All over the UK...sorry I'll start again. All over England (I don't know if they have to suffer in Scotland or Wales the way we Sassenachs do) the airwaves are cluttered with a sickly syrupy substance called Music Radio. From Wirrals Buzz in the north to Plymouth Sound in the south the country is awash with the hits of the 80's, 90's and today, all carefully selected to conform to the guidelines laid down in the music worlds manual under the heading of the Special List of Inoffensive Musical Entertainment  - or SLIME if you're a fan of acronyms. The hip bunch of inoffensive presenters at Music Radio prefer to call this magical list "More Music Variety" but us ordinary folks, who may or may not be inoffensive, prefer to call the list "More Of The Same." What the hip presenters neglect to mention is the actual source of the SLIME which is, in fact, a long running series of mass produced corporate pop music albums entitled "Now That's What I Call Music." (In case you're a fan, or you can't get enough music radio, these albums are readily available to buy from HMV or your local branch of Woolworth’s.)

From the early morning wake-up shows of Jeff and Becky, Gaz and Karen and the Morning Crew to the "late night love" of relationship expert Graham Torrington the music remains the same. Admittedly they do provide a little variety to get you through the day. There’s news and sport and travel details for your way to work and school, games and gossip and the all important Sing Along Selection where you get to request your favorite song from the 80's 90's and today (my favorite song comes from the 70's and is by The Residents so I'm losing on two fronts already.) Every single day - including weekends - the carefully selected SLIME pours from the speakers of countless radios throughout the home counties of England, infecting anyone within earshot with an incurable case of digital deja vu.

When questioned on the subject of the music radio playlist, the inoffensive presenters lose a slice of halo and become very very defensive and just a little obnoxious. I refer to them as presenters because there's no way any of them could ever qualify as a DJ, although some of them are quite likely to host or appear in one of the many reality TV shows currently infecting British TV. I thought I'd put that comment in to illustrate a point about the position of a presenter in the greater scheme of things. Anyway, back to the music. The halo slippage is quite surprising because it's not their own personal playlist they're protecting; it's the playlist of their employers, the Big Music Corporation, their paymasters.

Ker-ching!

The Big Music Corporation employs people to compile playlists from a list of "Top Acts" (who may or may not be on their payroll) along with up-and-coming stars from the Corporations assembly lines. When the assembly lines fail to deliver the goods on time the Big Music Corporations CEO orders the Blackberries of their A & R staff to be downloaded into a super computer where the data is analysed for HIT MAKING PROPERTIES. These properties usually come in the shape of a copycat act (ie: "Find me another Franz Ferdinand") but sometimes contain actual DNA from the winner of a TV Talent Show with a guaranteed shelf life of 11.6 months. Although he wouldn't recognise talent if it slapped him in the face with a wet fish, the CEO is trained to recognise marketing opportunities faster than Superman can change into his cape and tights. These marketing opportunities are then processed, packaged, polished and put into a studio where a computer technician hastily fashions a backing track from a list of pre-prepared HIT MAKING INGREDIENTS for the new talent to warble over. The warbling is then tweaked, tuned and processed into an acceptable package known to all and sundry as POP. Pop, as we all know from listening to Music Radio, comes in many guises: Easy Listening, Rap, RnB, Futuristic Synth Pop, Corporate Rock and Robbie Williams. It is healthy, wholesome and very very valuable to those who create it. It has absolutely no value whatsoever to the people who have to listen to it over and over again on Music Radio...it is torture.

Running alongside the music are the commercials. These lovingly rendered soundbites of salesmanship appear to have been put together by someone who couldn’t get a job writing jokes for Christmas crackers. They are supposed to be funny, possibly to compliment the juvenile humour of the presenters, but actually sound more irritating than the music they have just followed. The commercials urge the listener to buy local products and services or visit the nearest 4-wheel drive dealership in order to salivate over the car they can never hope to afford. They are mercifully short but brutally plentiful – they are also repeated more often than the music that paid for them.

The presenters never announce commercials on Music Radio (it wouldn’t be prudent to endorse someone else’s PRODUCT) they just say something along the lines of “Coming up next, a new track from Will Young’s latest CD…” which is really bloody annoying. The reason this little snippet of information is so bloody annoying is that someone as lame as Will Young actually becomes a bona fide FEATURED ARTIST on Music Radio because he’s on the Big Music Corporation’s playlist. And it’s not just loveable Will who benefits from this little bonus, oh no. In the week Ronan Keating released a new album and became a “featured artist” on Music Radio; the Killers, Lily Allen, Muse, Barry Adamson, Ali Farka Toure and Bat For Lashes all released far superior albums of their work but none of them ever received so much as a mention. Why? Because they have no commercial potential when it comes to broadcasting music to housewives, kids and the unemployed. This is a crime. Music Radio’s “More Music Variety” does not include anything truly worthwhile. Oh you’ll hear the occasional gem or golden oldie but not before you’ve been soaked with the contents of “Now That’s What I Call Music – Volume 44” for the tenth time on the same day.

Night time is no better. Between the hours of 7 and 10pm Sally and Kevin will be giving you, the listener, the chance to win £1000 every night thanks to blah, blah, blah. This part of Music Radio is called MUSIC CONTROL and pretends to be the part of the day when the listener chooses the choons he or she really, desperately, orgasmicly wants to hear. Amazingly the choons chosen by the listeners, with the exception of the odd album track from one of the artist’s playlisted by the CEO of the Big Music Corporation, are the same choons played throughout the day. So who’s controlling the music? Are the listeners really happy to hear the same stuff day in day out, or are they simply programmed to keep their ears open and their mouths shut by the shameless salesmen of the multi-national music corporation controlling their very consciousness?

Because of Music Radio’s strategy, real talent is being sacrificed, listeners are being denied access to a whole new world of music and Robbie Williams, whose latest record is not being played by Music Radio because it doesn't quite fit into the corporate mould, is still getting richer. As I said before, this is a crime. Music is a universal language that should not be shorn of an audience because it doesn’t have the right beat or the right chorus or the regulation cleavage. BIG MONEY MUSIC should not dictate to people, they should have a choice in what they listen to; and if they don’t care what they listen to they should at least be in a position to experience other forms of music through the medium of daytime radio. At the time of writing there are thirty-four Music Radio stations in England and they’re all selecting their playlists from the same pot. More music variety? I think not.

A K Smith – October 2nd, 2006