I'm not saying I dislike the music, in fact I really love it (talking about the music playing on GNR, and on the intros), but wasn't this music made in the 1950's and didn't the bombs fall in 2077? Even though this is an alternate reality, could people really listen to the same music for so long? What's stopping people from making music before the bombs fell, and if they did, then where is it?

My theory has always been that culture is cyclical - it's less that society remained stagnant for 120 years, but that "retro-50's" was en vogue at the time the bombs fell. It's less that no one was ever making "new" music (or that more modern bands never existed in the timeline,) but that what you hear on the radio is what was popular. (Also - there's only one functioning radio station in the DC Wasteland, and it just so happened that it was a "golden oldies" station... )

There's also the matter of verisimilitude, and maintaining a consistent tone and atmosphere. "Realism" will generally take a back seat to providing a concise and effective art direction in these cases. For example - in Star Trek: The Next Generation, there are Klingons that recite Shakespeare and Cpt. Picard enjoys listening to classical music. In that universe, those things still exist. It's equally possible that there's a Klingon out there somewhere with a collection of antique Gangsta Rap from Old Earth - but it wouldn't add the same sort of nuance to what they were trying to portray in that particular episode.

So I figure, if you want to stretch a point, that there's no specific reason why any specific music couldn't exist in the Fallout universe. There very well could be an ancient dust-covered CD of (well, just about anything really) buried out in the Wasteland somewhere. It's less a matter of specific things being denied by the setting, so much as it was a conscious decision of what to actually include. A selection of specifically "retro" music has a much greater impact than a variety of different music (especially considering that we're dealing with a limited number of songs in the first place...)

It is a stylised and idealised version of the 50s future - watch some cheesy 50s and 60s sci-fi flicks, they still use swing, country, jazz and the brand new rock'n'roll as music of the future. Sometimes complete with dance ensembles.
Otherwise, it is just about recognisability of those songs. You hear them and you think 'Yup, 50s.'
That's why one can't really complain about the use of, say, Earth songs in the recent movie Planet 51. We just couldn't tell it's 50s music of the alien planet if we wouldn't know any of their songs.

Its an integral part of the Fallout 'style bible', it keeps each game consistent with the whole, and it adds a certain level of class and contrast to an otherwise bleak and degenerate world.
If they did make modern music then im glad it all melted in the nuclear fire.

You might as well ask why Judy Jetson listens to 60's style rock 'n' roll (well, 60's rock where everyone wears rings on their clothes) in the far-off 21st century.

the ink spots are the best