Charting Our Decline

Listening to the official UK top 40 on the radio recently, any lingering notion that Britain’s musical tastes are innately superior to the rest of the world’s was finally laid to rest. From the trend for identikit urban-lite via Glee’s God-awful Queen tribute and Blah Blah Blahnd Ke$ha to the trying-too-hard over-painted Lady whose formulaic poppy cock drives me GaGa -honey, that Lee McQueen (RIP) is more bad drag queen - it’s wall-to-wall Yank w***. When homegrown ‘talent’ gets a look in, it’s invariably a cash Cow-ell (JLS/ Alexandra /Jedward) or something equally lame like Marina and the (courtesy-of-Elizabeth Duke?) Diamonds’s Hollywood. Rewind a generation to February 1982 when, Shakin’ Stevens notwithstanding, Britannia ruled the airwaves with The Jam, The Stranglers, OMD, XTC, Soft Cell and The Human League all charting. Assuming ‘yoof’ drives the singles chart, I fear they’ve been slipped a sinister Mickey Finn in their burgers. How else to explain passive acceptance of this relentless diet of saccharine American junk?