The big news story at the moment, for those of you disinterested in English football, centres around the most successful and tediously dominant side over the past ten years, Manchester City. They have been able to invest financially heavily in their team and all-round operation for almost two decades, thanks to the funding of their owners, an investment group who count among their numbers a member of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi’s ruling family are believed to have vast economic interests and therefore it has been accepted over the recent years and seasons that this is where the money has come from to invest into Manchester City. However, the English Premier League has been bound during this period by a Financial Fair Play system, designed to prevent clubs from running at a massive loss and simply throwing money at a team, buying the best plays across the globe, paying the highest wages from a bottomless pit of funding, the kind of which most other teams cannot compete. Now, it has been declared widely in the press this past month, following an investigation lasting years, that Manchester City are guilty of financial misconduct. The general understanding is that by cooking their books essentially, they made it falsely look like the source of their funding was coming from legitimate marketing deals and such like.
Now I am not writing an article attempting to get into the nuts and bolts of that story; if you want to read about it, it’s everywhere right now. Besides, it is far from over. Manchester City are still stating their innocence and there is bound to be an appeal, but all the same, pundits and fans are deep in discussion about the appropriate levels of punishment that should be handed out. There is talk of relegation to lower leagues, bans on transfers, points deductions and most aggressively of all, that the trophies they have won during the years in question, which there were many, will be declared null and void thus, presumably, being belatedly awarded to the team finishing second on each occasion. That does, and this is not something I have ever felt before (1981 FA Cup Final perhaps), make me feel quite sorry for City fans. Yes, they have had it unbelievably good for a very long time but, it is not the fans or even the players fault that these shenanigans appear to have been going on behind closed doors. Football fans invest their time, money and lives into their clubs and being a Manchester City fan was hardly a glory ride prior to the 21st century. Now they are going to be told that all the memories, the celebrations, the shared moments of victory, the parades, love and appreciation they have thrown at their heroes on the field since 2011 no longer count. Like they have got to recalibrate their memories because what they think they saw, the triumphs they felt they witnessed and the trophy pictures they hung on the wall to preserve those happy feelings did not actually happen. If that dire fate hit my team Arsenal, I think I would just quit watching football altogether.
But all this has got me wondering, what if the same standards could be applied to music. What if there was an independent panel who could go back over the charts and the hit parades, right back down the nineties all the way to maybe the sixties, through the eras when the charts felt like a weekly competition that people actually cared about? Try and apply the rules so that any artist or act who had their mediocre music inflated because of a TV advertising campaign that independent bands could not afford have their chart positions adjusted accordingly. Try and make assessments based on who got the most exposure compared to those whose releases, especially ones that have gone on to receive some critical re-appraisal and appreciation, were buried or mysteriously failed to find their way to the shops because of some vague distribution problem. Once started this policy could really snowball, I mean every manufactured act that found their way to the top of the charts because they were boosted by exposure on Saturday night prime time TV in the 2000’s would be scrubbed out instantly. Clearly the public might have to take some responsibility for falling for it, but what if the only time you get to think about music falls on that weekly TV slot where there is a robotic man, elevated to a position where people actually believe he is an authority on music, is telling you the acts his talent show are promoting are the best the industry has to offer in any given year? Then the only time you get to think about purchasing music is on that weekly trip to the supermarket and there, front and centre of the limited CD selection are the very acts being touted to you as the best recording artists of the day? And maybe your children quite like them because they are not being exposed to anything else either? It was nothing short of a crime against music; at a time when people should have been trumpeting the wonders of Belle & Sebastian, The Coral or Rufus Wainwright they were having Will Young and Gareth Gates shoved down their throats. It has gone on to this day; I saw a film with my kids not that long ago about a singer discovering he was the only person in the world who could remember the Beatles catalogue and so claimed the songs as his own. A central ruse to the story was that Ed Sheeran…yes Ed Sheeran… is the modern-day comparable talent to The Beatles. And they presented this notion straight, not a hint of comedy. Honestly, it should come with fact checking subtitles if that kind of idea can be stated unchallenged. And maybe it is true, perhaps in terms of chart placings Ed Sheeran really is on a par with The Beatles, but that merely adds fuel to the fire of my argument.
OK, good to get that off my chest, enjoy the monthly playlist…dig in and dig out etc…
