Classic rock über alles

Picture: Led Zeppelin/Dick Barnatt

I feel vindicated. The other night, before she went to bed, my girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter was listening to Led Zeppelin's Good Times Bad Times, the opening track of their self-titled 1969 debut album. The next morning I woke to read that the music I grew up with, from the 1970s and 1980s, is finding new audiences along with it original listenership thanks to streaming services.

In its latest yearbook, the BPI, the British record industry association, has revealed what the nation was listening to in 2019 via streaming services, and it is reassuring - from this old head's perspective, at least - to see how pop and rock's annals from the last six decades figure in that consumption. With the purchase of physical formats continuing their long-term decline (despite sales of vinyl records - pre-lockdown - remaining robust), music streaming in the UK grew by 7.5% in 2019, according to the BPI, which also noted that there were 114 billion plays on streaming services. Of particular note is that the '70s and '80s accounted for a greater share of so-called "catalogue plays" in 2019 than anything else, with two acts more prominent than anyone else - Elton John and Queen. No great surprise, given the success of the biopics Rocket Man and Bohemian Rhapsody: both films provided gateways to the music of two of the decades' most prolific artists, with John in particular bringing attention to both his colourful life in the 1970s as well as the extraordinary run of albums he recorded, with Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across The Water, Honky Honky Château and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road amongst the 12 recorded between 1970 and 1979 alone.

David Hepworth's brilliant book 1971 - Never A Dull Moment pondered the rich output of that specific year (Led Zeppelin IV, Who’s Next, Jethro Tull’s Aqualung, The Doors’ LA Woman, Carole King’s Tapestry, et al), but the BPI stats reveal that 1977 - the year of the Queen's silver jubilee - accounted for the most number of albums from the '70s streamed in 2019, with ELO’s Out Of The Blue (featuring the feelgood Mr Blue Sky), Fleetwood Mac’s perennial Rumours (The Chain was its most-streamed song), and The Bee Gees' Stayin’ Alive figuring heavily. As did Queen’s News Of The World, thanks to We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions.

Go back further, and the 1960s provided a steady appetite of pop, rock and soul music last year. Not surprisingly The Beatles figure prominently: the Fabs' catalogue was a relative latecomer to streaming, only first becoming available on the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Tidal and Amazon Prime Music at Christmas 2015, seen at the time as an important effort to maintain the band's legacy. Four years on, their latter output dominated streams of '60s material, with the 50th anniversary edition of Abbey Road prominent, along with David Bowie's Space Oddity, various Rolling Stones tracks, and a healthy slew of Motown material, including Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's Ain't No Mountain High Enough (the second most-streamed '60s track), the Jacksons' I Want You Back, My Girl by The Temptations and Ben E King's Stand By Me.

Further forward, the 1980s also featured significantly in the BPI's numbers, some 9.2% of all streamed in 2019, with Queen once again demonstrating - whether you like them or not - just how much they dominated British music for the better part of two decades, and up until Freddie Mercury's death in 1991. Another One Bites The Dust was the most-streamed song from 1980. Given that many a lockdown family Zoom get together will inevitably descend into violent disagreement over which era - and generation of music - was the best, the 1980s often miss out on a fair hearing, largely due to the association people make with their own memories of shoulder pads and puffball skirts on Top Of The Pops, and the ubiquitous clatter of gated reverb (and the ubiquitous clatter of Phil Collins...). Thus, Britons helped themselves to the likes of  A-Ha's Take On Me, Bryan Adams' Summer Of '69, Kenny Loggins' Footloose, Bruce Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark and Tina Turner's The Best looming large in the 2019 streaming landscape.

So what, then, of more recent output? In any given week the most popular songs are always dominated by new material, and last year songs released in 2019 accounted for over a fifth of streamed plays, with those from 2018 slightly behind. In fact the top two streamed tracks for 2019 were released the previous year - Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved and Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road (no, me neither), along with 2019 releases from Billy Eilish, Stormzy and Ed Sheeran. Contemporary events also had an impact on streaming choices, too. Along with the Elton John and Queen biopics, songs featuring in TV and film productions drew people to streaming tracks like Bruce Springsteen's Blinded By The Light and, randomly, Limahl’s Never Ending Story appearing in the Netflix supernatural drama Stranger Things.

Picture: Twitter/Glastonbury Festival

There was also a boost caused by last year's Glastonbury Festival, with The Cure being a notable beneficiary thanks to their headline set. Given that there won't be a Glasto this year - or, for the time being, any marquee music events anywhere - it'll be interesting to see what the 2020 figures reveal. That said, with so many of us currently in lockdown and potentially exhausting physical record collections, streaming might possibly be coming into its own. "The reasons certain songs resonate with us are many and varied, says Rob Crutchley, author of the BPI's What The UK Streamed In 2019 report. "They can lift our mood, reflect how we’re feeling at a certain time, or evoke a particular happy memory. Older songs can enjoy a renaissance at any time, maybe by being used in a film or TV show, being shared online via social media or by being discovered in a playlist. A much-loved artist going on tour can spike interest and there is a wealth of catalogue classics that are always in great demand at Christmas time – we’re streaming the hits of today in huge numbers but we’re also enjoying delving into our rich musical heritage."

The full What The UK Streamed In 2019 report can be read here.