Research that resulted in more questions than answers for me.
23 Jan 2019
Dear LPG
The last time I wrote I mentioned that I was, and still am a bit of a habitual Googler and I have been inspired again by the wisdom of the internet.
Did you know that a couple of internet articles point to some recent research which concludes that our musical tastes are usually routed in the music that was popular when we were just about 14 years old?
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I have also worked out that the majority of the residents in our care homes are over eighty-five years old according to another bit of research I found online. So, according to my calculations, their musical choices would have to include songs like Guy Lombardo and his ‘Anniversary Song’, and that ever-green Bing Crosby classic ‘White Christmas’ which were among the leading contenders for anyone’s top ten in 1947. |
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This means that perhaps we should be hearing some music that is a lot older than is presently played on their radios when we visit the average care home.
I am a younger oldie I suppose at the age of 65 but I regularly visit an Uncle who is some 20 years older than me and, in a care home I am so aware of, the music choices that are payed there. The middle of the road 1970s and 1980s songs are great but they do not take into account the type of music that was listened to in the late 1940s when he was 14 years old.
Perhaps we just feel the need to block out memories of World War II and songs from that era would make that harder to do. Perhaps children did not have radios to listen to much music then and perhaps the research is routed in information about teenagers who are now a lot younger than 85; I can’t say that I read all the details properly. Then there are the later 1960s when there was a British music revolution in progress in the UK.
By then I was in my late teens, the rolling stones and the Beatles had musical supremacy and it was my job as a dedicated fan, to swoon at the sound of George Harrison’s name when at school, but for all that I still enjoyed the chart toppers well into my 40s.
I visited my uncle one day when he was sleeping and all this went through my mind as I sat with him, the internet and my mobile phone. It is interesting to note that all the time I was there a quite popular music radio station was being played and I also enjoyed this music.
So while I remember with fondness the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits and the Dave Clark Five, having spent my time learning about this research, I have my reservations about the true accuracy of its findings.
TM, Crofton Park
TM asked us to share the source of the Gootling session that prompted these findings
