Why do vocal harmonies of older songs sound have that rich, “airy” quality that doesn’t seem to appear in modern music? (Crosby Stills and Nash, Simon and Garfunkel, et Al)

Question

I’d like to hear a scientific explanation of this!

[Example song](https://youtu.be/C7HP9Xkim9o)

I have a few questions about this.
I was once told that it’s because multiple vocals of this era were done live through a single mic (rather than overdubbed one at a time), and the layers of harmonies disturb the hair in such a way that it causes this quality. Is this the case? If it is, what exactly is the “disturbance”? Are there other factors, such as the equipment used, the mix of the recording, added reverb, etc?

EDIT: uhhhh well I didn’t expect this to blow up like it did. Thanks for everyone who commented, and thanks for the gold!

In: Physics

Answer 1

Because it’s not popular? Hiphop doesnt have record scratches anymore, rock doesnt use twangy clean guitars, hammond organs aren’t in every rock song, folk doesn’t include mouth harp in every song etc.

It’s just an aesthetic that was really popular in the vocal pop and folk groups in the 50s and 60s, and kept going into the 80s and 90s but kind of died down after that. You still have bands like Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Beirut, Tindersticks, Elephant Revival, even more popular things like The Dead South and Mumford & Sons do a lot of quite airy harmonies regularly in their music.