The Hit Parade and other stories

 It's not so much that Last Christmas made it to number 1 after 34 years after Christmas so it wasn't actually the Christmas number 1. I'm a great admirer of George Michael and only wonder if it's really necessary to put oneself through such agonies of self-recrimination to be any good.

I remember working with another student 40 years ago in a summer job who wanted to discuss if great work only came out of hardship. One thinks of Anna Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn, the Jewish diaspora and any number of others and could feel both blessed by the extreme comfort one has lived in all one's life and deprived thereby of the opportunity of writing anything significant.

I hope it's not quite like that. If we need difficulties to write out of, we seem capable of making them for ourselves if none are provided. If happiness writes white, such people need not concern themselves with the written word.

No, I don't mean that. I flicked over to that safest of safe havens, Classic FM, while reading over the last few days and found them counting down some enormous chart that assimilated all the last 25 years of their Hall of Fame votes. I first heard it when they were just below no. 100, with Soave sia il vento and Spem in Alium locked together around about no.104. Good Lord, with those candidates for any short list I might make, what on Earth can the Top 10 be like.

It was not as advertised on their website which is only the result of the 2020 vote. It counted up all the last 25 years which wouldn't be very fair on anything written in the last few years were there to be such a thing. Beethoven had three in the Top 10 which one wouldn't take issue with until looking for the Bach. The current champion, The Lark Ascending, was at 2 because over the years, it's been outdone by Rach 2. 

We always thought the answer was The Pearl Fisher's Duet that used to win Alan Keith's 100 Best Tunes in olden days but that's down at no. 90 now with, very depressingly, film music by John Williams finding more favour among the Classic FM audience. Which is exactly why it is only ever a station that plays harmless background music and why one buys records one hears on R3 and Classic FM, I think it's true to say, still provide work for David Mellor.