The reason I know this is that on an average of 10-12 times a month I will be in a business establishment that plays background music for its patrons, and at least 95% music I hear is from that period. It seems like that is the prime demographic age for commercial radio listenership, music sales, and concert ticket sales.
I generally would concur with that (though I would stretch it to include 70-74). It was the era of a lot of iconic R&R, R&B, and pop acts, and especially a golden age for Soul and R&B singers and groups (before R&B got subsumed into disco and club music).
When we were growing up here’s what we did. We turned on the car radio, flipped between 3 stations and heard the best classically based music coming from live or studio recordings from people who developed their talent. If they sucked, they didn’t get sold nor played. Then we’d get an album at one of three record stores in town and we’d play it. Put it on the turntable and place the needle where you wanted to hear the song from the ffwd and rev are still the quickest. The sound quality from a pioneer receiver and a technical turntable with a diamond or sapphire stylus coming out of Bose or JVC speakers is nothing like what you hear at this point.
Even when my father drove us for a trip into Manhattan or to the Bronx, he’d put on 1130 AM and we’d hear jazz tunes you hear now in a Starbucks. Later, he’d play Credence with a tape deck in his Lincoln. And it was good. What? You don’t like Credence?
And then we would play those songs with our bands in our garage or in a downtown bar or a crosstown bar :)
And now if we former kids are together for any reason, a funeral, an award, business, we go to someone’s house preferably on the north shore of Long Island where all of this took place and on the back porch in the evening we play and sing harmony. Everyone knows all the parts to ‘Friend if the Devil”, “Dead Flowers”, “Please be With Me”. The girls alone - James Taylor, CSNY- Helplessly Hoping in particular.
New music Is fine. Hans Zimmer on a score is brilliant. Korean pop dancer singers are talented. But we don’t go looking for it. What it takes to hear a song in my car is dangerous.
Forget it.
As someone born in 1970....I’m willing to go back as far as 1965 and as far forward as about 2000. What the hell happened to music after the year 2000? It fell off a cliff. The industry refused to play much standard rock anymore.
The local Lowe’s home improvement store was playing Buddy Holly the last time I was there.