17 March 2016
Forever young
Should songwriters respect old age?
by Chin Chin
Not me, of course. My hair is absolutely splendid, Boris-like, indeed. Still, it seems that there are those who find the lyrics of the Beatles song “When I am sixty-four” with its reference to hair loss, a tad less amusing as they approach retirement age. Other songs get the same reaction from the silver-haired generations. Why? Well, to quote from the paper “Representation of age and ageing identities in popular music texts” published by a team at Anglia Ruskin University: “it is evident that mainly negative representations of age and ageing are available in popular music texts.”
That is hardly surprising. In truth you would have to go quite a long way to find people who regard getting old as an improvement. There may be ancillary benefits, I suppose, such as bigger ears, more leisure time, the ability to secure admiring attention from the younger generation when you explain your role in the defence of Rorke’s Drift (yes, all they learn about at school are the Tudors and the First World War, so you are fairly safe); even the privilege of reading the papers with a sense of deja vue, and a free bus pass. But generally ageing is a negative experience and we all wish we were younger. After all, how many sixty-five year olds deliberately dress to emphasise their great age?
All in all, then, the music industry seems to have it about right; so does the report from Anglia Ruskin when it says that the representation is dispiriting, not to mention confidence- and esteem- lowering, for older people. What is less clear is what, if anything, the music industry should do about it.
Let’s take the issue of old people being depicted as boring, as an example. How could the music industry counteract that? A song about the merits of Ovaltine and slippers is hardly going to cut it. Something more exciting is called for. The obvious thing would be songs about OAPs stealing girls (or boys) from their juniors, preferably as a result of winning a street fight. Lyrics such as:
“No callow youth he used his blade.
‘My saviour, oh my love’ she sayed”
That’s okay as far as it goes, give or take the use of “sayed”, but actually there is a problem. How old is the boy or girl who has succumbed to the OAP’s charm to be? If the OAP has simply netted a 19 year old blond model he had better throw her back again. Otherwise there will be a suggestion that 19 year old blond models are more attractive than female OAPs, just the message we don’t want the music industry to send. On the other hand if the girl is another OAP, cynical youngsters may suggest that the OAP got her because the younger generation weren’t really trying. Perhaps she could be a very rich OAP to cover all bases.
Hmm, difficult. Perhaps then the song had better be about OAPs doing something rather dashing, a criminal enterprise perhaps. Perhaps something like breaking into safe deposit boxes in Hatton Garden, for example.
The reason this is all such nonsense is, of course, that what depresses the elderly is not being denigrated in song but being reminded of the truth about ageing and the inevitability of death. Bizarrely the Anglia Ruskin report talks as if this was a new issue:
“With significant achievements in life expectancy and the number of people aged 65 or older predicted to increase from an anticipated 524 million in 2010 to nearly 1·5 billion in 2050 (WHO, 2011), ageing is a matter of global and national importance.”
Ageing and the transience of human life have not just emerged as a matter of importance. Religion, philosophy, literature and art have focussed on them since we emerged from the primordial soup (actually, to explain for the benefit of the younger generations, it was our forefathers, not us, who emerged from that particular consommé, but the point remains the same). Sometimes we accept our fate and glory in it – the pyramids are a monument to this. When we need to avoid it we watch Dracula movies and hope to emulate the hero. But it is always there as the overarching background to human life and as you get older it becomes harder and harder to ignore.
So if that is the truth of it, what should the lyricists do? Say it like it is or fudge the issue to avoid causing a flutter in the dovecotes? There is a fundamental question of principle here. Which approach will sell more records? It would be naïve to expect something as important as the music industry to let truth get in the way of profit. These are artists, after all.
If you believe that there is an intrinsic duty to tell the truth, you are probably some way below retirement age and you clearly have not read the short stories of that great master Saki. In “The woman who told the truth” he sketches the fate of a woman who becomes addicted to telling the truth, the high point being when she tells her cook that she (the cook) drinks. This gives the author the opportunity to use the glorious line: “The cook was a good cook, as cooks go; and as cooks go she went” but there is a serious point too.
We all slide through life by avoiding truths and helping others to do the same. After all, what is being “tactful” but agreeing to collude in a fiction? That is all very well as a practical matter but should lyricists be expected to join in the process or, as artists, should they feel entitled to expose uncomfortable truths?
I don’t think there is an answer to this. In the end they must do whatever they feel like on the day. Still, if (as the lyricists suggest) many old people become crabby and self-centred, you can see that any of those young lyricists who have had to put up with much of that crabby and self-centred behaviour might be tempted to put some back in return. Perhaps they have had about enough of “the country is going to the dogs. Just look at today’s youth.” Why shouldn’t they take their turn and make us uncomfortable from time to time? After all, it is not as if those of retirement age have made the world such a splendid place for them to live in.
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