The Telltale Heart (FM)
More music variety. A simple enough statement. Not inflated by hyperbole and superlatives. Not brash or gimmicky. Just a statement, in a succinct form.
But it’s also a lie. Not a little lie. A big one.
If you’re like me, and have a job which constantly has the radio on, blasting out incessant, obtrusive crap then you’ll know how important variety is. Surely the cornerstone of any successful radio station is keeping the audience interested with a wide selection of new and old songs for them to enjoy. Heart FM agrees, even going so far as to use this as their selling point, and then unashamedly and wholeheartedly ignores it, and plays Adele, on repeat, forever.
I know Adele is huge at the moment, she’s easily Britain’s brightest star all over the world right now, selling obscene amount of records with her powerful voice and catchy songs, but just once, just one shift, please Heart, can I not hear those three songs. You know, the two about fire and, of course, the sad one.
Yes I understand how emotive that Brit’s performance was, what with the tears and everything, but surely a song might start to lose some of its power and effect when you play it every day for half a year. You know when you say a word over and over again until you can’t make sense of it anymore and it has no meaning? That’s what you’ve done to Adele, Heart FM.
So why not take a break on the Adele front for a bit? Put it down for a year or so and then bring it back in a blaze of reminiscent brilliance? Why not take a risk on something new and stop berating your valuable audience with endless repeats of everything by Rihanna, and the soulless abomination that is ‘Moves Like Jagger’.
So Heart, please take this on board, for the good of music and the future of radio. You have the power to choose what makes it big and what is forgotten. You can control popular culture, you can shape what Britain loves. You have all this but you give it all up for an easy solution. Your repetitiveness and lack of adventure convinces the audience that this is what they want to hear, and in return they ask you to play the songs over and over again until we all die from lack of excitement. You have created a horrible circle of safety and a fear of anything different that encases the nation. You have given us more music variety, in the tightest constrictions possible.
Ah well, what does it matter anyway, I’ll listen again, everyone else will listen again, Adele will make even more money and all of our diversity and imagination will drift away on the vapid airways. Sorry, turns out this was a bit of a depressing one, wasn’t it?
The Pop Cult Assault 