Talk:Timeline of trends in music

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This page could use a better name, but this is what I came up with. -- Merphant

"Musical timeline", perhaps? *shrug* I think it's fine, myself, but hey, I'm not much for aesthetics of any sort and prefer plain, descriptive names over what sounds more "professional" or what have you. nknight 08:43 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)

If you were searching for this index what would you search for? "List music year" presumably, so how about List of music events by year. I know this is more of a mouthful, but maybe do it as a redirect? -- SGBailey 10:53 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)
Good thought, I'd go for it. nknight 02:27 Dec 25, 2002 (UTC)

I'm wondering if this should be extended back somewhat further. As it is, we're leaving out the likes of Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach. nknight 08:43 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)

If it goes back further, do it in decades till about 1500 then in centuries! -- SGBailey 10:53 Dec 24, 2002 (UTC)


Beethoven had his first chart success in 1743, with a little poptastic number called Sonata number 1....
The sign of genius: having your first success twenty seven years before you're born ;-) --Camembert

216.234.195.244, you have made some great contributions to the music section on wikipedia. However, some of us (including myself) are a little uneasy with the "year in music" pages (1974 in music and the like) you've been creating. This might get out of control if someone starts adding "year in art", "year in computer science", "year in Pokemon collecting"... (you get my point).


Also, we surely don't need a separate birthday list for musicians, now do we? All the contents of your "year in music" pages would fit nicely under the appropriate year. You can still make "subsections" with different headers (== and ===).

Again, we all do appreciate your work on wikipedia a lot! But, please consider putting the "year in music" content on the year page. Thanks, Magnus Manske 22:38 Dec 25, 2002 (UTC)

This isn't directed to me, but I thought I'd give my 2 cents. Personally, I think we *need* xxxx in film, xxxx in literature, etc. The year pages themselves shouldn't be too cluttered with extra nonsense, in my opinion. For example, it would be more fitting in my mind to include the birthday for the bassist for Soundgarden on the year in music pages and not necessarily on the year pages themselves, because it's not a real important event overall - only to music. (No offense to mr. or mrs. bass player). In other words, I think the year in music pages can go more in depth into information that wouldn't need to be on the overall year review pages. Just my opinion... User:Jazz77
Ditto Jazz77. -- SGBailey 22:50 Dec 25, 2002 (UTC)
I also kinda like the xxxx in y format to specific spin-off lists so that only the truely important stuff is on the main year pages. But we do need to be careful and not let this get out of control. --mav
I also agree that the pages are a good thing to have. Think of it from the perspective of someone who comes here to read up on music. -- B.Bryant
Personally, I've already found out a few things I may not have otherwise run across that are of interest to me. I like these pages. nknight 06:50 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)

So what gets to go on the one line for each year? I would choose entirely different things.

- Tubby

Was kind of wondering that myself... It's pretty arbitrary except for a handful of things along the lines of when Elvis started recording and when the Beatles started showing up, things that were really /major/ events, and even then there will be significant difference of opinion (as an example, I'd classify the 1986 release of Slippery When Wet as "major" and worthy of mention, but someone else would probably be able to come up with something they may validly consider equally or more significant that I may not). I think we should just take the events off the index in the interest of neutrality and conflict reduction. nknight 06:50 Dec 26, 2002 (UTC)
That's what I thought the list was originally for -- I wouldn't call 1985 in music an "event", really. It is arbitrary, to a certain degree, but I think we can come to a reasonable consensus on the two or three most important musical events in a given year. Probably not an absolute consensus (maybe a use for rumored polling technology), but I think conflicts could be kept to a minimum. What would be the point of a page that listed no events? If I knew which year I wanted, I'd just search for the year. I think there should be some context. Tokerboy 08:10 Dec 27, 2002 (UTC)
Agh! You're correct, of course. I'm afraid it's been a long week and I'm not always thinking things through. I'm just wary of dealing with the inevitable disagreements; it could get messy. nknight 08:27 Dec 27, 2002 (UTC)

Just to start the ball rolling, here are my suggestions:

  • Remove "MxPx releases Teenage Politics" (1995)
  • Remove "They Might Be Giants career begins" (1985)
  • Remove "Jackson Browne releases Late For The Sky" (1974)
    • I fail to see what the above three did that warrants their inclusion on the list. All three have had some degree of popular and critical success, but I don't think they were popular or innovative enough to be put here. I'm willing to be educated on why they do, though, if anybody can explain. Tokerboy
  • Remove "Pearl Jam releases Riot Act" (2002)
    • Out of all the Pearl Jam albums, why is this one mentioned? I suggest replacing it with Vitalogy or Vs or Ten, if not removing it entirely Tokerboy
  • Remove "Tool's career begins" (1991)
    • Tool already has one reference and, as much as I like them, I don't think they warrant two entries on the list Tokerboy

For the record, as of right now:

My opinion: Nirvana should have two entries: One for the formation of it, and one for the death of Kurt Cobain. Aerosmith needs a "formed in" entry at most, or perhaps just the mention of the release of their best selling album. I think you can safely kill the start of the Bee Gees' career and just leave Saturday Night Fever. I'm almost tempted to say plaster The Beatles everywhere, but that would be absurd in itself, so perhaps just leave as-is and worry about that much later. The rest... I have no informed opinion on. nknight 12:46 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

This is getting extremely crowded and messy. Even on a 1600x1200 screen, lines are wrapping and look very ugly and it's difficult to tell at a glance what goes where. Two or three specific events need to be chosen for each year. I'm going to start going through and killing some of the more irritatingly non-major events. Do we really need to note the date that every band on the planet started recording?? nknight 12:12 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

This is absurd... I'm looking through here deciding what to kill, and I just can't decide what will get me yelled at for removing and what won't. Some of it's my own biases, some of it is lack of familiarity with particular subsections of popular music (what's more major? Ozzy's solo career starting, or his second solo album? I was going to kill the mention of his second solo album and toss "Start of Ozzy Osbourne's solo career" in 1980, which is less crowded, but I don't LISTEN to Ozzy Osbourne, so I don't know what significance his second album may have had!). There is no way we're going to be able to do this sanely without some sort of polling, and the sheer volume is just too big to handle it all in Talk. Should the start of Phil Collins' solo career even be mentioned? It's a big deal to some of us, but a great deal of music's audience, whether from that generation or not, couldn't care less! The mention of Peter Gabriel leaving Genesis has the same problem! This is definitely one page wherein the hoped-for polling function would not only be of great help, but may be essential for accomplishing anything in a sane manner. nknight 12:39 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

Do we need this list at all? We already have all the information redundantly in the "years in music" articles. Wikipedia is good at collecting information, but it's bad at limiting and selecting it. --Eloquence

That was basically my original question when these started being added. See the conversation block above this one for Tokerboy's response, which I agree with. It's something that could be a very useful resource. It could also be done fairly cleanly, but we NEED some sort of efficient polling function to do it. nknight 13:03 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)
I agree on the need for polling here, but I don't think there's too much info now (maybe a tad, but I don't see as much of a problem as I think you do). Maybe we need to decide on a purpose for this page. Why do you think people will be coming here? IMO, this page would be useful for people that
  1. want a more general overview than they could see by clicking on specific years
  1. aren't sure which year they want, and so need some major events to put the years into context

With these two motives in mind, I think the current amount of information is fine. I am using a larger monitor than most, though, so maybe I don't see the disorganization that others do. I would like to suggest a change in focus, though, and list specific recordings as much as possible. I think most bands have an album that can be pretty uncontroversially said to be their most influential, in terms of popularity, critical acceptance and innovation. Right now, only a handful of specific albums and songs are mentioned. I'll have to think about the Ozzy issue mentioned above, but I think Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel's leaving Genesis deserves to be mentioned. They've both had long, popular solo careers. Peter Gabriel, especially, was perhaps one of the most influential people in world music, and helped bring it to the mainstream.Tokerboy 21:40 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

The list itself is useful - it lets you know which years exist and makes it easy want to flit around within the "years in music" set of pages. I think we should have events, as reference points, but limit them to 1 or occasionally 2 per year. I think the things listed need somehow to be globally important to a lot of people - so that musically "significant" things that only "musical experts" would know should NOT be on this page. What should be here is the stuff the uninformed general public will relate to. Yes to the beatles, no to Tool (whoever they are - never heard of them). Yes to Nirvana, maybe yes to Genesis but no to Peter Gabriel - Just possibly yes to Phil Collins cos his acting work has raised his profile. Yes to Elvis & Dylan & Clapton & Madonna & M Jackson (has to be Thriller) & Bob Marley & Louis Armstrong & Beethoven & Mozart. No to Jethro Tull, Yes to Spice Girls, Cliff Richard, Stones, uncertain about Robbie Williams - maybe too British. Etc Etc. If in doubt, see how many sales the album has had or if just an artist mention their total album sales over their career. No to Foo fighters, Maybe yes to Guns n' roses, unsure. No to White Stripes. -- SGBailey 21:55 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)
Another thought - rather than clutter this page up with 100 arguments about each year, why no devolve the "vote" for each year to that yera's talk page - then we can also easily see the events which are candidates and if a "new event" is found at some later stage then it can be discussed there and maybe replace whatever we had previously chosen. -- SGBailey 22:01 Dec 30, 2002 (UTC)

Hello, I am an anonymous poster. I thought I'd add my 2 cents on this. If you think things are becoming cluttered, perhaps restructuring the information a bit would help. Although personally, I have no difficulty reading it at 800x600 on a 14" monitor.

However, I do think that many things listed here do not really belong here, especially when so many (more important things) are missing. Perhaps the years could be split into decades instead, with links to each year, and accompanied only by a brief list of the most important things that decade. Something like "This was the decade of glam rock...", "Eurodisco was a form of techno that was popular in europe at the beginning of this decade..." etc.

... Y'know, I was about to come on here and say "newlines after each item are a BAD idea", but I'm no longer so sure. Keeping it to two or three one line items and tossing in the newlines could enhance readability... nknight

64, would you mind holding off on adding to the existing summaries? With the newlines/list-format for each year, it's more readable with up to three entries, but more than that and it just becomes an unneeded duplication of the pages themselves and makes the index page excessively long. I don't think more should be added, we really need to keep pruning the existing entries as SGBailey was doing. nknight 16:59 Dec 31, 2002 (UTC)

I think we should ditch the "musical career begins" entries all together. The only thing they do is imply a future importance, which would presumably be shown later on. An yeah, I think the page would be improved with at least a bit of a look at genres and innovations. For example, Nevermind's popularity ushered in Grunge rock, which was a fundament of what became alternative rock. Or something. There are certainly albums which herald innovations like that one.
And I think Tokerboy is on to something when he talks of goals. If everyone has a good idea on what this page and the surrounding ones are supposed to do, then we can all work toward that. And if we don't and there are more than one possible directions, well at least we have something specific to talk about.
- Tubby

Maybe, just maybe, this page should contain nothing but genre developments. Links from this page would go to the years in music pages, and also to individual genre pages which would then list specific albums/bands. This would eliminate the jarring contrast when seeing Pixies next to Britney Spears, or what have you.
- Tubby

And, ah, the bullets just make this page look like all the individual year pages put together.
- Tubby

I'm not gonna revert anything, but I don't think the pruning to one event a year is an improvement. How can one person's choice, or even the consensus of everyone at Wikipedia, be NPOV? I disagree with many of the choices made, and I think the timeline will be so lacking in completion that it will not just be useless, but will actually be misleading and malinformative (if that's a word) by oversimplifying and overlooking important events. Tokerboy 23:16 Jan 1, 2003 (UTC)

I agree. It seems very odd that way it is now. --mav

It could work out ok. Pruning the list serves some useful purposes: it reduces clutter on the page, and reduces duplication of information from the year pages. The idea is that people are supposed to click on the links, not add stuff here. The way I see it, this list is an index page with interesting bits of trivia attached. The real content should go in the individual year pages. Having the whole timeline on one page would soon get out of hand, because people would just keep adding to it. I think one or two aignificant events per year is fine; we could get a little more space by getting rid of the bullet for each year.

As for POV, it's not, really; these things definitely happened. Listing them on the page sort of implies that they are the most significant events for that year, but we should list things that a lot of people would know about. "Most important" and "Most influential"; are POV. I disagree with some of the current choices too, but we can probably work out those differences easily enough. The name of the page is certainly misleading, though; sorry about that. Maybe it could be moved to Index of years in music or something.

-- Merphant

I think I might see where the disagreement lies. Merphant says "this list is an index page with interesting bits of trivia attached" and I disagree. Who would the index page be useful for? I see that as being the same as a List of famous Canadians that is just a list of names. Adding a caption that clearly, succinctly and completely describes why the name is famous makes the List of famous Canadians useful. I think the same thing should apply here. An arbitrary decision of one or two events is more POV than an open-ended list of whichever events are influential. By choosing just one, the list is expressing the POV that Private Dancer is more important than Like a Virgin, just to name one example. Tokerboy
Of course, this can't and shouldn't repeat everything on the individual year pages. Also of course, we have to choose wisely about which events to add. Since wikipedia doesn't have polling technology yet, I'd like to suggest something that some other list, somewhere (I forget which) tried. How about the article can't just list events, but must list why they are important also. That would make it a lot less attractive for people to add their pet bands, but would still allow for more flexibility than requiring a consensus on a certain number of events per year. Maybe something like this: Tokerboy

Good idea. Two of the events I like the most on the existing list, for 1912 and 1913, do just that. -- Merphant

Yeah this looks good to me too. These kind of entries immediately give the user another page to go to and another more specific avenue to explore. Right now, both this page and the year in music pages are very general, which is fine, but perhaps there should be an intermediate step between these pages and the individual band or album pages. Does that make any sense?
- Tubby

I'm not comfortable doing the pruning from the index, but I started going through, starting from the bottom, and making sure stuff on the index was on the pages themselves. Made it up to 1965 before I had to jet tonight. Thought I'd save you a little work, SG :).nknight 09:00 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)

OK, I just did 1972, so that should be it for merging from the index. nknight 15:32 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)

I just noticed that some of the original year articles, 1967 for example, now list a few entries under headings such as 1967 in music, 1967 in film, 1967 in television, etc. Is this a Good Thing? To me, it is redundant, as all these events should be listed on the more specific page.
- Tubby

What does everyone think about the format for my changes to the 1990s, as per talk above. If you disagree with what I wrote, I'll discuss, but I'm more interested in how the general format and feel of the entries strike you Tokerboy

I dig! The page just got a hell of a lot more interesting. - Tubby

I just did the 80s.

  • I don't know enough about hair metal and don't have time right now to do research, but there should be some more info on that
  • I'm American and I'm sure my choices reflect an unintentional bias, but I don't know how to fix it
  • 1993 could use some work -- putting Faith hill in with the others just isn't right
  • Does anybody have any problems with the De La Soul and N.W.A albums being listed together in 1989?
  • I'm not sure I like the second bullet in 1985 (Springsteen et al) -- what do others think?
  • What about listing Red Hot Chili Peppers with Megadeth and Metallica in 1983? The Chili Peppers aren't thrash metal at all, but they've been influential in the development of it
  • Not sure if I like the world music bullet in 1981 either
  • the second bullet in 1980 is badly worded; if someone can fix it, it would be most appreciated
  • what do you think about a move to Timeline of music trends or something similar?

I listed my thoughts on the list as it currently is because I'm sure no one person, including me, can be totally NPOV on something like this because we all have favorite bands and quirky memories about what was really popular and what was just a fad in our own hometowns Tokerboy

I think that having all this clutter on this page is horrible - it makes it unreadable and useless as a way of getting around between the years. As folk seem to like it like this, what if I make an alternative "list of years in music page" which is simple? -- SGBailey 23:16 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

I won't stop you, but I don't see the point. Who would find that useful? See my comments above.Tokerboy

We've got to figure out what this page is for. I for one would like to see it as a timeline of musical trends, as Tokerboy suggests, but others would like to see basically an index with a bit of extra info. If this is indeed the case, then two separate pages are in order.
- Tubby

I like the idea of Tokerboy's "TimeLine" myself. Instead of this page being an exact copy of the individual year in music pages (minus some info), it would be more of an overview of general musical trends... styles that become popular, etc. Then people could clikc on the individual years for more detailed info about releases, births, deaths, and artist info. -Jazz77

Since everyone seems okay with it, I will make the shifts outlined above. List of musical events will consist of the page as it existed before I started mucking with it, and the current revision will move to Timeline of trends in music (I know it's silly semantics, but I think "musical trends" makes it seem like the trends themselves are made of music, instead of millions of little social and cultural events) Tokerboy

I changed Johnny Coltrane (1959) to the much more common John Coltrane. As it was it wasn't even consistent with the other appearance of his name in this article. If there's a reason for it, then fine, let's change it back - but if so, it probably needs noting on the John Coltrane page itself so it won;t keep getting changed back! :) Nevilley 18:50 Jan 15, 2003 (UTC)

We've got to make sure this page sticks to musical trends. Right now there are a lot of things which could be classified as musical events, which should be on the other page, as I understand it. Two pages that intertwine and overlap in parts is completely detrimental.
- Tubby

A trend is nothing more than a series of events. I understand what you mean, though. I think some consolidation is in order. My first suggestion is actually to split the page in half, because I already can't edit it and I don't think there's much I wanted pruned -- the first half of the century still needs a lot of work and it will be too long once that becomes complete. 1950 is a good cut-off date too, as it could be said to mark the beginning of the rock and roll era. Tokerboy
I think one thing that will help keep the timeline neat and orderly is to have an agreed upon plan. I suggest having a list of trends we want included here on the talk page, and choosing three or four (maybe five at most) entries for each. For example, most trends have a beginning, a popular peak and an end and we can decide which years and what specific recordings (if any) to mention. If we agree on which entries we want for say, house music, it will be easier and justified to ask another user not to keep adding more entries for their current trend, because we will have a consensus on what is major about house music.Tokerboy

For example:hair metal

  • 1978 - describes the trend of heavy metal achieving mainstream success and mentions Van Halen
  • 1983 - hair metal breaks into the mainstream (Quiet Riot's Metal Health)
  • 1987 - hair metal is the dominant sound (Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction)

Bakersfield country:

  • 1951 - develops as a reaction against the Nashville sound
  • 1963 - Begins mainstream success (Merle Haggard's "Sing a Sad Song")

This is what is currently in the article for hair metal and Bakersfield country. Is this what we want and is this the best way to present the information?Tokerboy

Speaking of hair metal, should this page mention Spinal Tap? The LOC evidently thinks it's "culturally significant". -- Merphant

Does anybody know what happened to the first twelve years? They're gone and I can't find them in the history. Tokerboy

Looks like you accidentally deleted them on your last edit. Restored them from the edit before yours. (dangit, I'm supposed to be letting non-wikipedia things occupy my time!) --nknight 07:20 Jan 17, 2003 (UTC)

Unless anyone complains, I'm gonna split this page in half soon, to Timeline of trends in music (1900-1950) and Timeline of trends in music (1951-present), for the reasons described above. Tokerboy


Older version said "For the origins of rock and roll, see Timeline of trends in music (1900- 1950)". Wow, I really find that arrogant and offensive. Perhaps we should put the likes of Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, George Gershwin, Stravinsky, etc etc together in the category "Unfortunately not Rock & Roll Yet". -- Infrogmation 21:53 Jan 20, 2003 (UTC)

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