Radio Wave Pollution

I’ve been listening a lot to mainstream radio again recently for the first time in a long while, and have been relatively unimpressed with what I’ve heard. It’s been many moons since I was even aware of who was where in the singles charts, but since having listened to a station playing top ten singles to an obnoxious and repetitive level, I have slowly started to become embittered towards pop music.

Now as you probably (or don’t) know I have never been a person completely driven by mainstream tastes. I sit on an awkward fence between mainstream and subculture a lot of time; which often means I’m criticised by both the subculture mob for having mainstream music tastes, and vice versa, the mainstream posse lambast my taste for being too subversive.

In any case, sod what they think. I listen to music for the music not for the scene and anyone who does follow music for a fashion is an exclusive member of club stupid.

Here’s a brief rundown of some annoying types of music that are gracing the top ten singles charts at the moment.

Rich people wishing they were poor people who wished they were rich:


It seems because we are in recession at the moment lots of bands are singing about how it sucks to be poor; which is seemingly at odds with their apparent wealth as a singer of overplayed music. It really couldn’t be more patronising, as it seems to tap into some romantic notion that being poor is somehow credible, like it’s the latest fashion and can be dropped when tastes change.

In many ways it’s A bit like a group of Oxfordshire socialites moving to a sinkhole estate in London and pretending to be bohemian, or the sort of thing I observe kids doing in my area, where with the power of imagination they seem to have turned a conservative middle class suburb into a ghetto – their words not mine - filled with pretend gangsters.

Also it’s patronising enough on its own if someone is pretending to be poor because it’s in fashion, but when they pretend to be poor whilst aspiring to be rich, despite being rich, you do lose patience with them.

Silky voiced Cocknobs:

Another problem with much of the music in the top ten (as ever) is that there seems to be a large proportion of castrati voiced males, whose career perpetually seems to be two days away from retirement, because to be honest boy bands have a short shelf life. As flavours of the month, they are beloved by shallow twelve year old girls and even shallower forty plus cradle snatching women, who have the delusional belief that they like the music; when really it’s a thinly veiled excuse for ogling well sculpted men with orgasm inducing vocals – I’m sure most boy band members are wise to this fact also.

Dance Bilge:

Now these have left me mystified since age eleven, when after one summer of being into dance music I immediately went off it realising it was a repetitive tune on a loop with moronic lyrics about, “being in love with a drumbeat,” or some such rubbish. There are almost always always suggestive lyrics alluding to some kind of fantastical club/orgy venue; that seem to exist solely in the minds of morons. In this world (if the music videos are believed) everyone on the planet is a posing, gyrating twat, kinky uniforms are compulsory in all public services and unattractiveness has been outlawed. That is of course save for a small proportion of conscientious objectors who are made –perhaps by the law of this preening master race - to look uncomfortably geeky. These portrayals are generally about as subtle as a prize winning marrow being used to cut a plank.


Indie-er than thou:

Yep every so often there comes along a band that is a contradiction, in that they embody sub cultural values and looks, yet are clearly a mainstream band. Whether they are just being overplayed on the radio or are genuinely of the opinion that from a trilby hat an indie band is made, they are irritating. This is made even more painful by all the fans of the above types of music that I’ve described, becoming convinced that they are suddenly have a varied and discerning musical taste for liking something seen as non-mainstream (I call it the Green Day or Kings of Leon effect – going to show that it works with already established bands).

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