Old... are you ridiculed and fumed away
I know I go on about the Sound of... polls and how pernicious they are, but the 2011 edition has become a real tipping point for me. Consider first Jessie J (if that is indeed her real name): the video to demented debut single Do It Like A Dude succeeds in being simultaneously provocative and terrifying. The tired old chestnut of whether white middle-class kids should really be singing "do it like the mandem" like Yardies doesn't really concern me; that boat sailed long ago. But this tune, to borrow a phrase, is some next level shit. It seems designed to repel adults completely. Well that's fine, if this is what "the kids" are listening to nowadays then I'm happy to admit defeat - I hereby declare myself Old, and utterly baffled by a piece of popular music. It's actually something of a relief.
(Having said that, the follow-up Price Tag is a harmless bit of R&B, so perhaps Jessie's not so hardcore and is - gasp - just another major label tool after all.)
Also leaving me completely befuddled is James Blake. Seriously, it's an inside joke, right? There's some glacially slow synths with a bloke mumbling over the top of them... this does not come close to fitting my definition of actual music. He's meant to be rooted in dubstep, but that at least had ear-bashingly loud bass and doomy tones. This stuff is barely even there!
Blake is getting gushing reviews in all the quality press and is getting played on Radio 1 too... the world has gone quite barmy, I've decided. No, it's definitely not just me and my ageing process. Of course, everybody grows out of Radio 1 eventually - the mainstream, daytime-y bit at least. I still listen to the Chris Moyles podcast (apologies) but the rumblings have already started about him being too old for the demographic now so I can't imagine he'll be sticking around there indefinitely.
The problem is, one can outgrow Radio 1 but still not be ready for the onslaught of middle-aged MOR that forms the Radio 2 playlist. I loved Simon Mayo and Chris Evans when they were on Radio 1, and of course it would be foolish to expect them to be doing the same shows now as they did back in the day, but it still depresses me how cosy they now sound. I am not succumbing to full-blown fuddy-duddiness just yet.
Another big change is that I've started buying The Word magazine every month. Up until very recently, a combination of laziness and a misplaced sense of loyalty had kept me subscribing to Q, despite the headlong plunge in tone and quality from when I first started buying it circa 1999. Word is wonderful in many ways - proper quality writers covering the more interesting corners of popular culture. Still, a strong nostalgic streak runs through it, a longing for stuff that I'm far too young to have remembered first time around.
For example, I ended up skipping most of last month's lengthy Captain Beefheart piece. It was aimed squarely at folk who'd lived through his weirdness first hand, which is fine - the magazine knows its audience for this sort of article. But it simply bore no relevance for me whatsoever. Despite all its faults, at least Q provided me a way of keeping up with the latest developments in mainstream rock and pop, and its historical pieces were didactic enough not to exclude all but hardcore fans of the subjects.
When Q did CDs they mostly featured indie rock bands and if half the tracks didn't appeal to me at least they were in my ballpark. Word's monthly CDs are somewhat more diverse but seem to be wilfully swimming away from the mainstream, featuring all sorts of folksy, alt-country stuff and plenty of veteran artists who are purely niche concerns. The percentage of stuff I like remains about the same, it's just that listening to these CDs fills me with a sense of unease, like I'm becoming middle-aged before my time.
In summary, being unmarried and in one's 30s is pretty shit. Not being settled down yet means I have to make some sort of effort to get out and about, but my body is somewhat more resistant to my having fun these days, resulting in delightful new experiences such as two-day hangovers and irksome little post-run niggles which take forever to heal. Culturally I'm too old for the pop mainstream but I feel too young to abandon it altogether. It's a mess alright.
Gosh 9:30 already... well, time for bed.
(Having said that, the follow-up Price Tag is a harmless bit of R&B, so perhaps Jessie's not so hardcore and is - gasp - just another major label tool after all.)
Also leaving me completely befuddled is James Blake. Seriously, it's an inside joke, right? There's some glacially slow synths with a bloke mumbling over the top of them... this does not come close to fitting my definition of actual music. He's meant to be rooted in dubstep, but that at least had ear-bashingly loud bass and doomy tones. This stuff is barely even there!
Blake is getting gushing reviews in all the quality press and is getting played on Radio 1 too... the world has gone quite barmy, I've decided. No, it's definitely not just me and my ageing process. Of course, everybody grows out of Radio 1 eventually - the mainstream, daytime-y bit at least. I still listen to the Chris Moyles podcast (apologies) but the rumblings have already started about him being too old for the demographic now so I can't imagine he'll be sticking around there indefinitely.
The problem is, one can outgrow Radio 1 but still not be ready for the onslaught of middle-aged MOR that forms the Radio 2 playlist. I loved Simon Mayo and Chris Evans when they were on Radio 1, and of course it would be foolish to expect them to be doing the same shows now as they did back in the day, but it still depresses me how cosy they now sound. I am not succumbing to full-blown fuddy-duddiness just yet.
Another big change is that I've started buying The Word magazine every month. Up until very recently, a combination of laziness and a misplaced sense of loyalty had kept me subscribing to Q, despite the headlong plunge in tone and quality from when I first started buying it circa 1999. Word is wonderful in many ways - proper quality writers covering the more interesting corners of popular culture. Still, a strong nostalgic streak runs through it, a longing for stuff that I'm far too young to have remembered first time around.
For example, I ended up skipping most of last month's lengthy Captain Beefheart piece. It was aimed squarely at folk who'd lived through his weirdness first hand, which is fine - the magazine knows its audience for this sort of article. But it simply bore no relevance for me whatsoever. Despite all its faults, at least Q provided me a way of keeping up with the latest developments in mainstream rock and pop, and its historical pieces were didactic enough not to exclude all but hardcore fans of the subjects.
When Q did CDs they mostly featured indie rock bands and if half the tracks didn't appeal to me at least they were in my ballpark. Word's monthly CDs are somewhat more diverse but seem to be wilfully swimming away from the mainstream, featuring all sorts of folksy, alt-country stuff and plenty of veteran artists who are purely niche concerns. The percentage of stuff I like remains about the same, it's just that listening to these CDs fills me with a sense of unease, like I'm becoming middle-aged before my time.
In summary, being unmarried and in one's 30s is pretty shit. Not being settled down yet means I have to make some sort of effort to get out and about, but my body is somewhat more resistant to my having fun these days, resulting in delightful new experiences such as two-day hangovers and irksome little post-run niggles which take forever to heal. Culturally I'm too old for the pop mainstream but I feel too young to abandon it altogether. It's a mess alright.
Gosh 9:30 already... well, time for bed.
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