Greetings pop-pickers

by Rick Johansen

My late grandfather, Alfred Johansen, was not a fan of pop music. I can’t know if he liked music at all since I don’t recall him owning a radio, and certainly not a gramophone but he knew what he didn’t like. If there was pop music on the tiny little crackling and popping black and white television in the corner of the living room, it didn’t stay on for long. Mick Jagger was an agent of the devil and as for the Beatles, well, they’d never come to anything. Not with hair like that, anyway. It’s fair, then, to assume that he probably didn’t have much any idea of who was in the top ten singles chart. Having just checked the Official Singles Charts, I now know how he must have felt.

At various times in the late 1960s and the 1970s as a whole, I could probably have not just told you who was number one, but all the new entries in the charts, the biggest movers and the biggest fallers, too. We all did. Now I don’t know anything that’s in the top ten, or the top 30 for that matter and the first song I know comes in at 39, Valerie by Mark Ronson ft Amy Winehouse, a song I cannot stand, sung by a singer I couldn’t stand. To find a song I like a lot, we slide down as far as 83 for Jungle’s brilliant Back on 74 and at 86 Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac, which was first released in 1987. Have I turned into Alfred?

My complete lack of knowledge of the current chart makes a nonsense of any ideas I may have had about being up-to-date with the modern popular music scene. I have heard of many of the artists and have probably heard some of the songs without knowing who the artists were, but that can’t detract from my abject lack of knowledge about what Da Yoot is listening to. But how can this be since at the time of writing I have heard something like eight hours of music just today?

For one thing, chart music is the province of BBC Radio 1 and given that its target audience is mainly between 18 and 24 I have managed to work out quite quickly that I do not fall within it. The station for Radio 1 listeners when they get too old for Radio 1 is Radio 2 but The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s in His Kiss) by Cher, Solid by Ashford and Simpson and Walking On Broken Glass by Annie Lennox are not quite what I need in my life.

I have BBC 6 Music on virtually all day and sometimes during the evening, too, and on catch-up, and in the last half hour I have thoroughly enjoyed Get Lit (feat. George Clinton & D Smoke) by Kamasi Washington (so much that I want to buy his new album), Even Light by Nadine Shah (I do already have her album) and Disparate Youth by Santigold, about whom I know nothing. But interspersed with oldies from the likes of Blondie, Amerie, Lauryn Hill and LCD Soundsystem and I have plenty to be going on with. Lots of new stuff who next to no one else has heard of and some old stuff which everyone has.

Somewhat pretentiously, I have managed to persuade myself that because of my obsession with finding new music that I was somehow at the cutting edge. In classic pantomime mode, I can now say safely, oh no I’m not.

It’s a generational thing, isn’t it? When we’re young, we love the music of the day and when we’re old, new music isn’t as good as the music we used to listen to. I’m trying to avoid actively disliking the sort of thing you’d hear on Radio 1 so I suspect subconsciously I’m just avoiding it in order not to hate it. Or something.

It’s all a matter of opinion whether today’s music is better than yesterday’s, or vice versa, but in truth we live in the best era ever for music. That’s because we have access to all the music that has ever been made and easier, quicker and, sadly, cheaper access than ever. And if you ever catch me saying that there’s no such thing as bad music, apart from Queen, then just remember, I’m right.

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