If it's true that you're supposed to spend your year...

[jennaria]

...the way you spent your midnight - well, okay, let's be reasonable and stretch it out to the fifteen minutes on either side of midnight - then I am going to spend 2011 sitting and watching TV with both old friends and new, being rather confused by why Dick Clark looks more like an Egyptian mummy than a regular human being, why there is a small boy there and how he is not staring at not!Lady-Gaga's bright blue sequin underpants (and why she isn't all over goosebumps), and who these other people are and why they're supposed to be the most amazing next music Thing ever. (With perhaps a passing thought for how Fergie wasn't popping out of her dress. At least I knew who she was.)

I will cheerfully give up the musical confusion part. (Seriously, why does so much current Top 40 suck so bad?) And I suspect I don't want to know what's up with Dick Clark. But the friends part I can deal with. :-D

Next up: wrestling my room into something resembling decent shape. Wheeefun. ...but possibly sleep first. :thud:

Comments

[stranger]

why does so much current Top 40 suck so bad?

This has been a question in my mind since "Crimson and Clover" monopolized the 60s airwaves for months when I was in high school, during the era -- could it be coincidence? -- that I felt most dissociated from everything teenagers then were supposed to like. I retreated *hard* and got two degrees in classical music before I could admit that some highly popular music (late Beatles, for instance) might possibly have some merit. This does not prevent a good 39.9 out of any given top 40 from being crap. I'm guessing that the test of time, i.e., is this song good for anything but supporting a glittery dance sequence, can't be applied until after its Top-40-ness is over. And then it's too late.

[jennaria]

To be fair, the biggest problem I find with Top 40 is just that if you're unfortunate to be listening to a station with that focus, you hear the songs over and over and over again, to the point where you start to hate even the songs you sorta liked to start, and the songs you didn't like... (See also: Thia's continuing determination to find every copy of 'Hey Ya' in existence and fire them into the center of the sun.)

On the other hand, I grew up with mostly classical music, folk music, and church hymns as my musical influences, and this has not stopped a sneaking fondness for 80s pop despite the fact that I didn't really listen to it during the 80s. So my musical tastes are possibly suspect.

[syzygis]

Thanks for reminding me about the month I spent in sergeants' training, where it wasn't the Top 40 on the radio, more like the Top 4. 2/3 of the way through the month, they finally got around to switching to a different 4 songs. But I still change the station if one of those tunes comes on....

[stranger]

The repetition is a big part of the problem, true.

And, hee. I was presently introduced to heavy metal, which after Wagner and Richard Strauss and a lot of atonal early 20th-century music, had a sort of quaint charm akin to hearing the folk tunes underlying the great Bach cantatas.

On the other hand, I would be happy to assist you in deep-sunning certain former pop hits.