Music for sort of old people)

08Apr07

Nick Hornby , who I adore, wrote a piece about Nelly Furtado. I read it in a music Granta issue, it might have come from The Believer and it is in The Nick Hornby Songbook.  Whatever its roots, he talks about people dismissing  pop music. He says ” I know too, believe me, that Cole Porter was “better’ than Madonna or Travis , that most pop songs are aimed cynically at a target audience three decades younger than i am, that in any case the golden age was thirty-five years ago and there has been very little of value since. It’s just that there’s this little song I heard on the radio, and I bought the CD, and now I have to hear it 10 or 15 times a day…”  OK enough plagerizing. He was talking about Nelly Firtado. I am at the moment totally obsessed with Amy Winehouse . She is younger than either of my children yet I feel as if she is my find. I ran four miles listening to a rotation of Back to Black and Tears Dry on Their Own. I was so happy to be listening to her heavy accented voice. She has horns , I am married to a trumpet player so that is important and it is just what I want to hear. Hornby goes on to say something about knowing he should like opera or world music  but…

People often look amused when I tell them what music I like to listen to. They give condescending  looks to my tales of being the oldest person in the audience and of trying to find someone to go out with (the previously mentioned spouse hates most music I like. he is into JAZZ)

 I still listen to music in the adolescent ways of we who grew up with records. It is interesting to me that Ipods let you  do what singles did in my long ago teens; listen over and over until you know it the way you should know the Gettysberg address. Popular songs get internalized and recalled in a way nothing else does for me.

I am not sure how I discovered Amy Winehouse. It was before Back  to  Black came out. I may have read about her first. I listen to the radio some but not as often as I would like. I find myself reading about music and then going to have a  listen. How weird is that? Sight to sound but it is the way I discovered her and the Perniece Brothers and Ivy. In any case I am seeing her in a month and cannot sit still thinking about it.

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