SPEAKING of the 80s, there’s a distinctly retro feel to this week’s list from the BBC of the top 10 musical acts of the decade.
The Radio 2 list is based on the amount of airplay on radio and TV and in pubs and shops between 2000 and 2009.
Top of the list, depressingly, is the epitome of 80s emptiness, Madonna, a woman who has made a career as a singer without being able to sing. Now that takes talent.
Queen (number 4) and Elton John (number 7) also had their heydays back in the 80s.
Sixties standards Elvis and the Beatles feature, as do Abba from the 1970s.
The 1990s are represented by Robbie Williams and his former colleagues in Take That.
So, as mathematics fans could tell you, that leaves just two acts from the Noughties who actually made it into the list of the most played bands of the last decade.
The lucky duo are Sugababes – the girl group it’s OK to like – and Coldplay, passable at first, then got very dull.
All in all, the list makes depressing reading. Of the 10 acts featured, I would say that only three – the Beatles, Elvis and Sugababes – are any good. The rest are just varying shades of drivel.
Let’s hope we don’t have to listen to the same old tripe over and over again in the Teenies as we did in the Noughties.
