Pun Salad

If you're a Boomer like me, you may have noticed that "our" music often plays in the background of supermarkets, dentist offices, hotel atria, …

And you may notice people humming, sometimes singing, along to the tunes.

And you will often observe that many of those people were definitely not born when those songs came out.

So I wonder if there wasn't something timelessly special about that music. If people will be listening to it, humming/singing along, decades and centuries hence, long after Taylor Swift, Morgan Wallen, and Huntr/X have faded into obscurity.

Let me note that's not the theme of this book by British music journalist David Hepworth. He makes clear the primary reason "rock stars never retire" is economic: if they want to maintain their profligate lifestyles, it requires more income that can be generated via nest-egg investments.

(He also alleges that "oldies" radio stations never play songs made before 1980. Is that true? That would pretty much contradict the thesis I outlined above.)

I really enjoyed the book. Hepworth is insightful and witty, his knowledge of music, business, and personalities is wide and deep. His chapters are usually short, each concentrating on a music icon (e.g. Paul McCartney) or event (e.g. Live Aid) or combination thereof (e.g., Elton John dinking his song "Candle in the Wind" for Princess Diana's funeral). In his last-chapter musings, he wonders (as I have done) whether AI will eventually resurrect dead artists to not-exactly-live performances of their old songs. Or new AI-written songs that ape the style of their greatest hits.

As a bonus, Hepworth provides a 30-song playlist, "Songs of Innocence and Experience". And the first song in the list is Southside Johnny's version of "All the Way Home". One of my own favorites! A song written by Bruce Springsteen, but Hepworth claims (correctly) that Bruce's rendition "can't touch" Johnny's.

Ironically, Southside Johnny actually did retire recently.