Actors ‘performing’ non-fiction audiobooks by doing journalists, academics, politicians, etc. in different voices is ridiculous and distracting. It’s not bleeding Dickens – just read it.
The Spotify algorithm is a low-quality way of listening to music. It quickly regresses towards the mean or lowest common denominator, and plays the person in question’s own personal Radio 2 or Now That’s What I Call Music!
The greatest threat to quality of life is pollution: air pollution, noise pollution, and visual pollution.
If the binmen didn’t take your polystyrene last week, they’re not going to take it this week.
When matches are shown in pubs, the TV should be muted during the adverts and as soon as the match finishes.
For songs with music videos, record companies should still also post the audio-only track on YouTube, so you can share a great piece of music without sharing the invariably naff and dated music video.
Oasis sound nothing like the Beatles.
Lime bikes are mopeds. ‘Docking’ them is fly-tipping.
Decathlon shouldn’t sell equipment relating to the hammer throw.
Rod Stewart has as many great albums as Elton John has great songs (four).
The best decade for music is 1967–77. The best albums by the Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Dylan, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Velvet Underground, Elvis’s comeback, glam rock, including Bowie, and early new wave and punk like Talking Heads and the Jam. It’s the period of looseness, when music careened along, as with Dylan’s precarious ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat’, ‘like a mattress balances / On a bottle of wine’. Early Beatles is tight; the drum machines and synths of the eighties are tight. 1967–77 is loose.
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