This Aint News

I was chatting to Shanus the other week about turning 30 this year and it inspired me to write this.  No reviews in this edition, just some musically based musings.  Anyway, I'm paraphrasing but he said something along the lines of, "Everything you thought was cool was 10 years ago" and it got me thinking.  First I was reminded of something Abe Simpson told Homer in a flashback from the classic episode Homerpalooza:


  The tragedy is that for a lot of people this true.  For most people above 30 music had a golden age that has now passed; ask them when it was and whatever decade they tell you I guarantee they were aged 16-24 at the time.  This is no coincidence and I'm always surprised that more people can't see past this.  When you're 16-24.  That's when you were cool, right? 

Well what does this actually mean?  It means that you were in the key marketing demographic for the music industry.  Music was made, produced and most importantly marketed to you and your generation.  Once you passed out of that age range, you no longer belonged.

I've always been fascinated by this subject; how Capitalism and it's wretched offspring of PR and Marketing have affected society and our mental wellbeing.  I work for a major high street retailer that owns several brands, each targeted at a different age demographic.  Out of all of them, only the young fashion brand turns a healthy profit, enough to keep all the other brands going.  This should come as no surprise; everywhere you go older women are dressing younger and younger and conversley young girls are dressing older.  The media like to focus on the latter, the sexualisation of children as they call it.  It seems fairly obvious what's really going on.  We're only a few thousand years evolved out of our tribal, nomadic roots and we can't keep up with the pace of change.  The modern world is frightening, alienating place for our paleothic brains.  Everyone wants to be in the key demographic, not too old or too young.  Everyone wants to belong.


Anyway, back to the music.  My point is, there was never a golden age for music.  Music is as good and as terrible as it has always been.  Sure, there's a lot more music nowadays and a lot more crap to wade through but I truly believe the ratio never changes.  I can actually see things starting to change.  Thanks to the internet, the gradual sidelining of the music industry and the availability of portable mass storage mp3 players, kids these days seem a lot less discriminating in their musical tastes than in previous generations.


So yeah, with that in mind I present this editions playlist.  I've assembled
a list of great songs, one from every decade since the 1920s.  I would have have gone back further but I don't have anything older (perhaps Fido can help?).  If you feel obliged post your own selections in the comments.

Enjoy:

1920s



1930s



1940s



1950s



1960s



1970s



1980s



1990s



2000s



And something brand new: