Koganbot on the 'Nets today

Posting on other people's threads:

Regarding the seasonal units in Denver

Regarding a generation who make no distinction between Spice Girls 'Wannabe' and Blur's 'Girls & Boys'

Great music in the last decade with male lead singers that are over fifty years old

Tom creates a graph that shows a long-term trend upward in the percentage of UK singles with a female lead. This is a crude measure (number ones aren't necessarily representative of what's on singles as a whole, and singles aren't necessarily representative of what's popular among music consumers, etc.) and Tom makes no great claims for the chart. But the trend is striking.

Interesting parallel here, though, is that this graph comes close to matching the trends in my taste for contemporary music, with my late '80s veering wildly towards the women (thanks to postdisco and freestyle, and the decline in the quality of postpunk) and the mid to late '00s going even more wildly female (thanks to r&b and teenpop stealing my heart from hip-hop) - but my number is way higher than 50%. Not that during the decades of this graph I was even hearing much of what was #1 in the UK or having exposure to all the main popular styles there. And it isn't as if stuff that was pushing my listening - e.g., freestyle - was pushing British listening. Just that my trend seemed to be happening at the same time as the British chart trend, which is towards music fronted by women and girls.

Tom didn't graph by age, but I suspect that most of the women are young women, though I wouldn't have any idea if the average age would have changed much over the decades. (I'd guess that there are fewer older women, bringing the average age down, but that's a wild guess, my hardly knowing the performers much less the data.)

But anyway, it's disturbing to me how few good songs now are fronted by males (obviously that's comparative, since e.g. The-Dream will likely make my album's list this year)(but I'm not even sure how good a front man he is, just a maker of good music). Just as disturbing is the lack of great music that's fronted by people of any sex over forty. I hope that's not true in the cultures and genres I don't know much about.

So here's a question for you. What male singers over the age of fifty or acts fronted by a male singer over the age of fifty have made great popular music in the last decade? It's got to be a singer (not just a producer or instrumentalist or arranger) and the greatness has to be in the last decade (so not someone formerly great who's carrying on OK). I say "popular music" real loosely, and actually you can list any man whether his music is popular or not. I'll put my own answer in the comments.

Also am curious about your trends, and your speculations as to the reasons behind them.