Musical cycles

There was a creative piece in yesterday's Times honoring the retirement of Casey Kasem (the king of the long-distance dedication, and also - didja know? - the voice of Shaggy on Scooby Doo). After a few notes on Kasem's work, the paper printed the top five songs on the American Top 40 list from the week of July 17 at five-year intervals, covering Kasem's 39-year career.

An amazing list, really, for various reasons. With the Jackson Five holding down the second spot in 1970 and Miley Cyrus at number 4 in 2009, the appeal of feel-good pre-pubescent pop seems demonstrably consistent. Donna Summer, with two songs in the top three in 1979, emerges as a star even larger than I'd have guessed. But what really struck me was how few of the songs I knew - and, more specifically, how I could roughly chart my interest in pop music through my familiarity, or unfamiliarity, with the songs.

Born in 1970, I started when Kasem did, and so it's natural that I don't know many of the hits from his early years on the show. Even as late as 1979, I was clearly more interested in Nerf footballs and Atari than in pop music; the songs on that year's list don't ring a bell. 1984, though, turns out to be my wheelhouse: all five songs from that year are, for better or worse, engraved deeply into my musical memory. And yet, by 1989 I'd clearly begun to seek alternatives on the dial, or on my stereo: I remember listening to a lot of Talk Talk (not on the list), but not much Martika (number 2 on that year's July 14 countdown). The summer of 1994 - which I remember in musical terms as the season in which Kurt Cobain died - turns out to have been, for many Americans, a summer of rather lush ballads. And from that point on, the list just grows more and more foreign to me. Hoobastank, the band with the top song in 2004? I've heard of them, but barely. And I don't think I've ever heard of Shinedown, who currently hold the top spot.

It occurs to me that most folks would probably describe a similar arc of familiarity with pop. As children, we may move against a barely sensed background of such music, but of course we don't know the names of the singers, or the titles of songs. It's when we become young adults, though, that we begin to form an interest in music - and pop has always offered one of the easiest and most conventional paths of entry. Just as we often leave home at around 18, though, we begin to branch out musically, too, finding our own voice and learning our own tastes. And pop becomes an afterthought - a teen crush to whom our thoughts might return occasionally, but rarely in any serious manner.

What's neat about all of this, though, is that there's always someone nurturing the crush. I don't know The Fray (currently number 5), but I'm sure that there's a 13-year-old somewhere who's written the lyrics onto a Trapper Keeper. And that 13-year-old may never know the power of The Reflex played at a roller skating rink in 1984, but I remember it with delight. Or am I just overcomplicating things? Perhaps, although the names of the bands and songs change, we do know each other's experience, for it's simply the experience of growing up.