If I Was Your Girlfriend

 Eventually the list-making for 'A Perfect Day of Pop Radio' must stop. And so it stops now, the last adjustment being made in the Jazz Show, from midnight - 1 a.m., underwhelmed by Miles Davis's cover of 'Time After Time' and so replacing it with this.

And so now I can begin work on my Unfinished Symphony, the little essays on each track that would have made up my book on pop music had I lived long enough to do them all.

Prince & Miles Davis - If I Was Your Girlfriend

 'Cool' is a highly-prized commodity in certain parts of the pop music industry. For many of those who take it seriously, it is a necessary, implicit thing that the artist must have or else one simply doesn't give them the time of day. It's likely to be a high priority among young people keen on establishing the value of their chosen taste and thus in universities but I hope by now most students have seen through that and the situation isn't as bad as it was from 1978-81.

'Cool' is only really what you say it is. It shouldn't be achievable by trying to achieve it. That should instantly disqualify you from it. It should be effortless. Thus, I remain unsure if the 'cool' of Lou Reed, Prince and Miles Davis, three of its most apparently successful exponents, is valid or not. Perhaps their attempts succeed in spite of their efforts because the music was still good whereas the likes of, say, Bono bombed abysmally because it usually wasn't.

Disdaining the uncool, detaching oneself from the bourgeois, mainstream, square sorts that define the ordinary might have seemed a good idea but non-conformity very soon becomes a new uniform. The dissent from middle class standards of dress and behaviour into long hair, denim, some Marxism and maybe even substance abuse was as conservative as Jacob Rees-Mogg is now with its adherence to party lines, properness and herd instinct.

It could be turned inside out. If only they had realized how absurd it all was. They seemed to think they were one step ahead but they were a step behind and drenched in their own righteousness. Nonetheless, If I Was Your Girlfriend is a slinky thing and made for Miles Davis to step into as the two uber-cool giants from different generations overcome all accusations of 'trying too hard' by 'being any good'.