Up until ten years ago, Rolling Stone would have a Top-10 list on its back page composed almost entirely of songs I was familiar with. As Hip-Hop, boy bands and pop princesses began to dominate the charts, I am increasingly unfamiliar with any of the top songs. Occasionally a cut by Norah Jones or the White Stripes will get some chart action, but for the most part I am out of touch with over 90% of all current popular tunes.
I may one day buy some rap CDs–I typically get on musical bandwagons 15 years after everybody else–but I can’t imagine the circumstances that would make me buy an album by the Jonas Brothers or Miley Cyrus. (I did buy a Cristina Aguilera disc a while back, but it was all retro Soul and Jazz tunes, not her typical fare.)
The music stopped for me in the late '80s. After that, I wouldn’t know a Green Day from a Mariah Carey, a Radiohead from a Dixie Chick, or an India Arie from a Lil Bow Wow Snoopy Dog Puffy Diddy Doo doo.
Interesting - that song is older than I thought. I don’t really remember that well the exact circumstances of hearing “Hey Ya” for the first time, but I do remember I watched the video at the same time, and it was something I did deliberately, thinking “now,* finally*, I am going to check out this song that I’ve heard so much about” Maybe it was Yahoo video or something like that.
It’s amazing to think there was a time before YouTube, it feels eternal. Now when I hear about anything pop-culture I can just fire up the Mac and look it up on iTunes or Hulu, but it wasn’t so long ago I was clunking along on an old PC with a crap video card and (gasp!) dial-up!
I had heard of Rhianna, but didn’t know any of her songs. Last week I was at the gym and they have a room set up like a screening room, with a big projection screen on one wall and about 20 ellipticals and treadmills in a semi-circle, and they show concert videos all day. So I went in to run the treadmill and they were showing a Rhianna concert film. I only knew it was her because they were flashing her name on the screen and the audience was holding posters with her name on them.
I didn’t recognize any of her songs, but I now know that she’s rather easy on the eyes.
Well try to look at it like this, for those of you who don’t listen to radio now.
Are there songs you should’ve known but somehow missed when you were listening to the radio.
For instance Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You, was everywhere, I even heard little kids screeching “And I I I I I I I I I I will always love you…”
That would be a song that was just about everywhere.
So if you don’t listen to music now, were there songs, whenever you used to listen to music, that you probably should’ve heard.
I heard a short clip of this on NPR recently. That’s it.
It’s kind of a relief. In Bulgaria, they play this kind of music EVERYWHERE (grocery stores, restaurants, cafes, buses) and I heard every single pop song from 2006-2008 a thousand times. I am fucking SICK of Rihanna.