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March 22, 2005

Tony Christie

Picture this scene, about two weeks ago say. I get out an old record by 57 year old crooner Tony Christie. I put on the excellent track "Is this the way to Amarillo?" and tell my my 12 year old daughter to have a listen.

She would have been totally non-plussed that I would even imagine her liking it, and would probably think I was teasing her.

I actually am a fan of Mt Christie, and have at home his other classic "I did what I did for Maria", and his more recent "Walk like a Panther" which he recorded with the band The All Seeing Eye.

And yet Northern comedian Peter Kaye took the song, made a comedy video of himself and some other stars miming to it, and here it is at the number one position in the UK charts, outselling the rest of the top 20 combined. And my daughter is asking me to play it repeatedly at home.

This illustrates the important musical phenomenon of style over content. When the song wasn't trendy, young people wouldn't give it the time of day. Now that Comic Relief have taken a hugely popular cult comedy star and made it interesting, the song is back at the top where it belongs.

Boy bands do this all the time too, Boyzone and Westlife particularly have taken tracks by Cat Stevens, Billy Joel and even Barry Maniloe and made them hits again. Rap artists like The Fugees have made Roberts Flack and Enya popular (though not many people humming along to "Ready or Not" probably know that).

It disappoints me that this kind of recycling is necessary. I have a huge collection of older music, which includes tracks that I know my daughter's generation would really like, but I know they never will unless some marketing trick is played on them to make it acceptable.

Posted by se71 at March 22, 2005 10:44 AM

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