The new love songs

A lot of people hold that the best songs have been written in the sixties, and that by the nineties most of the song writers had probably written every lyric that could have possibly been written, and after that popular music hadn’t really much to offer. In India, the only western music one access over radio comes from All India Radio, if you’re lucky to live in a metro or possess a short wave radio that receives the North eastern services of AIR. AIR remains the best source of easy listening pleasure, and its Western Music programmes are still the best over Indian airspace.

After the untimely death of Worldspace radio, I have taken to consuming music and listen to internet radio, and in recent months have discovered that the music content has evolved to reflect, as it must, present day living.

Love is no longer the syrupy, sweet, forever and ever sentiment. Breakups no longer leave you morose and moony eyed. Post-modern pop is a trip to the psychiatrist’s couch, an exploration, a dissection of emotions that messes with your mind in amazing ways.

Right now I’m listening to Will Young, a very promising young pop artiste. Consider these fragments from ‘Who am I’: ‘Sometimes you know you push me so hard, I don’t know how I see, you almost make me doubt I feel at all…I know that all you’re asking for is a little space in my heart, but I don’t find it easy to give… maybe I got a little selfish sometimes, why shouldn’t I? Who am I to tell you that I would never let you down, that no one else would love you half as much as I do now, Who am I tell to tell you I’ll always catch you when you fall, if I did I wouldn’t be myself at all …’ The song speaks of getting ‘real’.

What’s on my easy listening playlist this week? A mix of music from the fifties to two thousand and ten. Will Young, Adam Lambert, Richard Marx, Cliff Richard, Boney M, Smokey, and Ned Miller.