If I needed a reminder that I haven't kept up with today's music, hereunder the proof -- the top ten songs downloaded from the net in 2008:Rank Song Artist
1 Low Flo Rida Featuring T-Pain
2 Bleeding Love Leona Lewis
3 Lollipop Lil Wayne Featuring Static Major
4 I Kissed a Girl Katy Perry
5 Viva La Vida Coldplay
6 Love Song Sara Bareilles
7 Apologize Timbaland Featuring OneRepublic
8 No Air Jordin Sparks Duet With Chris Brown
9 Disturbia Rihanna
10 4 Minutes Madonna Featuring Justin Timberlake
Source: Nielsen
Not only didn't I download any of these, I cannot claim to have even heard of most of the artists, much less heard these songs. Yeah, I know who Madonna and Timberlake are; Coldplay, and because we have the last name and she's being flacked for the Grammy Awards, Katy Perry.
Even heard of Lil Wayne, but there was a time when I knew all the artists and songs that graced the top forty, and if I didn't know all the words to each, could fake it well enough to sing along.
Move over, T-Rex ...
I'm familiar with 8 of the 10 but not at all sad that I really only care for 2 of them.
ReplyDeleteThe rest of them? That's why I have satelite radio and 12 presets.
Oh, favorite Satelite station?
HAIRNATION baby. Even then I only like 70% of that.
Now if there was more Perry stuff available on audio.......
Just finished reading Tommyland by Tommy Lee. Not even worth the paper. Of all the rock bios, by far the worst and I'm a drummer. Very disappointed.
Just to clean my brain I'm starting on some Gordon Dickson and Steven Brust (another good Steve!) tonight.
Maybe it's not about being a Fossil so much as about the quality of today's "music".
ReplyDeleteNah, I won't go there, viz the quality argument. My father was a big band man, and his thoughts on rock and roll and pop music past the 1940's was that it was crap.
ReplyDeleteMy grandmother thought swing was trash, she liked classical, and thought Blue Tango was risque.
I never talked to my great-grandparents about it, but I suspect they didn't think much of their daughter's musical choices.
I used to tease my children about what they liked on MTV in the 70' and 80's, and, to be honest, no way did I think punk was any kind of improvement on the Beatles and Rolling Stones.
I'm not a fan of rap, but if I were young and black, I suspect I would be.
It's the music that you hear when your hormones rise that seems to do it for most folks.
If it's any consolation to you, I don't recognize many of those artists either.
ReplyDeleteHrm, but back when I was a youngin', I didn't know who the Top 40 artists were. So at least I have consistency going for me...
Like you I think I recognized two names and never heard any of the songs.
ReplyDeleteI try to avoid the quality matter mentioned by EmMick but when my 18 yo son reminds me how similar his tastes are to mine, I succumb.
I'd like to have a chat if you've the inclination and time---related to your Yoda relationship to Rory. My email is klkeough@gmail.com
Very cool blog and extraordinary ball busting skills.
"It's the music that you hear when your hormones rise that seems to do it for most folks."
ReplyDeleteI think that sentence nails it for most people. Also after becoming an adult one thinks about other things and music typically moves to a back burner and we stick with what we're comfortable with.
My case is a little different because my interest in belly dance (and dancers) led me to Middle Eastern music, and my wife is part of a Brazilian samba band, so I hear lots of new stuff - just not pop.
I was pretty much a rock pop 40 fan as a kid. When I started trying to play the guitar, I developed an interest in classical music, and later, fingerstyle playing, and that included rock, pop, blues, and country. Can't pull off jazz -- too hard -- but I can appreciate it for how intricate it is.
ReplyDeleteMy view of music is much like it is of art -- drawing, painting, sculpture. If I think I could do it without any training, it doesn't impress me. Not to say there isn't a lot of dynamic stuff out there that looks easy, but if a chimp throwing paint at a canvas wows critics, it doesn't do anything for me. Norman Rockwell? Yeah. Even Picasso, because he went off in a new direction, he could palint portraits that looked like photographs -- look at the one he did of his grandmother when he was a teenager. If you can do that and choose not to, it's not the same as putting a vacuum cleaner under a plexiglas box and calling it art ...
I've listened to a lot of punk over the years -- if I had to pick never listening to either punk or the Beatles, for the rest of my life, punk would get the axe.
ReplyDeleteBut the Stones? Not even close. Not only would I not trade all my punk for the Stones, I wouldn't even trade Social Distortion for the Stones.
Yeah, but you're a young punk yourself, and while you can look on the Beatles as classic geezer rock because they were really good at it, the Stones were the bad boys of my era. Those opening riffs for "Satisfaction?" or "Honky Tonk Women" are memorable and part of my culture. Not wanting to be an old fossil when my kids were little, I listened to what had come along to replace hippie rock -- even the horror of Disco --and I can't recall anything that stuck with me there except maybe the opening for "Kung Fu Fighting" and "Stayin' Alive" that came remotely close.
ReplyDeleteNothing in Punk, which was back to basic three-chord rock and didn't have much in the way of, well, musicality ...
Well, I'm a good bit younger than you, Steve, and I must confess that excepting Madonna and Timberlake I've never heard of anyone in that list, and I've never heard anything by Timberlake. So... it's not just age.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell, the older generation is supposed to think the younger generation dresses weird and listens to music that sucks. And I have to say that sometimes that does seem to be the case. But hell, I'm even older than Steve Perry and can remember the days when you could meet girls if you knew three guitar chords. Well, you still can; it's just that the girls have gotten a little older, too.
ReplyDelete