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Again, I believe producers of movies, TV, music will keep iconic bands, songs, artists alive, even if only for episodic revivals. Heck...Irving Berlin has spotify channel.
Aretha owns "Respect." Whitney owns ayeeayeeaywillalwaysluvyouuuuuoooo Entertainment producers will know and use these and many others over and over just as they do 'White Christmas", "What a Wonderful World," .
They aren't just songs. They are legitimate art. Those creations are already demonstrating 'legs.'
And they're all recent (save White Xmas). "What a Wonderful World" was recorded in 1967. As was "Respect." "I Will Always Love You" was recorded in 1992. Those performances are well within the living memory of millions and millions of people.
Irving Berlin was a composer and songwriter, and I have no doubt that his songs - and indeed the whole of the Great American Songbook - will continue to have cultural relevance for quite a while. But for performers, I think the lifespan is more limited.
It's possible, I suppose, that there were no performances prior to WWII (other than "White Christmas") that were "legitimate art." That would be one explanation why all of the performances of the 20's and 30's and early 40's have largely disappeared from cultural relevance even though they were recorded. Bing Crosby was every bit the musical juggernaut in the 1930's that Elvis and the Beatles and MJ were in their respective decades - but when we see today's youth getting "exposed" to "old" music, it doesn't seem to include anything that far back. Maybe that's just an artifact of the specific artists back then - there just wasn't anyone that good - and not the fact that there's just very few people alive that are old enough to have been a teen before WWII.
But I think it's probably the latter. Once all the people who were shaped and formed as adolescents by the popular music of a period are gone, the performances of that period are largely going to disappear from the culture. Which is why I think even a virtuoso performer like a Clapton isn't all that likely to last.
