Can you ever get bored of discovering new music? I'd stake most of my soul on wanting to say no, never, but a fantastic programme I've just been listening to on Radio 4 has made me think again.
It was called Songs Your Godmother Should Know, and it span off a radio documentary aired a few years back in which, in the course of an extended tribute to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, Times classical music critic Hilary Finch admitted that she'd never actually, well, heard the song. Millions gasped, we're told (I still wonder how she managed such a subtle feat of avoidance), and today's documentary attempted to right matters. Finch was sat down with her teenage goddaughter Tamasin and forced to listen to some hand-picked pop as punishment - sorry, in order to re-educate her in the paths of righteousness.
So far, so Ministry of Truth, and of course the headline is predictable: Boring Old Fart Wised Up By Hip Young Gunslinger. And indeed there was a bit of that, some delicate comedy as Finch attempted to wrap her ears around Mötorhead and the Killers, came away disappointed by the Arctic Monkeys but professed to rather liking All By Myself (youch), even without noticing it was based on the slow movement from Rachmaninov's Symphony No 2 - an insight that was sweetly, if long-sufferingly, offered by Tamasin.
But there was also something far more subtle and intriguing going on that posed a big question: should you actually bother with pop in the first place? Finch, though she did her best to try, came away disappointed. "I'm really demanding of pop music something it can't offer," she admitted, deciding that she found its "rebel yell, its visceral impact, its posturing" somehow empty. Perhaps, she concluded despondently, it was an age thing.
It's a generous thought, but I'm not so sure. I think it's starker than that: it's a quality thing. Most music that's produced, like most things that are produced, just isn't that good. Law of averages, capitalist reality, call it what you will - there's plenty of thinly disguised hot air out there, and the grim truth is that those of us who simply aren't interested in the cut of Franz Ferdinand's suits, say, or Hot Chip's latest ditherings are somehow made to feel guilty, lifeless, tied to the corpse of a tradition that, we're relentlessly told, is headed for the knacker's yard. Can anyone be deader than Thom Yorke? Surely not - and yet during the programme we were informed, apparently with a straight face, that Paranoid Android is an "emotionally overwhelming" experience. Sorry, but anyone who seriously believes that, and actually cares about music, should listen to a lot - really, loads and loads - more.
So here's my proposition. Radio 4 should commission a follow-up programme to this follow-up programme in which, with not a shred of sniffiness or whimsy, a set of classical-haters should be forced to listen to some really, really amazing music: some Couperin, some Messiaen, some Monteverdi, some Bach, some Brahms, some Byrd, some Schoenberg - a random list of names, but in fact you could choose almost anything from the thousand-odd years of brilliant, astonishing sound that make up the classical tradition. See how Arctic Monkeys do alongside that.
