Rules and stereotypes, the twin evils of our lives. The enemies of a true and free-thinking existence. Yet they are so entrenched. So were you to hear that the Queen is really into reggae, but the early, hardcore, Jamaican stuff, you’d be shocked. (She’s not, she’s actually into punk and likes spitting in her private mosh-pit at the palace). If you learned that Mike Tyson relaxes with counter-cross stitch tapestries whilst listening to Gilbert & Sullivan you wouldn’t believe it. Should it be announced that Kate Moss spends her evenings studying particle physics and loves playing rugby, you’d be amazed. Whereas I’d look to join the opposing rugby team. I love a ruck and maul with an ageing supermodel.

These things go against stereotype. And your first thought is ‘NO!!!’

So in my formative years I had very strict rules for myself. Or really, they were rules to create the image of myself I wanted to be and be seen as. And I only listened to ‘rock’ music. Black Sabbath was good, Led Zeppelin was cool, David Bowie you could get away with, even with all that gender ambiguity, which was way more profound in the 1970s, just because he was so brilliant. Abba were shit. No mitigation, no excuses, Scando-pop garbage. And if you found that your mate ‘Blaster’, heavy metal to the core, 10 pints a night, hair down to his knee-caps, if you found him secretly listening to Rolph Harris’s ‘2 Little Boys’ through his headphones, he’d be ridiculed, pilloried by his mates and humiliated forever.

And the main rule of any true rocker, or aged ex-rocker, was: NO COUNTRY & WESTERN. Especially for Londoners. For the inbred truck-driving masses of Alabama and Tennessee it was fine but Londoners didn’t need to listen to shitty steel guitars and singers bemoaning stolen cattle, the death of their favourite sheep-dog and wives running away with Vietnam vets. And it was hardly a ‘relevance’ issue. Ozzie Osbourne’s lyrics about devil worship and forces of evil were hardly ‘everyday life’ for a schoolboy in East London.

Ballads were for tarts, pop was for wankers, folk musicians should be beaten with sticks, anything to stop them singing.

But music can surprise you. Especially in oldER age. When perhaps you become more receptive to the content and less obsessed with the categories.

So now, having found that my reading ‘guilty secret’ is to indulge in the odd ‘rom-com’, but real, slushy, totally predictable, no-redeeming-virtue chick lit rubbish, so I find now and again I get really ‘hooked’ on certain tunes. And they’re not by Deep Purple.

It started with Shania Twain, probably 20 years ago. Then it continued with Taylor Swift. And now I’ve found a new track that haunts me. Miley Cyrus singing (and even I have to cringe as I type it) Jolene. The Dolly Parton ‘classic’ (or, ‘Auntie Dolly’ as Mylie calls her God-Mother) performed by teen-star car-wreck juvie-twerker. Performed in her garden. And its brilliant.

So there, I’ve confessed. My new(ish) guilty secret: pre-pubescent Country music. Can’t beat it. High school sweethearts, stood up at the prom, my boyfriend dumped me and rode off his dad’s Chevy. Apparently that’s the new meaning in my life.

Off to therapy.

Happy friday

A xxxx