Hip hop onto the musical roundabout
THIS week’s Ramblings takes you to a time when men had long hair and wore pant suits.
Yes, tight fitting, bedazzled pastel-coloured outfits that left little to the imagination.
The Bee Gees pitched notes as high as their bouffant hair dos.
Freddie Mercury showed off his form and some men wore platform shoes that raised their height several metres (or so it seemed).
Fast forward fifty years and the music industry has turned full circle.
Benson Boone is a 20-something rockstar who was discovered on a talent show.
His name reminds me of Pat Boone, an American singer-songwriter whose music echoed through my childhood home.
They’re not related, I checked.
His hair and musical style takes you back to the 70s and people are loving it, or should that be digging it.
There are a lot of young male artists who openly wear dresses and skirts nowadays.
Harry Styles has walked the red carpet wearing them, rockstar Yungblud wears one and Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds’ signature look is a knee length skort.
Eye liner or ‘guy-liner’… well that’s been happening since forever and it didn’t start with Johnny Depp.
The ancient Egyptians were partial to a bit of ‘guy-liner’.
The other day I watched a commercial for the male Maybelline skin care range and three men at the end said, ‘because we are worth it’.
To those over 50 who are rolling their eyes … read the first two paragraphs of this Ramblings again.
Today’s pop stars weren’t around when Freddy wore the tight white pantsuit with plunging neckline or the Bay City Rollers sported shaggy bob hairstyles and platform shoes.
Or when Farrah Fawcett and Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees had the same hairdresser (presumably).
Today’s musicians are being their authentic selves and that’s nothing new because artists have been doing that forever.
Perhaps even as far back as the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras when William Shakespeare wrote plays that required men to play the part of women.
My teenage years were lived out in the 1980s, an era when people had bad hair days for the entire decade.
Enter Boy George, the flamboyant rocker who captured hearts and Duran Duran’s hair and flair.
The Cure singer Robert Smith had teased hair and always wore bright red lipstick.
It’s 2025 and he hasn’t changed his look.
He needs an intervention and someone to give him a makeover to update it.
“Robert, we love you, but you need to put the red lipstick down and back away slowly.”
In the 80s we didn’t bat an eye when male popstars wore full make up on stage and in music videos.
Then along came the 90s and the colour was wiped from men’s faces.
Hip hop and rap became mainstream, and clothing went from tight and chest baring to jeans pulled down so low underwear stuck out.
And that was on purpose.
Tick tock and we are moving through the mid-2020s with elegance and class.
Men are dressing feminine again and artists are spitting out albums that could fit perfectly into a 1970s record catalogue.
There’s the loop, the neat bow that is tied when two parts fit together perfectly.
I said I’d take you back in time to when men had long hair and wore pant suits.
It turns out back in time could be last year or 60 years ago.
I wonder if I’ll be around when rap and rhythm and blues music have their turn on the musical roundabout of resurgence?
Best I hang onto my baggiest pair of jeans and boxers … just in case.