Why do I tend to hate old songs more than anything I have ever hated?
Because I have heard them before. The limited number you get played on the “gold” radio stations, or at an oldies night in a pub, or in a jukebox, or on compilation CDs are all drawn from the same safe batch of say 2,000 songs. I have heard those 2,000 songs. I don’t want to hear them any more. Please take them away.
Some songs are worse than others. Take Stairway to Heaven, my pet hate. Now, when it first came out it was wonderful. I probably queued to buy the album. I probably played it non stop for weeks and weeks (well, the whole album). But as the years passed, other stuff also came along and I wanted to listen to that too. Instead of playing other stuff, stations (well, Radio Caroline, or Nicky Horne on Capital) would keep playing this bloody Stairway to Heaven. What made it worse was the morons who wrote in with their top 3s or top 10s. Radio Caroline would play the listener’s top 10 in full. What was always number one? Bloody Stairway to bloody Heaven.
So, a song that was really nice in 1971 when it first appeared, got very boring within a few years. By 1976, five years on, it was already too much. People who were no longer listening to new music were now stuck listening to this bloody song. In 5 years I had probably heard the damn thing 10–15 times a week, week in week out. That’s nearly 4,000 times, plus however many times I’d heard it when I really liked it. Maybe it adds up to 6,000 times.
Yes, granted, as time slowly moved on, the amount of times I heard it a week reduced (thank god), and I manipulated myself into a position to stop hearing it (like switching off the radio every time it came on), but I must have still been in a situation where I was hearing it at least once or twice a week, possibly more. By 2005 I must have heard the damn thing over 15,000 times.
Now, why on earth would any sane person want to listen to one thing over 15,000 times?
Ok, moving on from Stairway to Heaven to other more poppy oldies that don’t last so excruciatingly long. Take a song. Any song. When will I see you again – The Three Degrees. Didn’t like it 30 years ago, yet it gets used because of the words in a lot of situations, and it’s played on high rotation on oldies stations as if it was the only song the Three Degrees ever made. How many times have I heard that song in those last 30 years? Probably a heck of a lot more than Stairway to Heaven. 20,000 times maybe?
Now then. Multiply this by all the others that just keep being played again and again and again. Rock Around the bloody Clock. Damn Elvis songs. Again and again and again. They won’t go away. They’re even re-releasing the bloody things to hype them into the charts.
As I say, it’s like a hard core of maybe 2,000 songs that I’m being exposed to again and again and again, meaning that at a very conservative guess over the last 35 years there’s 25 million plays of songs I really don’t want to keep hearing, that I just keep hearing.
I can avoid them by not listening to radio stations that play them (although general all-purpose stations like Capital FM will wait until I can’t get to the off switch and suddenly play one, the bastards). But I can’t avoid these evil songs when they are on bloody muzak systems in public places, or coffee bars, or at people’s homes, etc., etc. They always have a way of finding me and getting into my ears.
Meanwhile, I do have an interest, as I always have, in new music. I don’t really have a lot of space in my brain, and in 1971 when Stairway to Heaven first came out and was new music, indeed a new concept, and a new style, not just a new song, I listened excitedly and I loved it. But new music continued to come out. It never stopped. I continued to listen to it, and I wanted radio stations to play it. However, they played less and less new music, because there was no room. Their airtime was jam packed with bloody oldies. The same bloody oldies. Again and again. Bloody Stairway to bloody Heaven.
To make matters worse, Radio Caroline, which had been a source of new music, changed into an oldies station. More bloody damn Stairway to bloody Heaven. (And don’t get me started on Freebird! I’m trying to contain myself just talking about Stairway to Heaven).
On average I probably listen to stuff for a maximum of 5 years then never ever deliberately listen to it again, with only a handful of exceptions. I will obsess about something when it comes out, and play it for months, then it slowly gets to the bottom of the pile, replaced by other stuff that I start to obsess about.
There will be exceptions to the rule, but in 1971 (back to Stairway to Heaven again!) I probably listened to the music that was new or current, and had little interest in stuff more than 5 or 6 years older. I’m the same in 2005. That’s why I hate the obsession the music and radio industry has with oldies.
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