What to get for Christmas? How about a "Greatest Hits" album of The Eagles for a seventeen-year-old kid? Get serious, this kid wasn't even born when the album was No. 1 in the seventies. Believe it. My daughter's friend has it on her shopping list.
And then a friend across town says the most-often-played album of his fifteen-year-old daughter, who thinks she's in love, is not Brian Adams, M.C. Hammer, Paula Abdul, or Nelson, all of which are in her collection. It's The Beatles' Rubber Soul album that she pulled from her mom and dad's record set.
I'm a little surprised, but not totally. I've often heard our generation run down early rock 'n' roll and other sixties and seventies music, even though many groups do revised versions of early pop and rock that most teen-agers aren't aware of. "Yesterday," by Lennon and McCartney, for example, has already been recorded by more than two thousand artists.
Is it that we can't improve on some things, or is it that today's pop music has a stagnant side? Maybe or maybe not, but the same old rock beat popping up, the same old "pump it up," "get down," "mother," lyrics popping up in the latest song with a new name don't get it. Some of our younger generation appear to be accepting mom's and dad's music as okay, for god's sake. What's the world coming to? Or, are they trying to give artists and radio program directors a hint to take a closer look at the creative side of the playlist? Who knows, this thing could close the generation gap.