The Change of Popular Music Between 1963 and 1987

The movie Dirty Dancing takes place in 1963 but was released in 1987. The movie features songs that were released during two periods.

1) The years 1956 - 1963

2) The year 1987

Below are the songs released during 1956 - 1963.

In the Still of the Night -- 1956

Love Is Strange -- 1956

Stay -- 1960

Hey, Baby -- 1961

Some Kind of Wonderful -- 1961

These Arms of Mine -- 1962

Cry to Me -- 1962

Will You Love Me Tomorrow? -- 1962

Big Girls Don't Cry -- 1962

Do You Love Me? -- 1962

Be My Baby -- 1963

Wipe Out -- 1963

You Don't Own Me -- 1963

Below are the songs released in 1987.

Hungry Eyes -- 1987

Time of My Life -- 1987

She's Like the Wind -- 1987

Yes -- 1987

Overload -- 1987

The 1956-1963 songs were selected for the movie by the scriptwriter Eleanor Bergstein. She was born in 1938, so when those songs were released she was about 18 to 25 years old. She had a good, personal understanding of the popular taste in the music of those years.

The 1987 songs were selected by the movie's music supervisors Michael Lloyd and (especially) Jimmy Ienner. who understood well the popular taste in music of that year. In other words, Lloyd and Ienner knew expertly what kinds of songs were likely to become hits in 1987.

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The 1956-1963 songs differ from the 1987 songs, but I have not been able to formulate the difference well. My own best formulation has been merely that the movie's 1956-1963 songs are played with small-band instruments (guitars and drums), whereas the 1987 music is performed with many more instruments -- especially with music synthesizers.

However, I do not have the musical knowledge and vocabulary to formulate the difference credibly.

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Yesterday I happened onto a video by a music expert, David Bennett, who has made a video titled When Did Rock Stop Being Pop? This video gave me some new insights into the changes of popular music since 1960.

During the interval between 1963 and 1987, there was a dramatic rise and fall in the popularity of music with distorted electric guitar. His video includes a chart that graphs this rise and fall. I have cropped his chart to show only the period from 1960 to 1990.

* In 1961 and 1987, the popularity of distorted electric guitar is about the same.

* Between 1961 and 1987, the popularity of distorted electric guitar rises and falls.

Bennett explains in the video below the chart.

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I think -- off the top of my head -- that the only Dirty Dancing song with distorted electric guitar is "Overload", which is one of the 1987 songs and which is played in the movie for only a few seconds.

The movie's 1956-1963 and 1987 songs share a similarity that there is practically no distorted electric guitar. If the movie had featured music with distorted electric guitar -- something like Jimmy Hendrix's 1967 hit song "Purple Haze" -- then the movie's 1963 setting would have been spoiled.

Because the movie's 1987 songs that were featured -- "Hungry Eyes", "Time of My Life" and "She's Like the Wind" -- did not include distorted electric guitar, those songs did not spoil the 1963 setting in that regard.

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In his video, Bennett explains that the popularity of distorted electric guitar was replaced eventually by the popularity of music synthesizers.

To some extent, I think, the music synthesizers resonate in lushness with the big-band music in the movie's ballroom dancing scenes.

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Here are a couple more explanatory videos done by Bennett.

I don't pretend to understand his explanation, but I can see that he explains with great expertise.

I hope that some day such a music expert will analyze Dirty Dancing's music as a whole.