track always surprises me when it pops up as - and i think it's the percussion - it sounds like a Brooklyn hipster two-piece with a drum machine trying to sound like a new wave band rather than the genuine article themselves. Written by Midge 'King of the Hipsters' Ure, too.

Also, the guitar sound at the start of 20th Century Boy is far heavier and crushing than a teen heartthrob band from 1973 has any right to be dishing out.

DrGreggles

Quote from: purlieu on June 29, 2017, 05:34:14 PM
Bowie's Ashes to Ashes always sounds contemporary to me. The bass is a bit of its time maybe, but the rest of the track never dates for me. The rest of Scary Monsters sounds very 1980, which makes it even stranger.

I always think that some of the Bowie/Eno stuff still sounds pretty modern.

If you played 'All Saints' to someone who'd never heard it before, without telling them who it was, and asked them to guess which year it was from, I'd guess that "1977" wouldn't be the top answer our survey said.

Gulftastic

Donna Summer's 'I Fell Love' is an obvious choice. Still sounds fresh as fuck today.

And 'Everything Little Thing She Does Is Magic' by The Police always sounds like it should have come out about three years later than it's 1981 release.