I’m not old enough to complain that today’s music is crap, even if it is. I happen to think that there has been and is crap music (in my judgement) in every era of music: there is bad blues, bad jazz, bad 60s pop, and I’m sure there was bad stuff when humans first started making music. My problem with some music at the moment is the sheer unoriginality – worse, the blatant plagiarism. I’m not talking about covers; some covers are good, some bad (Joe Cocker’s With a Little Help from my Friends far surpasses the Beatles’ original; Madonna’s American Pie was boring). I’m talking about when somebody decides to take the melody from one song and put different lyrics over the top, and claim it as new. This goes beyond sampling – which I don’t have a beef about (Fat Boy Slim’s Bird of Prey, with Jim Morrison’s lyrics, may be a good example). I’m thinking, for example, of a song that came out a few years ago: it took the music of John Cougar Mellencamp’s Jack and Diane, put boring love-happy lyrics on top, and called it a new song. Very annoying. I think one of the things that really gets to me is that people without much exposure to old songs will think this is new, and be very confused when/if they do hear the original. I also strongly object to ‘dance-ifying’ songs. I heard Tasmin Archer’s Sleeping Satellites the other day with a very offensive beat on top; to me this is almost sacreligious, since it was a dear favourite of mine and my brother’s when it first came out. It adds nothing to the song, and in the latter case takes away every single element of mystery and lament.