Pop pretension and perfect pronunciation

On my way into work this morn­ing, I was listen­ing to a com­pil­a­tion of early Roxy Music, and I found that it began to demon­strate just a little of what’s wrong with Mod­ern Pop­u­lar Music Today, Kids (in my humble opin­ion, of course).

Firstly, we need more songs like Re-make/Re-model, where the chorus (“CPL 593H”) is based on a car’s num­ber plate. There just aren’t enough pop songs that have spot­ted the snappy chorus poten­tial of car regis­tra­tions. We also need more records that, like this one, fea­ture bass gui­tar solos and drum solos (albeit mer­ci­fully brief ones; we’re not talk­ing Prog Rock here).

Next, it was Do the Strand (“Rhodo­den­dron is a nice flower!”), which led to me mus­ing that Mod­ern Pop­u­lar Music Today, Kids, doesn’t fea­ture nearly enough records based on entirely fic­ti­tious dance crazes, as sung by someone doing a fairly accur­ate impres­sion of what Noel Cow­ard would have soun­ded like if he’d taken speed and then over-enunciated all his con­son­ants to almost comic effect.

At this junc­ture, I should point out that I’m really not get­ting old before my time. After all, the first Roxy Music album came out when I was only one year old, and I wasn’t a great pur­chaser of utterly pre­ten­tious glam rock while still in nap­pies. I’m just mak­ing up for lost time (with the musical appre­ci­ation, not the nappies).