Radio
That's not what I call music
Published 07 February 2008
Once, pop on the radio brought us together - now it's used to divide us
BBC Radio 1 97-99FM
One of the few pleasurable things about travelling on a Virgin train - apart from screwing your eyes up tight and willing it to go faster than 90 miles an hour - is that you can plug your headphones into the armrest and listen to the radio. The first ten channels are an airline-style array of fussy pop, twiddly rock, a cocktail-tinted jazz programme and a pleasantly snooze-aiding classical selection hosted by Radio 3's Penny Gore.
Then - surprisingly, given that this is Virgin and it's got its own radio stations to peddle - you have the choice of BBC Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4. A reckless moment one lunchtime this past week led me gingerly to try Radio 1, whose appeal I've found to be narrower and narrower in the nearly six years since its DAB sister station, 1Xtra, was set up and Radio 2 began to steal its thunder.
Edith Bowman, a deep-voiced Scot in her early thirties, was booming over the end of what sounded like a three-minute-long mobile ringtone: a deranged beat and sibilant refrain with vocals as lilting as an air-raid siren. It wasn't pop music: it was a speedy, tinny, tune-free aid to drug use in big fields. What on earth was it doing on the national pop radio station?
I'd read a few days earlier how Radio 1 had made the decision once more to promote "pop" - that is, tuneful music designed to have wide appeal - and I'd had a look at its playlist, posted every week on the BBC website. Top of the list is a track called "What's It Gonna Be" by H "Two" O featuring Platnum. If that's pop, I'm the pope. No one, but no one, who doesn't fiddle with their mobile settings twice an hour will like this record.
There is now no point in Radio 1's schedule where it tries to unite disparate groups of listeners. Its daytime line-up, in form and content, assumes a kind of slouchy cynicism that is unique to teenagers and those who labour under permanent hangovers. Chris Moyles, the breakfast-show presenter who delights in ten-second digressions and plays about four records an hour, personifies this: "Mike Oldfield was rubbish, wasn't he? All that Tubular Bells nonsense! Folk crap!"
The station occasionally makes the good popular by promoting decent acts at the start of their career (though usually only acts that are also backed by big money), but I don't think it is making the slightest effort to make the popular good. Instead, it seems determined to give people what its producers believe they want.
1Xtra hived off its "black music" content, dividing listeners by race and assumed taste. The Asian dance specialists Bobby Friction and Nihal must be thrilled with their Wednesday-night slot between midnight and 2am, a time when only lorry drivers must be listening. Even worse, 1Xtra's Ras Kwame must ply his trade between 5am and 7am on a Sunday - oh, and have his programme referred to on its website as "Radio 1's new black music show". It feels like a horrid joke. The roots of all popular music are black, so why should the BBC, of all institutions, decide that parts of it could do with sectioning off?
Radio 1's spineless approach is personified by its choices of "house band": most notably We Are Scientists, a mediocre American guitar group who've been picked up and promoted because of, not in spite of, their lack of strong identity. I don't for a minute believe that Jo Whiley likes them, but they represent what her show is "about", which is to appear cutting-edge while having all the cutting edge of a soft white bap.
I could go on in this foamy-mouthed manner until the analogue signal is switched off, but still I can find no good reason why the Beeb should decide to make Radio 1 a fragmented series of specialist shows held together by asinine waffle about booze and football teams. It's paid for by the licence fee, which nearly all of us pay. So, how about making it a station that nearly all of us listen to, rather than one that groups of us tune in to apart, not together?
Nothing can be gained from playing mobile ringtones and passing it off as music radio. Nothing, because it's not music, just as Chris Moyles's longueurs aren't speech.
Just over ten years ago, when Chris Evans's breakfast show captured the optimistic spirit of Britpop, it still felt as though Radio 1 was broadcasting to the nation. How many nations does it want us to split into now?
Pick of the week
Garrison Keillor’s Radio Show
9 February, 5pm, BBC7Words ’n’ whimsy direct from Minnesota.
Stuart Maconie: Drivetime
Monday to Friday, 5pm, Radio 2
Stakhanovite of the mike stands in for Chris Evans.
Invisible People
11 February, 3.45pm, Radio 4
London bus controllers talk to the urban historian Joe Kerr.
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