Watching today’s Christmas Top of the Pops turned me briefly into my grandfather, who probably saw Frank Sinatra as being every bit as threatening and dangerous as the Sex Pistols later did when interviewed by Bill Grundy. Whilst I had heard of many of the acts, there were a good few of whom I knew nothing. “All this modern music,” I found myself thinking, “sounds exactly the same!” Then, I realised that everything had changed. I had changed, the music had changed, the years had gone by, people hardly ever bought singles anymore, TOTP was on once a year, I never listen to Radio One. It’s not them; it’s me.
Some of the music featured was samey and generic, but then it always was. The difference back in…ahem…my day was that I knew who the samey and generic artists were. I knew T Rex from Slade, Showaddywaddy from the Rubettes.
Today, I knew upper class Corbynistas Clean Bandit, who happen to make decent music, despite their dubious political preferences. And there was the excellent Rudimental. I knew them too. And Years and Years. By the end of the programme, I reckoned I liked as much as I ever liked on Christmas TOTP. For every classic, there was always a There’s No One Quite Like Grandma.
TOTP is not for old people like me. There was a time when it was, which happened to be when the show, like Radio One, was presented by dinosaurs like Mike Read, DLT and Simon Bates, all of whom would look horribly dated these days on Radio Two. I know this for a fact because Steve Wright, who became famous in that era, is still on Radio Two today and he’s worse than ever.
TOTP is probably not for young people either because many, of not most, of them obtain their music in different ways. We didn’t have the (legal) music stealing service Spotify, for example (other legal music stealing outlets are available), or a a wide variety of other ways of hearing music.
People of a certain (old) age posted on social networks that music was essentially shit these days and obviously not as good as it used to be. This is utter garbage. In truth, today is the best time ever to listen to music because we can listen to everything that went before and we can listen to the veritable glut of new music that constantly arrives.
2018, as I shall argue later this week, was a vintage year not just for new music but for great new music. Loyle Carner, Louis Cole, Courtney Barnett, Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, 77:78, Christine and the Queens, Gaz Coombes. I can rattle of a list of names to carry into the New Year and I’d still be scratching the surface.
The truth is that TOTP should not be a show I sit down and enjoy any more than Radio One should be my first radio port of call. The demographic of Radio One was always mainly among young people, apart from the era as described above when the station took leave of its senses, and it’s back there, hopefully to stay.
I’d like to see much more music on the telly, featuring as many different genres as possible, but this won’t be easy. The days are long gone where people knew what was in the charts or even the number one single. I’ve been in that group for many years. But I still listen to more new music than I ever did.
Music is changing, as is the way we consume it. TOTP, I feel, no longer reflects the music scene in Britain and that’s why it’s only on once a year. But if you thought the music was nothing but noisy, generic rubbish, just remember what your elders thought when the Beatles came along. All that’s happened is that you have turned into them.
