1. Tangled Up In Blue , Bob Dylan 2. Ernie , Benny Hill 3. Wish You Were Here , Pink Floyd 4. On Wings of Song, Mendelssohn, Kiri Te Kanawa and Utah Symphony Orchestra 5. Fake Plastic Trees , Radiohead 6. This Charming Man , Smiths, 7. Perfect Circle , R.E.M, 8. All these Things that I've Done , The Killers If the Conservatives win tomorrow's general election that list will be the musical tastes of our new prime minister, David Cameron. He chose those tracks in 2006 for the BBC's long running Desert Island Discs programme. It prompted a wonderful rant from Peter Maxwell Davies who described it as 'musical garbage' . Gordon Brown appeared on the programme back in 1996 and his choices were only marginally more inspiring: at least there was no Benny Hill and there was Bach, albeit predictably the Suite for Orchestra No 3 in D major. When Nick Clegg appeared on Michael Berkeley's Private Passions programme on BBC Radio 3 in 2008 his selection was notably eclectic ...
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I wonder if you are familiar with MacDonald's theory of "midcult." I question the idea that all music is or should be made accessible to everyone. At the risk of repeating Babbitt's "Who Cares if You Listen?" mistake, I rather feel that certain music can only be appreciated by those who put in the effort to do so with their full attention. Yes, future generations might be more visually attuned than aurally, but that does not mean we should give up on helping them to cultivate their ears and practice listening; the brain is amazingly plastic, after all.
I can name plenty of songs that, while musically perhaps not so exciting, became popular because of an entertaining dance or video attached to them. I don't look forward to the day when a composer's success is measured by how much they can spend hiring artists and CGI editors to mask their mediocre music.