Growing up in the 60s and 70s, there was all manner of deprivation inherent in our post-war, baby-boom lives. Ok, we had sugar, all we wanted, so ‘sweets’ were hard currency back in that day. Also, soft currency, chewy currency and sherbet-flavoured currency. But if we liked a particular song, we had to either buy it (expensive), record it from a friend, once ‘cassettes’ had been invented, or wait for it to ‘come on the radio’. Which for a top 10 hit was easy, but for anything more… vintage, or an album track, you were in for the long haul waiting for that.

Being ever the visionary, I remember thinking: one day there should be a way of finding songs, which you don’t have to buy, perhaps pay for them by escaping from really annoying advert clips or something, and even see the video!!! I appreciate, for those historians among you, that the music ‘video’ didn’t arrive til about 15 years later, but I was brilliantly and precociously incisive.

So when YouTube came into my life, Mel’s life was thrown into a really noisy frenzy of 70s rock, 60s soul, 80s punk and anything else you could play really LOUDLY.

Music didn’t stop in 1989, but I did. Other than the odd Nirvana track, Whitney Houston, a bit of Eminem and the first two Oasis albums (and NO MORE!), nothing past then was deemed ‘good enough’. Until Taylor Swift came along, obviously. And Adele.

I’ve known about Alicia Keys for ages. Since she started, age 5 (so it seems) with her amazing voice and incredible song-writing talent. But by the usual circuitous route on Sunday I ended up in the 7 degrees of Alicia Keys. And I played ‘This girl is on Fire’. And I thought… its just brilliant. Then I played more. And more. And now she’s my favourite.

And that led to the next thought/realisation/question? Do I only love music when its played by truly beautiful people? As Alicia emphatically is. As Taylor Swift is. Even Kurt fucking Cobain was fairly gorgeous and pretty. David Bowie, Bryan Ferry, Whitney, Stevie (aaaahhhhhh) Nicks.

No! Definitely not. I love those people because of their immense contribution to their genre and their almost immeasurable talent. But then a shock. I adored Olivia Newton John. No fucking talent, couldn’t sing for shit, didn’t know a crotchet from a pair of satin pants, but… Olivia… Newton… John… Who became more a ‘volume right down’ kind of singer in my world.

Do beautiful people sing better than ugly ones? Well, Olivia doesn’t, for sure. And does this make me shallow? Perverse? Superficial and trivialising??? Probably.

But who cares?

Happy Monday

A xxxx