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Telegraph
07-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
How Live Aid ruined music forever
Forty years ago this month, Bob Geldof unleashed his 'global jukebox'. With the help of Midge Ure and promoter Harvey Goldsmith, he staged a concert across two venues on either side of the Atlantic, starting at midday on Saturday July 13 1985 in London and ending at the John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia 16 hours later. Around the world, 1.7 million people tuned in, and it is seen as one of the great charity success stories of all time, raising $140 million for famine relief in Ethiopia. Live Aid was so big that it has its own folklore: Status Quo's backstage antics, Bono's messiah impression, Phil Collins hopping on Concorde to play both venues, Geldof swearing on TV and, of course, Queen's show-stealing performance. Yet Live Aid's impact on music itself is often overlooked – perhaps because no-one wants to sound uncharitable. But the truth is that it was a disaster. In Britain, up until this point, we had enjoyed a long tradition of innovation and reinvention, but this brace of charity concerts changed all that, although few people noticed at the time. It resuscitated artists on life support, invented the idea of a concert as a greatest hits parade, strangled the 'second British invasion' of great pop acts in America, and provided the model for a new consumerism, encouraging us to purchase (or repurchase on compact disc) the back catalogue of musicians who had been slipping out of public consciousness for a decade Ultimately, Live Aid heralded an era of musical regurgitation and nostalgia, an era from which we have never escaped. At the end of Martin Scorsese's 1976 film of The Band's farewell concert, The Last Waltz, Robbie Robertson turns to the crowd and yells 'Goodnight, Goodbye'. The Band's guitarist and principal songwriter was signing off on behalf of rock's great and good. The fact was that Robertson, perspicaciously, sensed that bands like his were about to be superseded by the punk movement. Among the artists gathered in San Francisco's Winterland – most addled and exhausted – were Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ronnie Wood and Neil Young. But it was not quite an extinction event for the dinosaurs. Live Aid, nine years later, would bring them back to life. If The Last Waltz was supposed to be the meteor that killed them off, Live Aid was their Jurassic Park. Punk may have lasted only two years (reaching its peak around 1978), but it cleared space for a new generation of artists. This used to be the accepted way of things – one movement made way for the next, new styles and ideas took precedence. What followed punk – new wave, synth pop and the New Romantics – was younger and fresher. These were the movements that came to dominate global pop as part of the 'Second British Invasion' in the first half of the 1980s – a golden era of British exports the equal of 1964-1967 – with huge international success for Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, Culture Club and Tears for Fears. But instead of providing space for them at the front of the queue, Live Aid put the spotlight on something else altogether. The old rockers couldn't believe their luck. A decade after punk made them seem irrelevant, they were advertising their wares in front of hundreds of millions of new customers. Live Aid was like the revenge of the hippies. Part of the problem was the old fellas knew how to milk the opportunity. New Romantics were not cut out for rock stadiums. Live Aid was a competency test and not surprisingly, the musicians who'd been playing live for years passed it with flying colours. Nobody capitalised on this more than Queen. It would have been pointless putting The Human League or Depeche Mode on that stage. Queen could fill the space: less so Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones or Adam Ant. Now several years away from his early 1980s success, Adam Ant made the error of playing a new song. He wrote in his autobiography that Live Aid was 'the end of rock 'n' roll'. What he meant was that it was no longer what he thought it should be: a cycle of constant change. Even the closest thing the New Romantics had to a stadium band, Duran Duran, managed to mess it up, when Simon Le Bon's voice cracked spectacularly in Philadelphia while singing A View To A Kill, in what became known as 'The Bum Note Heard Round the World'. Of all the acts at Live Aid who began after punk, it was U2 who benefited most. They were just the kind of anthem-peddling monsters who suited the future. In his history of pop music Yeah Yeah Yeah, Bob Stanley writes: 'Live Aid saw the final triumph of old rockers, new wavers [meaning Sting, primarily] and the most conservative Eighties stars… it pulled up the drawbridge on anything daring or different.' In fact, Sting was one of Live Aid's major beneficiaries. With a new album just out, he performed three Police songs, a duet with Dire Straits and two with Collins. Then there was Dire Straits themselves who showcased Money For Nothing from their new Brothers In Arms album, which became the first CD to sell one million copies. Meanwhile Queen's three-year-old Greatest Hits album returned to the charts and went on to shift more than 25 million units. The success of their 1986 global Magic Tour can be traced back to their performance at Wembley that day. The effects of Live Aid took a year or so to trickle down. The British singles charts had always been a mixture of genius and pap, but things began to begin to slide after the first half of the 1980s when exuberant chart acts such as Wham!, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Soft Cell, Yazoo, and ABC had dominated. After Live Aid we had Wet Wet Wet, T'Pau and Cutting Crew, all of whom looked like the kind of people you would bump into in a provincial nightclub, rather than iconoclasts who would shock your grandma. Or bands that Patrick Bateman from American Psycho would get excited about, the suit-wearing yuppie pop of Johnny Hates Jazz and Living In A Box. Record labels wanted artists with safe, cross-generational appeal. Even the sainted Bowie was affected, turning out a succession of dull, corporate-friendly duds after 1985. All the confidence was gone. In a greedy, short-termist industry, it was safer to rely on wealthier, older fans of older bands or let marketing synergies do all the work. Percy Sledge, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone and Jackie Wilson were in adverts and on the radio, a reminder that we were in a new era in which people paid for old songs because it reminded them of a jeans model with a pert bottom. The worst ever year for pop music could well be 1987, featuring the act who most epitomise the journey from counterculture to corporate junk. It took 500 years for the benign Sméagol to turn into Gollum in Lord of the Rings, but it only took 20 years for San Francisco hippies Jefferson Airplane to turn into Starship, who produced the egregious Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now (from a film soundtrack, another staple of corporate marketing synergy). In the year of Live Aid they sang We Built This City, perhaps of the most widely despised three minutes of pop rock ever discharged. The effects of Live Aid were not felt in America for some time – probably because its music culture had been dominated by rock for several decades. There was also a point in the early 1990s when a new movement (grunge) temporarily dislodged the old guard. Strangely, while rock and pop was flattened by Live Aid, it did facilitate the rise of house music and hip hop, the only innovative genres to come from the same period. This was largely because they were organic and spontaneous (as the best music often is), rising independently from Chicago's gay clubs and the streets of New York and Los Angeles. But what of Britpop? Wasn't that a new movement born of dissatisfaction with the past? Well, yes in word if not in deed. Britpop had some good tunes but it was inescapably retrospective. Blur lent on the Kinks, Elastica on Wire, Suede on Bowie and Oasis on, er, Slade. It was a kind of musical cosplay. Britpop may have the soundtrack to your life but it had already been the soundtrack of somebody else's life 30 years before. 'I wanted to show my past and my future,' said Eric Clapton, describing his Live Aid set in 1985. Like many of his peers, he grabbed the unexpected opportunity Live Aid presented with both hands. And those peers are still rocking Hyde Park every year as a result. Just don't forget to buy a T-shirt.
Daily Mail
15-05-2025
- Daily Mail
The music you listen to while driving could KILL you... is your favourite smash hit a crash risk?
Listening to music with a fast tempo, exaggerated bass tones or aggressive lyrics whilst driving can promote risky driving behaviours, studies have found. Tracks with a tempo above 120 beats per minute (BPM), may subconsciously cause motorists to drive faster and switch lanes more often, according to researchers. A 2003 study found tunes with 'exaggerated bass tones and/or aggressive lyrics, can promote risky driving behaviours (for example, undertaking and braking red lights), or even lead to road rage'. Music with high BPM can stimulate the area of your brain that processes danger which sets off a flight or fight response causing drivers to react rather than think. This may cause a lack of alertness, an increase in speed and less concern for safety. However, Brunel University researchers discovered music matching the average resting heart rate of around 60-80BPM is associated with promoting more focused and calmer driving. Songs matching the range include Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran, Let It Be by The Beatles and Angels by Robbie Williams. The study revealed faster tracks can cause increased heart rate variability, elevated mental workload and unpredictable driving patterns. 'Our findings indicate drivers in high-load, urban environments should exercise caution in their use of fast-tempo music,' the academics said. Spotify, and insurance company Allianz have designed a tool to provide drivers with lower tempo music for safer driving aimed at young people who stream music more. It creates unique playlists based on the individuals Spotify listening activity by analysing their current playlists to figure out their taste and average tempo they lean toward. The tool then uses the data to curate a 'safe' playlist of songs with a range of 60-80BPM. Matt Cox, chief claims officer at Allianz, said: 'We can always do better when it comes to driving safe. We're excited to offer an experience which isn't just personalised, but will potentially help keep the roads safer.' Some of the playlists the tool has made include hits by Halsey, Tate McRae, Ariana Grande, London Grammar and Justin Timberlake. In 2021, another study by Brunel University found playing singalong hits behind the wheel may leave you 'mentally overloaded' and at risk of errors. The researchers put 34 adult volunteers in a driving simulator programmed to replicate urban roads and had them follow a set route. During each eight-minute simulation, drivers were faced with five events to handle, including a pedestrian crossing the road, red traffic lights and a truck to overtake. The team monitored each driver under one of six sound conditions — including urban traffic noise, spoken lyrics and either soft or loud music with or without lyrics. They found that — perhaps because they were knew they were being observed — the drivers' speed and performance was mostly unaffected by the music choices. However, the researchers did find that listening to music that was loud or had lyrics led to higher levels of affective (emotional) arousal than soft, non-lyrical pieces. Past studies have noted that loud, lyrical music can elevate levels of activation and aggression, and encourage overconfidence, particular among younger drivers. 'Drivers should consider the use of soft, non-lyrical music to optimise their affective state during urban driving,' the researchers concluded. 'The most important thing to consider when listening to music while driving is to ensure you are not mentally overloaded,' paper author and psychologist Costas Karageorghis of Brunel University told the Times. 'A number of internal and external factors can influence this, but one of the easiest to control is our choice of auditory stimulation, whether it be talk radio, podcasts or music. 'Through minimising distractions, motorists are much better able to focus on the road and therefore stand a better chance of identifying potential hazards in time. 'The main implication of this simulation study from a safety perspective is that drivers should consider the use of soft, non-lyrical music to optimise their mental state when driving in a stressful urban environment.' The team's simulator experiments also revealed that drivers were an average of 37 per cent more stimulated when they listened to louder music at around 75 decibels — roughly the noise made by a vacuum cleaner in operation — than softer tracks. Furthermore, women were found to exhibit higher levels of heart rate than men when driving while listening to music with lyrics. 'Music often plays an integral role in driving,' said Simon Hendrick, a spokesperson for insurance company Direct Line which helped fund the research, told the Times. 'These findings are therefore really interesting from a safety perspective, as they show that music can influence your level of focus when behind the wheel. 'In towns and cities there are so many potential risks, it makes sense to listen to music that keeps you calm but alert.'
News.com.au
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- News.com.au
Find out how a playlist could impact your safety behind the wheel
Songs with a faster tempo can have a negative impact on driving behaviours, according to new research that revealed that some of our favourite tunes can hamper crucial decision-making. Songs with more than 120 beats per minute (BPM) were found to be the music that affected some drivers' speed, alertness and reaction time. The research by Allianz Australia revealed that of the 32 per cent of people who responded that they are affected by music while driving, nearly one in three admitted that the pace or tempo makes them drive faster. Another 33 per cent noted a decrease in overall concentration when listening to music. With many of the hit songs of the season falling in this range – including Charli xcx's Brat and Troye Sivan's Rush – road safety experts are asking drivers to be aware of how music can affect their mood when behind the wheel. According to experts, the ideal BPM for music while driving is 60-80, which studies suggest can promote safer driving by encouraging a calmer and more focused state. Conversely, songs with a BPM between 120 and 125 are believed to be the best for jogging, as they can help people to synchronise their stride to the beat. Although music can be a helpful tool to stay focused on drives involving long monotonous roads, road safety expert Andry Rakotonirainy said it was important that drivers think about their song choice. 'Music has been created to generate emotion,' Dr Rakotonirainy said when asked why some music impacts our behaviour more than others. 'Enhanced situational awareness is paramount for road safety. 'Research, including studies by Allianz, has shown that faster-paced music directly correlates with increased driver distraction, leading to poor decision making.' Although Dr Rakotonirainy said music wouldn't affect everyone the same, choosing slower-paced music was one way to enhance road safety. To ensure that drivers can listen to their favourite songs while travelling safely on roads, Allianz Australia have joined forces with Spotify to launch 'Seat Belters', an in-app function that creates personalised playlists that only include songs with lower beats per minute. The feature has been launched to coincide with National Road Safety Week, taking place from May 11–18. Dr Rakotonirainy reminded drivers to organise their playlists before they begin driving to avoid distractions. 'While Allianz's research specifically highlights the link between music and driver safety, revealing that nearly a third of drivers believe music affects how they drive, it's important to also consider other potentially harmful habits like phone-use, smoking, eating and drinking, and speeding,' he added. To access the function, search 'Seat Belters' in the Spotify app.
