There are numerous indicators of impending old age. The unwelcome novelty of struggling to get out of your armchair after watching a TV show that your children wouldn’t be seen dead watching, the ankle injury you suffered over 40 years ago playing football prevents you from running 10 yards to catch a bus you subsequently miss and reading a review of a Wembley concert by pop superstar Dua Lipa and only knowing one of the songs in her setlist, which wasn’t even one of her hits. I appear to be turning into my grandfather, but hopefully without all the moaning about how things used to be so much better in the old days (they weren’t).
My obsession with music and specifically my ongoing search for new music has clearly not reached what one might refer to as modern day pop music. I am, of course, aware of Ms Lipa’s immense talent as a singer, songwriter and performer. It’s just that I am not regularly exposed to her music. I am at least 40 years too old to be listening to BBC Radio 1 and 40 years too young for the likes of Heart, Capital and Smooth which is where I would think her music would be found. Instead, I read the BBC website and find that she ‘performed some of her biggest hits: New Rules, Don’t Start Now and Dance The Night’. 70,000 fans shrieked with delight, as they should. I am merely living up to my out-of-touch old codger image. I don’t know any of them.
As well as performing other songs I don’t know, like Physical, One Kiss, New Rules and Levitating, the BBC reporter, one Mark Savage, seemed to betray his own age by leading his review not with Ms Lipa’s obvious brilliance, but by reporting that during the show she was joined by 1990s pop star Jason Cheetam, better known as Jay Kay, even better known as Jamiroquai, to perform his hit Virtual Insanity, the only Jay Kay song I know, presumably still with the faux American accent fitting a bloke who comes from … er … Lancashire. Just imagine if I’d been there. The only song I’ll have known all evening was one I could not stand by an artist I cannot stand.
If only to confirm my ignorance about modern pop music, I took a look at this week’s singles charts and, as expected, I didn’t know most of the songs, vaguely know a few others and I have to go all the way down to number 60 to find a song I know really well, Dire Straits’ Sultans of Swing.
It is a frightening realisation that despite my best efforts, I am becoming as unhip as it gets. How long until I am going to concerts ‘after the horse racing’ or struggling to get a ticket for Lionel Ritchie’s latest tour? Please God, if you are there (I know you’re not, really), please don’t let me descend into the world of Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Muse and other age appropriate music.
Dua Lipa is clearly not age appropriate music for me. She’s brilliant, one of the finest talents of her generation, but I’d look more than slightly ridiculous and indeed given the demographic of the crowd, subject to arrest. If I went to a gig featuring Jay Kay, I’d expect to be sectioned.
I think I’ll try to live out the autumn – or is it winter? – of my life without pretending to be what I’m not, which is a young whippersnapper and concentrate on the things I actually do like rather than the things I feel I should. Apologies to Ms Lipa, and all that, but for all your brilliance, I’m more likely to listen to some crusty old rock band than your clearly excellent work. I think you can probably manage without me, sadly.
