Interesting listening to radio abroad in France, Germany, Italy, Morocco, Denmark, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden and Tunisia... those essentially programming UK/US music are almost totally playing 60s, 70s and 80s hits with a tiny smattering of current huge tracks like Gangnam, Lucky and Impossible.

The last two decades appear to be virtually barren. As indeed does this current decade.

Radio Two in the UK seems the blueprint format for global music programming.

N° 1 son was flipping through radio channels in the car yesterday after despairing of a cover mount CD from a hip French rock magazine. I found myself singing along to Abba, Kate Bush and Kool & The Gang. It's actually currently quite hard to find songs with that level of plain old singability.