> Have people changed so much in the last 70-80 years that these songs—which seem expressly designed to debase their singers and deify their subjects—would be j

> Have people changed so much in the last 70-80 years that these songs—which seem expressly designed to debase their singers and deify their subjects—would be joyfully sung in harmony without complaint at company meetings? [...] > Moreover, to answer one of the rhetorical questions above, no—people have not changed so much over the past 80-ish years that they could sing mawkishly pro-IBM songs with an irony-free straight face. At least, not without some additional context. > There’s a decade-old writeup on NetworkWorld about the IBM corporate song phenomena http://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/wireless/a-history-of-singing-the-big-blues.html http://www.networkworld.com/article/2333702/wireless/a-histo... that provides a lot of the glue necessary to build a complete mental picture of what was going on in both employees’ and leaderships’ heads. The key takeaway to deflate a lot of the looniness is that the majority of the songs came out of the Great Depression era, and employees lucky enough to be steadfastly employed by a company like IBM often were really that grateful. The truth is probably closer to 'yes' than 'no', as best I know: I can't see how the OP thinks that the Network World piece supports the opposite conclusion. At any time in recent history before the '60s, people really did tend to feel a greater sense of deference to big institutions. But more than that, the '30s were something like the '60s in reverse: just as everyone over 35 discovered individualism and self-actualisation in the '60s, in the 1930s very many people really did feel a surging need to subsume their individuality into a greater collective, marching forward together. That urge wasn't limited to card-carrying fascists or communists at all. (Disclaimer: not a historian.)