I thought I knew what I liked when it came to music. There’s some variety there: I nod along to eighties classics, raise a hand to nineties house, shout along to noughties girl power ballads and attempt to rap with Iggy (I like to think I’m fancy too). Given my husband’s musical taste stopped in the late eighties and is limited to ACDC, U2 and Guns n’ Roses, I felt it was my responsibility to keep up to date with current music trends for the sake of my kids’ musical education. I felt I had succeeded when watching the school Kindy to Year 2 disco, where my boys were right at home and grooved along with the girls to the latest hits played by the DJ.
There has been a recent, very troubling development though. I’d like to say I could trace it back to my childhood and the deviant tastes of my parents, but it was the odd humorous/folk musings of Harry Neilsson or Welsh tenor Harry Secombe that was played with alarming regularity in my formative years. Frankly, I’m surprised I turned out as normal as I did, given the number of times I heard “Put the Lime in the Coconut”, which contains the very misogynistic lyrics “you’re such a silly woman”. I’d like to say we’ve come a long way, but I’ve seen music videos in the last decade and I think it’s gone backwards. There’s nothing like an 80’s retro set on MTV to make you realise how G-rated those videos we grew up on were. The clothes might have been appalling, but at least they were there.
But back to the point of my post – I think I’ve been dreading actually admitting it and have been beating around the bush for the whole post. It started with some harmless and seemingly ironic banjo playing by the bearded hipsters in Mumford & Son. But it didn’t stop there! A few more songs entered my library that had a similar sound. I then thought, how bad would it be if I admitted that I injured my knee dancing to Dolly Parton? “Nine to five” is very catchy. Slowly, but surely, the creep had begun. Then tonight, watching Jimmy Fallon, it hit me in the face like a wet salmon straight from the river: I was nodding along and admiring the cowboy-ness of a band called Florida Georgia Line. For a moment, I was outside my body looking in, disbelievingly. If I was enjoying country music, did that make me a country music fan? Who am I…
L. C. Fenton Author 