How is it possible to not think that?
You can easily pick out what era something was from by the music, fashion, kinds of jokes etc. Popular culture is popular culture because it's pushed heavily in the mainstream to make it popular. It's shifted a bit now that people can upload things themselves and occasionally something will get popular organically, but there's still heavy backing for distribution of some things over others. In the case of music, it used to be all about getting "signed", and bands would conform to whatever is being pushed at the time to get attention of the handful of major labels. They even had a formula for the power chord songs to start, then they'd have their "power ballad", and all with the same outfits, hair styles, makeup etc.