17 November, 2004

Pop quiz

This morning I participated in a 'missing lyrics' quiz about 1980s pop songs.  My score was 24 (is that a percentage?), and that's with a 5-point bonus for saying where I saw the quiz.

I'm not entirely surprised. As I've said before, I had negligible interest in music until 1990. I bought my first ever album in 1980, and my second in 1987. I wasn't a school disco or pop culture sort of teenager, so the whole subject simply passed me by until University, even music I've subsequently come to like. I think a high proportion of the few lyrics I did recognise were from songs I've encountered more recently, not from the first time round.

I did listen to the radio occasionally in the 1980s, but almost always BBC Radio 4 (i.e. spoken material - news, plays, documentaries), very rarely music stations. That probably makes me sound precocious, but I doubt that's accurate; I was just brought up to be comfortable with silence.
Incidentally, I no longer listen to the insufferably smug Radio 4, either. I doubt I've switched my radio on at all within the last five years.