Rachel Johnson’s Golden Oldies

What is the difference between literary or popular fiction? Let me tell you, therefore saving my rant about women’s writing being categorised as ‘chick lit’ for a rainy day. (I cheered when an academic recently argued that the oeuvre of Jilly Cooper should be studied at university in his long review of Mount! – a title which is both an order and the surname of this magazine’s editor).

The difference is not seriousness, importance, or even quality. It’s sales. The most bankable, bestselling authors are almost always the worst writers.

Wilbur Smith, Dan Brown, Jeffrey Archer, Stieg Larsson – I pray none are subscribers – are awful ‘wordsmiths’. Only a handful of world-class storytellers, among them Jo Nesbo, JK Rowling and Stephen King, can actually write.

With pop music there is a key difference. The authors I’ve listed hook you in on the first page and then deliver plot, lickety-split. But their output is clunky and naff. It does not bear re-reading, despite being unputdownable. I skim to the end, only because I want to know what happens; then hurl the book across the room, cursing, ‘Four hours of my life I will never, ever get back!’

The artistic output of musicians – especially when it comes to ‘party music’ – has an addictive, transcendent quality that never stales, like the work of PG Wodehouse, however cheesy it is.

The more we like it, the more we want to hear it, like a toddler repeatedly watching Thomas the Tank Engine. It hits the sweet spot every time.

While there are no longer novels everyone has read, there can be few people alive today whose toes don’t tap to the Beatles, Michael Jackson, the Rolling Stones’ ‘Brown Sugar’, Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ or the Bee Gees.

I’m a premium subscriber to Spotify, the streaming music service that ‘curates’ (SORRY!) playlists for every situation and mood (heartbreak, office, indie roadtrip, rock workout, classical commute, etc). It has a great ‘party classics’ stream, where recent smash hits from the charts rub shoulders with timeless songs from the dawn of popular music.

There’s Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison, Marvin Gaye, The Jackson 5, Little Richard, Ben E King, Billy Ray Cyrus, alongside Jay-z, Daft Punk and the Veronicas.

Spotify shows that party classics, many decades old, are enjoyed by centenarians and millennials alike. Pop is the soundtrack to the lives of everyone born in the past seventy years – ie most of us – not just the ipod generation.

Noël Coward puts it best in Private Lives, when Amanda meets her exhusband by moonlight. They are both newly married to other people, and he confesses he still loves only her. ‘Extraordinary how potent cheap music is,’ she observes, changing the subject.

Cheap music is potent, floor-filling, while cheap lit is more like fast food – unsustaining pabulum.

So put on your red shoes and dance the blues, readers. It’s party time.