Jazz musicians started using Groovy to mean the band is playing together like a needle in the groove of a record. They wouldn’t compete or play separately, but rather they would be in the same groove of understanding and creativity. By getting on the same wave they would produce the best music possible.
Eventually the word became associated with the mindset it took to be able to get in the groove. The musicians found that the best ones usually had a certain quality that Taoists would call “Wu Wei”. They would flow with life, going with the changes in their own natural way rather than against it. How Bruce Lee would put it “be like water”.
Certain drugs were found to be conductive to this groovy state of mind, the hippies definitely made sure of exploring that deeply. Then before dying off, the word Groovy deteriorated to a superficial meaning of in style or desirable.
At this point, when the corporate consumer machine took hold of the word, it quickly declined into a tacky, meaningless, and outdated slang. The spirit officially left the word, “groovy” fell out of groove.
