h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm taking a cue from the song "Tower of Song" by Leonard Cohen. It took me three months, but I have finished collecting pop CDs of 20th century music.
http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/alabaster/A87773340?s_fromedit=1

Mountain climbing is hard work, even if the mountain in question was assembled by the climber. I left out a number of worthy performers and groups, but eventually there will be an overflow collection that they can reside in.

I allowed a few 21st-century artists into the list -- Jewel, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, for instance. I left out Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and Adele. Bieber was about 8 in the year 2000. Miley and Adele weren't much older than that. They're still so young that there's plenty of time for them to show what they can do.

It's sobering to think that the earliest single-artist CD was the one by Harry Lauder. A hundred years ago, he would have been 42, and one of the most popular performers in the world. He wrote lots of songs during the First World War. Nowadays, he's pretty much forgotten. My personal opinion is that a lot of his songs were pretty silly. The most popular songs of today will probably seem just as silly in 2112.

In truth, every decade has its share of silly songs. In the 1950s, there was "Mambo Italiano." In the 1960s, there were the Chipmunk craze and the Witch Doctor song and the Monster Mash song. Tiny Tim sang "Tiptoe through the tulips" in a quavering falsetto. Allen Sherman turned "Dance of the hours" into a song about summer camp ["Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah"] In the seventies, there were more silly disco songs than I can list here. In the eighties, Bobby McFerrin came up with "Don't Worry, be happy." In the nineties, Michael Bolton sold more than 50 million records; people of 2112 will be laughing their heads off at the people who bought those records.

It's too early to name the silliest song trend of the early 21st Century.

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people of 2112 will be laughing their heads off at the people who bought those recordsthey won't be laughing at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POv-3yIPSWc

worst part isthey're Yorkshire

Agadoo is not in my collection -- I have my CDs indexed by song. Should I be trying to get a copy of it?

stop ingand the answer is NO NO NO!

I can't lose friends this way

When I looked it up in Google, I saw many UK references, but no indication that anyone in the USA had ever heard it. Maybe I wiouldn't even understand it if I heard it.

I suggest you give Adele one more chance. That girl can sing!

Bobby McFerrin came up with "Don't Worry, be happy" for good reason. It's not just a silly ditty - and trust me : He was not appointed a professor if that had been true!

Other than that I have no comments and I congratulate you on finishing the assignment

No one can understand it Paul

Adele will get another chance, Pierce. I can borrow as many CDs as I want from the library, but I've bought enough for now. This is a working collection. They're all in rotation, and I'll hear them each about twice a year, interspersed with CDs from other periods and genres. No radio station can give me this much variety. Operas, motets, rock music, jazz, trio sonatas, symphonies,concertos for every conceivable instrument, chamber music of all kinds,lieder, masses, folk music, country music, Scottish music, Irish music, movie soundtracks, stage musicals. The only genre I haven't systematically cultivated is world music. That can wait for another year.

Some other categories that I have are waltzes, solo keyboard music, marches, humorous music, big band music, Christmas music from dozens of different countries.....