Is Top Of The Pops Still On?

It seems a little like the theme this week may well be “cliched musings on age and the passage on time”. Well, I never claimed to be original. 
*does quick scan through last four hundred-odd posts* 
Nope, no originality here.

I love music. It’s great. While I do admittedly spend quite a bit of time on my standard commute listening to podcast/audio plays/etc., I still switch back to spending time just filling my ears with the sound of music*. My music tastes are varied and pretty hard to pin down but I probably default more to rock/indie, 60s soul or 70s funk most of the time (with plenty of other stuff thrown in too). Used to be that I was on top of the latest bands and knew most stuff that was out. A lot of this can be laid at the hands of MTV, back in the days when MTV was a music channel that played music videos.

I never really listened to the radio a huge amount but I devour music videos. As a youth, I could easily lose hours sucked into the rabbit hole of various music-based channels. I hesitate to use fusty old grandpa-ish saying like “golden age” (so I won't) but a number of the video directors I grew up watching went on to be the more interesting film  directors’ Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze were too of the real favourites (I defy you to watch Jonze’s Beastie Boys ‘Sabotage” and not want to fling yourself around dressed like the star of a cheesy 70s cop show).

Fast forward about twenty years and the way that I consume music is totally different. For the most part, I am the stereotypical middle-aged person who’s is no longer in touch with the music scene. I don’t listen to the radio at all anymore and, while I do listen to plenty on Spotify, it tends to be all music I’ve heard before. Occasionally, on their tailored daily mixes, freakishly and disturbingly accurately based on my music tastes, will suggest something new that I like but that is a rare occurrence.

I don’t even listen to albums the way that I used to anymore. Much like with having everything at your fingertips in the video streaming world, the availability of pretty much all the music I used to own within the one app means that I don’t have to sit through that whole album anymore. Get bored of a song? On to something else.

Is is a good or a bad thing? Musicians naturally would, I’m sure, argue that it’s a bad thing, that the art of curating the tracks on to an album in an order that presents a specific flow for the listener is no longer being adhered to. Consumers would, of course, argue that they are now in control of what they want to listen to, how and when. 

Me? I don’t know. All I know is that I’d like to find a way to get into new music again. Before I started ranting at youths about it not being music anymore and it all used to be better in my day….

*Although curiously not The Sound Of Music. I love a good musical (and often, sometimes even more so, a bad musical too) but that is one that leaves me cold. Just doesn’t do it for me. Oh, and Annie can fuck right off too.