Cassettes, iPods, Cliff Richard and Nicki Minaj

I discovered the musical wonder of the Top 40 and Countdown when I went to boarding school in the early eighties.  I reckoned (and still do) Cliff Richard’s Wired For Sound was the best. I’d been raised on a musical diet of my mother’s tastes - Glen Campbell, Maureen McGovern, Helen Reddy and The Carpenters - which I played over and over. 

    Chart music was so refreshing because it was refreshed each week with new songs.  So it’s easy to understand how I developed a curious fascination with the ever-changing musical scene. There was Rick Sprnigfield’s, Jessie’s Girl, Eddie Rabbit’s, I Love A Rainy Night and Kim Carnes’, Bette Davis Eyes.   

     In fact, some of the soppy ones were almost unbearable like Kenny Rogers’, Lady, Air Supply’s, The One That You Love, Leo Sayer’s, More Than I Can Say (please cut your hair) and Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross crooning Endless Love. But the main thing was they weren't on the charts for too long.  There was always something else around the Top 40 corner.

     I didn’t necessarily like the music, but what interested me most was the inane-ness of the lyrics.  Few of the lyrics made sense to me and I knew it wasn’t because I was young and naïve.  They were simply absolute nonsense created by artists who were having nothing more than a jolly good time. Think of Whip It by Devo.

     Whip it. Now whip it good. I said whip it.  As an adult I am now wondering if the lyrics had some arcane and meaningful connection to those funny bowl hats and a cult.

     Here’s another one.  Justcan’tgetenough,justcan’tgetenough,justcan’tgetenough by Depeche Mode.  Those lyrics made lucrative songwriting look easy.

    Never in the eighties did I hear an expletive in the songs.  Remember, there was no internet so if we wanted the lyrics we grabbed a pen and paper and played the cassette, pressed Stop, scribbled furiously, rewound the cassette and played, pressed Stop and wrote and so on.  Perhaps the naughtiest song was The J Geils Band and the reference to pornography in Centrefold. 

     I am now thinking, I may have misinterpreted the words considering the audio quality of cassettes was so poor and there may have been some swearing.

     My interest in chart music waned in the early nineties and picked up again in the mid-noughties when TK started buying So Fresh CDs.  I assumed lyrics would be equally as brainless as those of my youth and I was in a state of blissful denial about the chart music TK and then Sutchy then Seffy started listening to.  I considered it such awful music I simply tuned out. 

     About five years ago I became aware how frequently swearing features in music, not to mention the denigration of women in many rap numbers.  I found I needed to relax on the swearing front mainly because if I wanted to vet the music I’d first have to work out how to operate one of those small electronic musical devices the size of a AAA battery and then I’d have to listen to the tuneless twaddle.  I never managed it.

     Recently I was reminded of why it’s a good thing to monitor what your children are listening to and I mean 10 to 15 year olds, assuming younger children are disinterested in the chart scene.

     During the school holidays we were eating lunch.  The kids munched on sandwiches and Tony and I, a bean salad.  I was lauding the merits of beans and pulses to the kids.       Savannah and Seffy started singing, Beans and pulses, I’m over-eating, beans and pulses, I’m over-eating.

     I was filled with pride at their musical and poetic genius.  They could teach those song writers of the early 80s a thing or two.

     ‘Girls,’ I said, ‘that is so clever.  Did you just make that up?’

     They shook their heads.  

     ‘It’s a Nicky Minaj song,’ said one of them.

Nicki Minaj

     For the uninitiated, Nicky Minaj of Super Bass fame is none other than a singer who appears to have been artificially created with straw-like hair, artificially inflated lips and breasts and a Barbie doll vacuousness.  In fact, she is a bride of Frankenstein in the film clip of Turn Me On. And yeah, yeah, I understand she is very talented and/or very marketable.  Whatever, she is not the sort of role model I want for my daughter.

     So when the girls said they were inspired by a Nicky Minaj song, my stomach turned.

     ‘What were the real lyrics?’

     ‘Pills and potions, we’re over-dosing.’

     I suspected a reference to drugs, but even after I checked out the lyrics on the internet (it's quick and easy these days) I wasn’t sure because there was such a mish-mash of pills and potions, over-dosing, ain’t, nigga, luv and yo! 

     I appreciate it is a chart sensation, but it’s just not good material for 11 and 12 year old girls even if most of it goes straight over their heads. 

     If only my daughter would listen to simple, brainless, upbeat music like Xanadu by Olivia Newton-John or Our Lips Are Sealed by The Go Gos?  Or Wired For Sound?

   It then occurred to me that maybe the stuff I listened to and wrote off as inane might have had sinister, debaucherous, drug-fuelled, seditious and mysoginist undertones that went straight over my head.  I always thought Cliff Richard was too squeaky clean to be real.  I need to youtube Wired For Sound and get to the bottom of this.