We have partied like it’s 1988

So, 2008 – good for you?

Based on the big events in Music this year, if you have a mullet, have a favourite ‘axe’ player, drive a pick-up truck, or like a good mosh, then I’d guess it probably was.

You see, last year everybody was watching Sam Tyler go back to the 1970’s in BBC One’s smash hit ‘Life on Mars’. Then, all of a sudden, music was taken back to 1988.

Britney Spears? Britney Who more like. Yes, entered the year exposed lady-parts first with a hairdo modelled on swimmer Duncan Goodhew, but after being removed from the paparazzi’s gaze on a stretcher she disappeared off the radar.

I’m sure there were plenty of reality show wannabes littering the year like chip wrappers at a truck-stop cafe, but can you name any of them? Even the last dying gasp of the Cowell-machine in 2008 relied on Cohen’s own strain of rejoicing, inadvertently startling every music aficionado on the planet that it’s already been 14 years since Jeff Buckley made it his own when that cover reached number 2.

What’s been big on the gangster scene? Well, Jay Z looked as likely a booking at Glastonbury as Cliff Richard being booked for Hugh Heffner’s birthday bash, and the audience mutiny was nothing compared to the wrath of Gallagher brothers. Once the bad boys of ’90s rock, they looked less like ‘our kid’ and more like ‘our nan’ as they quietly muttered their outrage without even a victory solute to the camera.

In pop music Pete Waterman disappeared from reality shows and Steve Lamacq saw his target audience age overnight as he crossed the street with his mother’s permission from Radio 1 (does anyone still listen to that?) to Radio 2.

With so little going on you’d think 2008 had been a complete washout, with the exception of a 50 year-old man in a schoolboy outfit. Yes, the big album of 2008? ACDC with their first offering in 8 years. Okay, so Duffy outsold them in the end, but given that the average ACDC fan grew up in an age where you needed a small van to make your music portable, they were unlikely to be able to compete with downloads.

On the subject of downloads, Metallica sold 500k in the US alone of Death Magnetic, and found themselves headlining the Download Festival alongside an unlikely candidate. Surely needing less makeup and more polyfilla, Gene Simmons and Kiss successfully moved from the thing of the past to the thing of the moment. Oasis somehow managed to sneak a new album out without anyone taking a blind bit of notice, and Def Leapard made a successful escape from old age to do a quick stadium tour.

Just as you thought 2008 had finished with its faded leather jacket, cowboy boots, clack-dyed hair and eye-liner, the mullett came back as Axl Rose decided to stick two-fingers up at Dr Pepper and release a new Guns and Roses offering. Obviously we were supposed to believe Axl was the true depiction of Wagnerian artistry, a struggling sole working tirelessly for 15 years to release a musical offering worthy of Homer’s Odyssey. In any other year it would have been momentous, but surrounded by the other stadium zimmer-users it slightly paled in comparison. Still, the album’s title ensured at least 13billion Chinese residents stood up, took notice, and then sat back down again in case it was somehow seen as them making some kind of democratic Mexican wave.

So there you have it. Those boys from the mid-eighties Midlands were right, Pop Will Eat itself. Like a caterpillar who suddenly takes a fancy to eating his rear end, music is officially going backwards. Based on this, I predict 2009 will see Bananarama, Belinda Carlisle, Gloria Estefan and Cher making it big with stadium tours and keep fit dvds. Pop socks and leg warmers will be filling the racks of Marks and Spencers, and everyone will be taking dancing lessons from their Mum.

That said, today’s news was full of John Lennon being used to advertise laptops, so I can’t wait until 2010 when the Beatles will reform, and Buddy Holly and Glen Miller will find themselves stepping from the airport arrivals lounge and into the back of a waiting limo.