Imprint After

unidentified compact disc, Janesdead, 2005

I hate being subjected to Radio 1. Either my tastes have evolved considerably, or pop music's standards have dropped considerably. Yes I know, I'm twenty-three so that probably puts even me far outside its tweeny demographic; but I swear we've witnessed the idea of the musical composition known as a 'song' eaten from the inside out by the refrain. The refrain - often called the chorus - has always been the catchy part of a song, often where the hook resides. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the chorus came to form an entire song whereupon the hook ceases to be a means to catch the listener's ear and instead acts more like the little slots on a cheese grater. Coupled with a gratuitous looped sample being shouted over, the whole concoction shreds my eardrum over the course of three minutes.

That's not to say sampling isn't an art. Much like an averted disaster, no-one gets praised for doing it right. I spent years listening to Garbage's début album without realising they had sampled The Clash. Granted I hadn't yet got into The Clash, but even long afterwards I didn't realise until a while back I was looking through the liner notes and put the two together. In contrast, listen (if you can) to Madonna's 'Hung Up'. I had to look up the title because all anyone can recognise of it is the liberal ABBA sample. It would actually make more sense to refer to it as an ABBA song, as the bulk of it is that bloody woodwind flourish from 'Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)'.

Anyway, I presume Chris Moyles is still (seven years later) doing that segment where Comedy Dave tenuously links one non-playlist song to another old non-playlist song - if I recall correctly it was 'Tenuous Links'. After some annoying song of someone talking all over the (looped) hook from an INXS single and then some chatter, they played Christina Aguilera's 'Genie in a Bottle'. Call me hypocritical for having just bashed contemporary popular music, but I actually enjoyed hearing that again. I remember at the time I found Aguilera on the good side of meh, and more agreeable (in context) than Britney Spears, whom the other guys in school were almost openly masturbating over in public, if not fawning. In fact, I nearly started a fight when I dared to say Spears was not attractive - we were about fourteen years old at that time. Not that I found Aguilera attractive or even musically engaging. Indeed, the later 'Dirrty' [sic] was about as unengaging as a song about bodily secretions and hedonism can get, at which point I wrote her off as another sex-sold product in the vein of Spears.

However, I got a CD (Huge Hits 2000) for birthday or Christmas that year and Aguilera's 'What A Girl Wants' is one of the few tracks from it I've bothered to rip to my iPod. I genuinely did quite like that song at the time, though I probably would not have admitted it. 'Genie in a Bottle' was fairly passable for me at the time and still is, but something has changed. It's not the first song to undergo a shift in perception, it's simply the first I've been conscious of. The majority of songs I heard when I was growing up are long since forgotten. For the most part, if I liked it I would tape it during the Top 40 countdown on a Sunday night. There was a very small window in which I bought singles - wedged between not having enough disposable money to buy music and then having a developed sense of album-orientated musical tastes. As such, I've only got nine singles versus around one-hundred and thirty albums. It's the internet, so there's plenty of space for unnecessary detail:

1. Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl (1999)
2. DJ Jean - The Launch (1999)
3. Bob Marley vs Funkstar Deluxe - Sun is Shining (1999)
4. Primal Scream - Swastika Eyes (1999)
5. The Manic Street Preachers - The Masses Against The Classes (2000)
6. The Artful Dodger - Re-Rewind (2000)
7. Limp Bizkit - Take a Look Around [Theme From Missions Impossible 2] (2000)
8. Billy Bragg - Take Down The Union Jack (2002)
9. The Manic Street Preachers - There By The Grace of God (2002)

What infuriates me about my parents' music is the number of Best Of compilations. Especially when it comes to bands I've found through their vinyl collection, it bewilders me why they have relegated some great albums to the basement (until I rescued them from conditions down there) and instead preserved the hits on awful bargain-bin eighties "the Compact Disc will provide a lifetime of pure listening enjoyment" quality transfers of 7" cuts. Despite trumpeting the death of physical media distribution, I still buy CDs and DVDs. I've had enough unrecoverable hard drive crashes to know how easy it is to lose data - and I don't care how many backups I'm 'permitted' to make with downloads. Unfortunately this probably leaves me predisposed to buying crappy nostalgic compilations in a few years.

That's really what it is - nostalgia. Pop music is often generic and disposable and the only way it ever gains any cultural or personal meaning is the context the listener remembers it. When 'Genie in a Bottle' came on I wasn't thinking about the song, never mind listening to it. I was remembering June 1999 when one of the music channels became free on cable. I was waiting on a lift to the park to play football and I can still clearly recall watching the video for that and 'Beautiful Stranger', the summer sun coming in through the curtains. Whilst Doctorvee has found joy in a song he previously disliked, thus far I've only had a slight change of opinion in a song I was largely indifferent to. If Churchill's words are anything to go by, getting older means becoming more conservative. I love the 90s.

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