Pop songs are a product of the times in which they were created. The people who write and perform them draw on contemporary life for inspiration. No surprise, then, that songs often reference what’s new, what’s hot, at the time.
That’s one of the reasons music can so powerfully evoke memory and conjure a time. But, many decades later, some of the things being sung about no longer exist, and we might need to call in the archaeologists to help us understand them.
Jukeboxes were once the main way people heard music. They’re long gone now, but there’s plenty of songs that reference them. Same with telegrams, short messages sent by Morse code and telex that would be delivered to your home at whatever time of day or night.
Even relatively modern inventions have gone, like pagers, a device that fascinated the early rappers. There’s the party line, switchboard operators, Myspace, and more.
