Originally started up on the remarkable idea that it might be useful and interesting to publish a list of the relative
popularity of different musical entities, in recent years the charts have been reduced to a much poorer purpose. It has been estimated that
the charts have not reflected the opinion if right-minded people since the day that The Birdie Song entered them. Since this fateful day the
only purpose of these listings is to reflect the relative success of each record company's marketing strategy or the ideas
suggested for the "performers" to adopt as personae. If the relevance of any phenomenon is estimated as the degree to which an
alien studying the said phenomenon would form a true and useful opinion of life on the planet, the charts are right down there with the SInclair C5.
An alien studying today's top forty would believe that earthpeople had not yet developed any sort of musical culture. They might even doubt that we knew of any tempos
other than the two currently employed by 'songwriters' for their plasticised 'performers' to gyrate in time to. It would seem that
all the technology employed in the production of music was little more than a pair of electronic rocks, banged digitally together.
Aliens choosing to study the Billboard top 100 would gain a little information about the relative ages of the creations whose
relative 'success' is documented thereon. The nearer an 'artist' is to the top, the newer they are.

If an otherworldly visitor chanced to regard the television programmes on which the chart is embellished by performance of its content,
they get a very warped idea indeed of humanity. They would conclude that the only reason for primates evolving to be
bipedal was that they didn't have enough ideas to choreograph for two legs, never mind four. They would develop the idea that
we were dominated by a ruling class of sylph-like rhythmically-moving creatures that opened and shut their mouths as
the frantic worker caste screamed their hysterical adulation. It would seem to them that despite the success of groups of three or more
males in public houses and clubs across the country that the ideal way for males to become the sexual desire of a roomful
of females was to form a group of three or more which should dress identically, look as if they're at least three years from shaving
and sing in very high voices. On the offchance that the millenial end of the world should be true and that the means is by annihilation by
an alien race, we should strive to ensure that all indications of humanity are positive. Losing the charts as they are today would be a good one.

One of the major sources of the apparent indiscretion of the modern purchaser of music is the proliferate compilation album.
Most neglect to distinguish between the type of music they sell and will mix in the odd heartfelt and meaningful track with the trite fodder
emitted by the nondescript and manifold masses of teenypop groups. Young followers of music will adopt this method of emotional expression as the true form,
forming the opinion that the glibness of a statment and number of beats for which a single syllable is sustained is directly proportional to its truth.

How can the charts be improved? The advent of real-time music downloading/playing technology could be a help. If (as Douglas wishes) all
manner of things such as magazines, newspapers and records are published electronically (saving trees and removing all the excuses record distributors use to
support the high prices they charge for their products), all music could be rated in an efficient and truthful way. Rather than people buying records that they've heard on
saturday morning bankrupt-the-teenies 'music' shows, people could sample all styles of music equally. If the listeners could give their own rating of the tunes they sample,
overall ratings could be generated. This style of thing recently triumphed when Belle and Sebastian won an award over the highly marketed (by that scourge of all things musical, Pete Waterman) Steps.
For those whose musical world is two stumpy Byker Grove refugees on saturday mornings and the restricted playlist of the mainstream radio stations, this result was astounding as they'd never even heard of Belle and Sebastian.
To further clarify the matter, categories could be introduced. Most right-thinking people would hope that such travesties as Peter André were excluded from a music rating system on the simple grounds that they are not music.
The indie charts sported by music papers such as NME were recently dropped due to the fact that their classification was independent of their content; an 'indie' label could sign a high-profile kiddies' dance act as well as musicians and artists
in the traditional senses.

A few years ago I saw a television documentary about songwriters, the people who traditionally wrote for all artists in the days before singer/songwriters became the norm. In one shot, a writer was complaining about the dearth of people who were
prepared to let a qualified tunesmith and lyricist write all their material. Whilst they may be the most technically skilled in the execution of music as an art form, there is nothing to beat the feeling conveyed by someone performing a song or piece that they have
written themselves and which carries their own feelings and thoughts. People know that a game of Chinese Whisper will beget a result that bears little relation to the original statement; in this way concert pianists who are lauded for performing a piece by a long-dead
composer so 'perfectly' are thus fallible. What do they know of the way it was played? Constrained by staves and time signatures, composers so skilled in creating melodies and counterpoints must have had more to add to their works by means of subtle variations conveyed only in thir playing.
If an artist wishes to perform other people's writings they can but they should be made distinct from those that play their own words. Only in this way can Celine Dion be ousted from radios and televisions everywhere.

this is still unfinished. more later.