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(Or, maybe a different evolution for punk rock, at least.)

Somewhere on this board, or elsewhere on the interwebs, I remember seeing a thread where someone posited the question of how the Beatles' music might have evolved had they not gone psychedelic; in other words, how might it have grown more sophisticated without going the acid-rock route?

This is a similar idea. It's 1975. A lot of the big Sixties stars have gotten or are getting long in the tooth but are still big stars (the Rolling Stones). Heavy metal/hard rock is a major thing (Kiss); so is prog-rock (Yes, Pink Floyd). There's a lot of poppish stuff like the Carpenters in the air, and disco is just starting to catch fire ("The Hustle" was a number one hit that year). Various big stars have emerged from the glam-rock movement of the early Seventies, most especially Elton John (peripherally) and David Bowie. That's what's happening; in about a year IOTL punk comes along and begins changing the picture.

Let's say that doesn't happen, or at the barest minimum, it happens very differently. It's hard to make a cultural POD from one event, but just to start a discussion, let's say Malcolm McLaren gets busted for some kind of cash irregularities at the Sex shop (it's Malcolm McLaren; would it be that surprising?) and he goes to the pen. John Lydon never gets his big break, and John Ritchie (aka Sid Vicious) ends up dead in a gutter in London from an overdose.

How does popular music evolve post-1975 in the absence of, or in the considerable alteration of, the punk scene?
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