Bad Music
Why Do People Listen to Crap Radio?
And can we stop it?
You don’t have to go too far along the dial on the radio these days to run into a bad song.
In fact, a tiny tweak of the knob and it’s not long before some mindless DJ is in your room telling you how they absolutely adore this track, before blaring the Godforsaken song into your ear.
Sound familiar?
Whenever I have to drive any distance with my work colleague, I load my ears with cotton wool. As I know I’m going to be subjected to two hours of death-defyingly bad pop music, accompanied by a parade of idiotic DJs proving that they are indeed, totally fucking stupid.
I live in France, but I could be in the UK, the States, Sweden, or Japan. Anywhere you go these days, there’s bad radio. I grew up in the UK, and boy, we’ve got our fair share of it there.
My personal pet hate is BBC Radio Two, the country’s most listened to (amazingly) radio station with its banal mix of chat, news, and bad music.
It must have escaped radio producers’ attention years ago, but people don’t want to listen to news when they listen to music. They want to get away from things, not be plunged every hour into the grim details about the world’s problems.
Perhaps there are regulations that state news must be included in order to get a licence. Governments never want to be forgotten they exist, do they?
OK, so great, we’ve done the news! Now let’s get on with the music. But no. Now we have to listen to how the DJ got his toothbrush stuck up his ass that morning as he was bending down to look for the soap!
Great story. Now let’s get on with the music.
But wait, now there’s a jingle advertising someone else's show. Then there are the commercials…
Ever listened to Steve Wright in the afternoon on Radio Two? Doesn’t matter if you haven’t, you haven’t missed anything. But the thing is, they don’t have commercials on the BBC as it’s state owned, so you would think they would have more time for music.
Think again.
Steve Wright is credited with creating the zoo format on British radio. Instead of one moron talking nonsense, you get two, or three, or even four imbeciles, chipping in with their two pennies’ worth of crap. These normally focus on some non-news story like the colour of Weetabix or the taste of semen. Before we are invited to listen to a dreary two-minute ballad, normally by James Blunt, or a jumpy pop song featuring Ed fucking Sheeran.
French radio has picked up on this dumb format as well, which is why I dread long journeys with my colleague. Luckily, even though I speak French, I don’t understand all of it, because part of the zoo format is to speak quickly, all at the same time.
In my humble opinion, unless you’re talking about the music, or a story behind a song, I don’t see any reason to speak about anything else. There are plenty of talk-only radio channels if you want to listen to mindless chat. If I want to listen to music, I want to listen to music.
Why is this concept so difficult to understand among DJs? Is it because they love their voice so much that they can’t shut up, or are they just born stupid? I’ve been listening to Steve Wright since I was a kid, and the guy is still as boring as he was forty years ago.
‘Shut up Steve, and play the fucking music for God’s sake!’
That’s how I feel when I listen to the majority of music radio channels these days. My work colleague once asked me what I listen to on the radio.
I answered without hesitation. ‘FIP.’
‘FIP?’ he replied in disgust. ‘But that’s just music, there’s hardly any talking on it. It’s just music,’ he repeated incredulously.
I turned towards him: ‘Exactly,’ I said, pointing to the inane drone coming from the speakers. ‘Imagine that?’
I don’t have any affiliation to FIP, but you can listen to it here if you want. Or alternatively waste more of your time reading my stories below.