Millennials better at recognising 1960s songs than today’s tunes

Millennials are better at identifying songs made between the 1960s and 1990s than they are at recognising musical hits created from 2000 to 2015, according to a study. “The 1960s to 1990s was a special time in music, reflected by a steady recognition of pieces of that era — even by today’s millennials,” said Pascal Wallisch, an assistant professor at New York University in the US.

While the researchers did not identify what explained the stable level of recognition for songs from the 1960s through the 1990s, they note that during this period there was a significantly greater diversity of songs reaching the top of the Billboard charts compared to 2000 to 2015 and 1940 to 1950.

The large number of popular songs during the latter part of the 20th century may explain why so many are recognisable decades later, according to the study published in the journal PLOS ONE. However, the researchers acknowledge that the findings could be the result of self-selection: there was a considerable correlation between the likelihood of recognising a given song and its corresponding play count on Spotify, which they also measured.

This result underscores the popularity of certain songs from the 1960s through the end of the 20th century, researchers said. “Spotify was launched in 2008, well after nearly 90 per cent of the songs we studied were released, which indicates millennials are aware of the music that, in general, preceded their lives and are nonetheless choosing to listen to it,” said Wallisch.

Researchers noted that recognition of songs even from this period varies. Some were extremely well known, such as “When A Man Loves A Woman” by Percy Sledge (1966), and “Baby Come Back” by Player (1977) whereas others, like “Knock Three Times” by Dawn (1970), and “I’m Sorry” by John Denver (1975), are all but forgotten.