Yeah, that’s how they treat Eurovision as well. Of course no one takes it completely seriously but Graham Norton just shitting over every contestant may be funny but it’s not a good look. Desperately wanting to be a part but also thinking you’re the only one doing it only ironically and that it’s funny that others take it seriously.
Can you tell that Brexit has really soured me on British attitudes towards European things?
To be fair, there is also the LGBTQ+/camp side to it here as well. The people who treat it as a joke may be part of a backlash against that, like with Disco Sucks in the US.
So that would be homophobia as well as “ironic” racism.
The Brexiters deserve everything they are about to get (Remainers not so much) but Graham Norton is Irish, as was his predecessor Terry Wogan.
Gen X here. I looked at the Billboard Hot 100 list for each year, taking it as a proxy to what was considered pop music. It’s pretty clear from my memories that I only began to notice music in 1974, recognized most songs from the late 70s and throughout the 80s, but by 1990 I didn’t recognize much. At that point I had stopped listening to pop music and selected my own genres that were just not played on the radio.
At 2 & 6 they have a few years. The last thing I need is my rising 1st grader to ask his virtual teacher / class what a crablouse is.
There was a study in an old-folks home that hilariously showed 70 years olds found the 80 year olds music ‘old-fasioned’ and the 80 year olds still found the 70 year olds music ‘crazy noise’. We studied the paper in Uni - a couple decades ago. Won’t even try to find it.
The thing about the Big Bang Theory is that it uses a laugh track, so I refuse to watch it at all. Canned laughter is vile, nasty and earns an automatic ban from my watch list.
I found it interesting that the songs that the author of the article was surprised weren’t well known, were ones that I wasn’t really familiar with in the UK. (eg Jewel’s “You Were Meant For Me”, which I’d never heard of, but I recognised the others mentioned).
Perhaps one thing that songs need in order to be recognised by younger people is that they’re well known internationally? Possibly that would make it more likely for a young person to hear an older tune.
(Which leads me down another rabbit-hole, if you could chart how many foreign friends a person had growing up, would you see a big jump around millennials? We grew up with the internet connecting us to other people all over the world.).
Now that is a weird pattern! American exceptionalism for once justified 
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