Waxing lyrical?

I like to think that I have an eclectic taste in music; I do listen to a lot of it and generally tune in to radio 3 for mornings and listen to my collected stuff in the afternoons and evenings. As i write I am listening to Beth Gibbons and Rustic man, a band I know nothing of but the noise that they make is very pleasing.

I do try to listen to whatever comes my way and try to understand what musicians are trying to do. There was a time when they were more about making music than making money, but I am afraid that those days are long gone. I am sure that there are plenty out there for whom the music is far more important than the paychecks but everyone has to live.

What we listen to and enjoy is a very personal thing and there are genres of music which to me have no impact or meaning and i am sure that is so for everyone. I cannot relate in any way to Rap or Hip hop, and at the same time cannot comprehend the music of many modern classical composers. I don't particularly like Johan Strauss of Franz Lehar, and most traditional scottish music irks me.

I can understand then that many people can not relate to what I listen to. The leap from britpop or indiepap to Mozart or PinkFloyd is a huge one and therin lies a chasm which some will never cross in either direction.

Pop music is about youth culture and history shows us that the quality and type of music is an audible commentary on the times, or at least it has been since the forties and fifties. Good times and bad times have a way of producing music with impact and meaning for those to whom the music is aimed.

Good music has power to move people, either thought the overall sound, rhythm, melody or lyrics, and no one has yet managed to have a universal appeal. Even the Beatles at their best never achieved that, and they probably reached more ears than Beethoven ever did. And so when I hear what seems bland, banal and tediously plastic song releases, I must remember that someone out there actually relates to this and that makes it valid.