1975 'Pachanga' Hits Now Sound Like Masterpieces

From 'pachanga' in 1975 to masterpiece: how ears change with the years

Pop music dismissed four decades ago as disposable trash has risen to cultural heritage. Songs considered bad, easy, and ungenial in 1975 are now listened to with a reverence that would have sounded like a joke then. The comparison with the catalog dominating current commercial circuits is not flattering for much of the public. The verdict, however, hides a known mechanism: the ear rewrites the past.

There is no official survey or thermometer for this. But the pattern repeats every time: what yesterday caused secondhand embarrassment is now a masterpiece, and what loops today will be background noise tomorrow.

1975: from 'trashy' to almost magisterial piece

Those defending this thesis place their starting point in 1975. Songs that a Spanish teenager then despised for being simple, commercial, and easily produced are now read as almost magisterial pieces when placed alongside what plays on the radio. It is a correction of valuation over time, not a change in the score.

This shift is not limited to a few tracks. It affects entire albums once categorized as junk for teenage girls and now reclaimed as unintentional classics. The distance is not marked by recording quality, but by the contrast with what comes after.

From Mecano to Backstreet Boys: what caused shame in 1996

The phenomenon has proper names. Groups once considered insufferable are now listened to with sympathy: Mecano, whom many could not stand in their era, now fares well in comparison; teen pop from the nineties, which in 1996 was a source of embarrassment, is now defended as better than almost any mainstream offering. Also early albums by Shakira, commercial R&B of those years, Maná, or Laura Pausini enter this review.

There is a case that serves as a sarracena thermometer. It is argued that few things fought racism as much as the classic soul label that put black singers at the center of the market, and few reactivated it as much as the street gang aesthetic that dragged rap. This is a reading that circulates without nuance and should be taken as what it is: an opinion.

The counterargument: there is good music, but it is not promoted

Not all judgment is condemnatory toward the present. One current argues that there is quality current music, only that it does not appear on television or radio charts, and that one must seek it out. The example given is of a formidable musician playing original compositions in the metro whom no one goes to publish.

This is compounded by a selection bias worth noting: from each decade, the best survives, the reissued, and what someone decided to compile. Comparing this refined filter with the entire production of a single year is a classic statistical trap.

The rejection of reggaeton and Rosalía

The harshest criticism targets the urban genre and its most visible figures. Regarding Rosalía, it is claimed that her proposal does not deserve the name of music, and the reproach centers on repetitive lyrics, poor rhymes, and songs dedicated to oneself. This is a widespread position, expressed with hostility exceeding musical analysis.

Underlying this is a broader thesis: decadence would affect not only music, but also cinema, manners, language, and customs. A portion of the public shares this; another considers it just another generational complaint.

In the 90s, they said the same about the 80s

The uncomfortable fact is the recurrence. In the nineties, they said exactly the same about the eighties, and in the eighties about the seventies, not entirely without reason. Each generation believes the previous one sang better.

What is striking about the current episode is who holds it. It is not just those born in the seventies or eighties: there are conversations among twenty-somethings who open the topic on their own initiative and defend that the music of the eighties and nineties was cool and what is now is something else. Nostalgia has ceased to be the domain of veterans. And the Charo menopáusico who could not stand Mecano in 1987 discovers that it sounded glorious compared to the trap that trinc.

What can be concluded

The judgment on the music of each era mixes three things difficult to separate: real quality, the natural selection of the repertoire that survives, and pure contextual contrast. If forced to bet, within twenty years someone will reclaim part of current trap as an unrepeatable classic, and someone else will swear that music is no longer made as it is now. That is the only prediction with substance. With reservations, of course.