please empty your brain below
My music tastes got a shock to the system back in 2015. I had absolutely no idea who Ariana Grande was, then my two grand daughters stayed with me for 10 days. Let's just say I now know who she is.

Michael | 20.04.21 - 7:11 a.m. | #

Propose crowdfunding for DG to embed his version of "Hit Me Baby One More Time" in a future post.

Kevin | 20.04.21 - 7:15 a.m. | #

Your comment re age is apt. But for me, your 35 is 24, when I stopped being a student. A while back I read an interesting article that stated the obvious: as time goes by the opportunity for new music diminishes, it's all been done before. I've heard the odd song by Adele and Ed Sheeran and all I think is "so what". I think the problem is simple. Performers age and die but their recordings, especially since perhaps the 1950s, continue in pristine condition. New acts fill the live performance gap but find it harder to compete with the recorded archive.

J. | 20.04.21 - 7:22 a.m. | #

There is a fun game I play (which is in essence the same as this post) every time a new NOW compilation comes out.

Run down the track listing and score yourself 2 points if you know the song eg. You can hum or sing it.

Score yourself 1 point if you don’t know the song but you’ve heard of the artist. 0 points obvs if you don’t know the song or the artist.

Total up your score.

The track listings for all NOW complications are all on line, DG. I’ve plotted mine as a graph and shows a similar pattern to your grid above.

Want to compare NOW track knowledge though? I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours ...

Geofftech | 20.04.21 - 7:30 a.m. | #

As you say, the nature of popular music has changed. When I was young, all the music I could buy had to fit, on singles and albums, into WH SMith & Dave's Disks record shop. The industry, the top-100 structure, was all designed around this.

Kids today collectively listen to a far, far, wider range of music - genres and periods - than we did or could. And, actually, what I listen to has broadened - Dave's Disks didn't carry much Malian music!

Peter | 20.04.21 - 7:31 a.m. | #

So true, DG, so true...

deruf | 20.04.21 - 8:10 a.m. | #

I think the pop music industry went downhill when singers started using autotune from the late 1990's

John | 20.04.21 - 8:15 a.m. | #

Couldn't help but read this entire blog with the Homerpalooza episode of The Simpsons in my mind. Two quotes:

"I went to the record store today and they were playing all that music I've never heard of. It was like the store had gone crazy."

"I used to be with it, but then they changed what *it* was. Now what I'm with isn't *it*, and what's *it* seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you..."

BP | 20.04.21 - 8:21 a.m. | #

Was half expecting the punchline that DG is a massive Swiftie, and is really enjoying the new album (recorded out of spite!)

James Scantlebury | 20.04.21 - 8:21 a.m. | #

Same here DG, the effects of time on ones tastes and listening habits.

One aspect of modern pop “songs’ is the industrialisation of the writing process. Not individuals but teams each writing their little bit, the Max Martin approach. I like occasional examples but most of it is bland beyond belief. Homogenised, denatured, safe, dull. In the 60’s you expected artists to change, to innovate, not to rigidly stick to a successful formula. You might pull the same sound on a follow-up but not the third in the series. Now it’s the complete opposite. Artists are straght-jacketed by genre or their signature sound. Commercially successful by without interest.

An awful lot of pop has always been like that, instant, quick, disposable. But some artists have managed to sustain a commercial and artistic career. Watching Sky Arts the other night they were reviewing Elvis’s first album. Some tracks are nearly 70 years old. Heartbreak Hotel is 65, a pensioner in musical terms, yet 65 years before it was made puts you back to 1890, the very dawn of recorded sound.

Some current artists music might manage such longevity, though who they might be I couldn’t begin to tell you.

IanD | 20.04.21 - 8:25 a.m. | #

Maybe Douglas Adams rules about technology also apply to music, ie:
Anything that's released between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary you and anything released after you're thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

The end of mainstream music TV (or: top of the pops) may be a factor in your detachment. I'm impressed you can tell one Ed Sheeran song from another so not all is lost

Ian | 20.04.21 - 8:27 a.m. | #

I think you would really enjoy these three US articles:
music-challenge
song-decay
wedding-playlists

TomH | 20.04.21 - 8:28 a.m. | #

I can't agree with my namesake IanD about the sixties being less formulaic. That was the era of Phil Spector and Holland Dozier Holland, after all. That's not really any different to the Stock Aitken Waterman of the 80s or whoever today's equivalent is.

Ian | 20.04.21 - 8:30 a.m. | #

The big change for me was when I stopped driving. Most of my radio time was in the car, and although I still had some idea of pop music afterwards it was the start of the decline.

Chz | 20.04.21 - 8:41 a.m. | #

Take your point Ian. There was a difference between British approach and US approach. They did rely on a more distinct and repeatable "house sound".

I was thinking more that over here younger artists / bands were more willing to innovate. Though you still had your mainstream artists who charted big, especially the ballad singers.

IanD | 20.04.21 - 8:48 a.m. | #

The terms 'edgy' and 'urban' don’t only apply to current music. We share a very similar demographic, DG, and I do my household chores to a soundtrack of The Jam, Joy Division and The Stranglers, but then I am stuck in that great musical period of 1978- 82.

PJS | 20.04.21 - 8:51 a.m. | #

Got as far as 1988 before my first ??? - it was Robin Beck, who did a Coca Cola advert, then Sonia and New Kids on the Block in 1989, having checked on YouTube, this pair of songs seem to me to be interchangeable, so I've officially been like my parents for 32 years.

Still Anon | 20.04.21 - 9:42 a.m. | #

As per Michael, I had no idea who Ariana Grande was until le bombe. My graph would be similar but a little ahead by maybe three or four years. I think I did hear a song I liked in 2019 but nothing since and I have no knowledge of current music and I don't care.

Andrew | Homepage | 20.04.21 - 9:51 a.m. | #

Can really relate to this DG.
I am a bit older than you, but could probably draw a very similar graph to you and have similar sentiments to the other commentators.
Having children into music is interesting, as they both are very much into "my music" as well.
I suspect music is more diverse and fractured now than it was in earlier pop music eras.
If you want some current radical feminist punk, try out my daughters band Dream Nails!!

MikeK | 20.04.21 - 9:59 a.m. | #

You're so mainstream!
I always preferred music that hardly ever hit the charts and lost touch with the top 10 straight after school when peer pressure eased.

Which is ironic because I went on to work in the industry and had to artfully hide my blissful ignorance when I was tasked to edit a NOW-equivalent (non-UK) down to a 3min presentation for the head of Sony Music Europe. Still grateful to colleagues for their tips to not get me fired.

For me, charts = business, no clear correlation with artistic merit. But it clearly makes a lot of people happy and performs a few functions sociologically, which is great and reason enough to be a sizeable, appreciated industry.

commonliner | 20.04.21 - 10:14 a.m. | #

The only way to judge "chart music" is over time, will people still be listening and signing along to it in 20 years time, whether on Simon Cowell shows or spontaneously (e.g. "Don't Look back in Anger" after the Manchester bombings, or even as the basis of football chants)

As someone who stopped listening regularly to music radio a long time ago, it was the ending of Top of the Pops in 2006 which killed my knowledge of the charts. I used to record the programme and fast forward the songs I didn't like, thus managing to keep up to date in about 20 minutes a week!

Mikey C | 20.04.21 - 10:20 a.m. | #

Yes, it may have been re-released and sold very well in the 1990s as a result of the film "Ghost", and further sold in large numbers with the pointless Robson & Jerome's cover, but how is The Righteous Brothers' Unchained Melody anything but a 1960s song? Indeed, it was originally written in 1955 so even the famous version was itself a cover.

Arlu | 20.04.21 - 10:53 a.m. | #

I like to think that it's not my musical taste that is failing - it's the plateauing of music technology that's the problem. A century or more of wave - after wave - of unprecedented technological advances began to seriously tail off and plateau in the 90s. Recording, radio, tv, amplification, cassette, synths, CD, MTV.. the explosion of technology changes that drove extraordinary musical novelty and invention has become a trickle of minor innovation. The technology to build a holophonor, perhaps - could create a matching musical excitement. The past century has been unparalleled in human history. The next thousand years may be bland in comparison.

JP | 20.04.21 - 10:53 a.m. | #

No gradual decline for me - a transcontinental move in 1995 hit with a wall of red from then on!!
Though to be fair the yellows had been creeping in from the late 80s anyway.

My 20-something year olds don't listen to the chart rubbish - they have similar (good!) tastes as me.
In fact most of the new music I am exposed to comes from one kid who thinks "you might like mum!" He in turn is introduced to new music via Spotify's genre feature - you like this so you might also like this...

Cornish Cockney | 20.04.21 - 11:18 a.m. | #

The digital generation - my daughters among them - get very edgy with any song that has a run-in/intro before the vocal of over 15 seconds. The attention span has gone. Result: short, immediate, forgettable songs.

The decline of the band in favour of the soloist has also reduced variety. Talent shows and the expense of rehearsal/low-level live performance venues plus the ease of simulating instruments electronically probably play a part here.

David | 20.04.21 - 11:20 a.m. | #

My confession is that I discovered pop in the 1960s and my interest in contemporary music has gradually waned ever since. In fact I've increasingly left Radio 2 behind, let alone Radio 1. Scala and Smooth Radio are my thing these days!

100andthirty | 20.04.21 - 11:36 a.m. | #

Diamond Geezer seems to concentrate on specific music items recorded in some form by music 'professionals' i.e. by artistes. He does not seem to recognise that, particularly in the past, a lot of 'music' was in fact the background to advertisements, so within seconds of hearing it, the name of a product is what comes to mind.
Also, he has not realised that with the universal availability of TV, many people (myself included) no longer have a working radio

pierre | 20.04.21 - 12:08 p.m. | #

(sigh)

diamond geezer | Homepage | 20.04.21 - 12:15 p.m. | #

Thanks, TomH, for those interesting links. Have whiled away some time testing my song knowledge - far worse than I'd anticipated!

JJ | 20.04.21 - 2:09 p.m. | #

Oh yes, I do stumble onto an excellent contemporary song every now and then. I enjoy that in much the same way as in the 80s, which means listening until the mp3 wears thin. I do find it nearly impossible, though, to convince another person my age that it's a good song. That either means that my taste is still questionable, or it means that the brains of our generation get clogged one way or the other.

Turn it up. And kind regards from the country of Yello and Fiji.

Roland | 20.04.21 - 3:13 p.m. | #

My TV can broadcast a wide range of radio stations.

Ian | 20.04.21 - 4:06 p.m. | #

Born early eighties, really got into indie and alternative music in the mid-nineties when Britpop hit. Over the years my radio tastes moved from Radio 1 to Xfm to 6Music. Then about a decade ago I got my first smartphone with Spotify free for a year which, combined with using the tube more, meant this is now my primary way of listening to music.

In the last few years I've really struggled to find new music that appeals to me. I check out well reviewed stuff and end of year best of's but - like my Dad used to say twenty years ago - nothing seems to have a memorable tune these days.

I just resigned myself that this is what happens as you get older, except... in the last few years (2019 especially) I noticed that the headliners for music festivals seemed to all have got big fifteen to twenty years ago. Is this a sign that music tastes have fragmented so much that the only indie acts big enough to pull huge crowds are from another era, or is it actually true that for the first time in history older people are right and new music is rubbish?

Peter of London | 20.04.21 - 10:29 p.m. | #

I stopped listening to pop music when the pirate radio stations closed down in 1967. Radio One was of no interest, and I've been locked on to Radio 4 ever since.

Alex McKenna | 21.04.21 - 10:16 a.m. | #

I could do a fings ain’t wot they used to me about pop music (they ain’t), but I wonder if this is an aspect of a broader topic: at what age do we give up on trying to keep up...
- in fashion
- in hairstyles (though the hair gave up on me)
- in our understanding and use of tech
- in home decor
- in looking for new and exciting over old and familiar
Etc etc. Obviously, everyone is different on this. I am feeling on the cusp with tech, which will be a problem as it will continue to change at lightning speed for the rest of my life (at least 20 years with a following wind).

Philip | 21.04.21 - 3:07 p.m. | #











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