Today’s music might be bad, but then again it always was
Was music ever really better than now? The ascent of a 37-year-old Kate Bush song to number one suggests it was.
Don’t believe it teenyboppers. Just try to be polite when an oldie mentions “real music”.
Miss Bush excepted, most people around my age haven’t the faintest idea what’s in the current hit parade.
This somehow fails to deter them from asserting what a load of old rubbish it all is.
It was ever thus. Kate Bush was roundly ridiculed when she first warbled Wuthering Heights in 1978.
She was very different and therefore not worth listening to; according to the older generation of the time.
Now that most of the people who scoffed back then and said she was no Dorothy Squires are, let’s face it, dead, Kate Bush is a genius.
It just takes time.
Frank Sinatra eventually admitted he was wrong about The Beatles and recorded their songs.
If today’s charts are mainly comprised of (let’s be generous) forgettable music, interspersed with the occasional pearler, then please remember; they always were.
When Running Up That
Hill peaked at number three in 1985, it shared the top 20 with teeth clenchers like Tarzan
Boy, Say I’m Your number One, I Wonder If I Take You Home by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam (no, me neither) and Bonnie Tyler’s excruciating Holding Out For a Hero.
So, to the many, many teenagers who loyally read this column and are subject to parental mockery for their musical taste, ignore it.
It’s a rite of passage and a silly one at that.
There is only ever a finite amount of great talent, but the charts and airwaves have to be filled somehow.
For every Chuck Berry, Beatles, Smiths, Stones, Clash, Who, or Marvin Gaye, there was a hundred Showaddywaddies or Kajagoogoos.
The dross gets forgotten. It’s the same now, so just listen to what you like.
But remember young ‘uns, when you’re telling your kids in decades to come that their taste is awful and they’d be better off listening to real music like (insert name of currently popular act), then remember, I told you that the day would come.