(Today's blog is long. Get a cup of coffee.)

They Don't Write 'Em Like That Anymore, But Then Again, They Never Did

I'm not sure who it was. Maybe LilyG or Mike the Blogless. It was someone in the poundsqueeze faithful, though. Someone who suggested sporcle.com as a good time waster.

And boy, is it. I went there and was immediately hooked. It's all quizzes. I'm the first to admit I'm a sucker for a quiz. And there's a quiz for everybody! There are all sorts of topics, entertainment, science, math, television, music, religion, geography, sports, and more. I spent many an evening and late-night weekend playing all the quizzes I could play.

Then I started kind of running out of quizzes. I was taking them faster than they could post them. And yes, I'm also the first to admit that that's more than just a little bit embarrassing.

But then! Then!

Then I discovered the "User Created" section of the website, where plain old people like you and I put up their own quizzes. Sometimes they make it to the main page and sometimes they don't, and that's because some of them are great and some of them suck, but there are quizzes in all the regular categories as the main page, and games are uploading all the time, and well, I'm still quizzing away.

However. The thing that sends me to the blogging board for a little rant-rave.

For about three weeks now, there's been a new quiz uploaded daily by the same user. And boy, am I in love with these quizzes.

This user (no idea if it's a male or female) takes a year and it's our duty to guess the songs that charted from #15 to #1 in that year. And the best part - the clue for the answer to each question is a clip of a song for that year.

The first year for these quizzes was 1968. The next night was '69, then '70, then on and on until we finally reached 1989. That's a lot of years' worth of music, and it's taught me something I pretty much already knew, but this just drove it right home, into the driveway, and closed the garage door.

Music sure got sucky.

I often talk about how out of the loop I am as far as popular music is concerned. I thought it was just because I'm old, but I'm now realizing it's because I'm a relatively intelligent human being with a modicum of taste, and what has passed for a hit song the last 25 years is really sad.

The first years of these quizzes, the late 60s and early 70s, I was having a blast! I was singin' along, I was typin', I was in heaven. I was actually downloading songs from the quizzes from iTunes, songs I'd forgotten about, ones I realized I only had old, scratched-up singles of. And I was rockin' the quizzes themselves. For 1968 I got 36 of 38 songs. 1969, 33 of 36. 1970, 42 of 47.

And it stayed like that, and I thought I was it, man. Then as the years progressed I found I was getting less and less correct songs. The early 70s were still good, 48 of 56, 48 of 60.

Then 1975 hit, and I got my first small hint of disco and thought, "Oh, shit." The numbers dipped to the mid and low 40s. I remembered all those people when I was a teenager. The ones who said disco was so much wallpaper paste, and I laughed at them, as if to say, "You old fool - get with the times!" Now upon listening, most of them sounded exactly alike. I was getting more and more disappointed that I couldn't remember the songs I knew from high school. I was sure 1977, a year I remember has having one memorable hit after another, was going to be a breeze for me. I ended up with 39 of 50.

Well, fuck it all, I thought. The early 80s were my halcyon days! That's when I discovered Elvis Costello, and Squeeze, that's when MTV was born and I saw all those rough but endearing videos. Over and over and over. So when the quizzes for '80, '81, and '82 showed up, I was so ready. Uh-huh. I was so ready I found myself getting scores like 38 of 54, and 29 of 43.

It hit me that sure, I discovered Elvis Costello and the like in the early 80s, but guess what - those people never got played on the radio. They got played on MTV and if you wanted their records, you had to go out and scour stores for them. As I told Mike the Blogless, it hit me that these were also the years I abandoned my radio forever. Good for my soul, but not for the quiz.

I knew that once '83 and onward hit I was going to be out of my element. I wasn't quite prepared, though, for how out I was. I was outside looking in through an electric fence. My scores dropped down to the mid-twenties of 50, 51, 52 songs.

Then 1987 came along. Full disclosure here, it was Friday, and I'd done a full Hucklebug podcast so I'd been drinking, but I scored a paltry 21 of 55 on the songs of that year. And more full disclosure, it was't the liquor, because I took it the next day sober and got the same result.

The rest of the decade had me hovering at 23 of 50 or so.

Now. Here's what I'm talking about when I say music sure has gotten sucky. Well, wait. There's always been sucky music, don't get me wrong. I doubt I could name a year without at least a couple of songs that will make us all cringe, laugh, or gag. But! But those gagalicious songs were at least memorable. From the 80s on, it is a rare gem to find a memorable (good or bad) song that registered on the charts.

I'm going to give you an example here. Let's take some random years, OK?

1968: Lady Madonna, Tighten Up, Sky Pilot, Both Sides Now, White Room, Walk Away Renee, I Heard It Through The Grapevine, Honey (Mike's all-time favorite song), Grazing in the Grass, For Once In My Life, and Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay.

1969: Sugar Sugar, Come Together, Hair, Fortunate Son (my favorite Creedence song, thanks very much), Sweet Caroline, Build Me Up Buttercup, Honky Tonk Women, Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye, and Suspicious Minds.

1970: Let it Be, Ride Captain Ride, Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes), All Right Now (my favorite guilty pleasure of all time, thanks very much), Spirit in the Sky, My Sweet Lord, ABC, Tears of a Clown, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again and if you ever wondered where Prince stole all that crappy spelling, now you know), Bridge Over Troubled Water, and Fire and Rain.

1973: Ramblin' Man, Space Oddity, Smokin' in the Boys' Room, Let's Get it On, Killing Me Softly, Until You Come Back To Me (favorite Aretha song, thanks very much), Reelin' in the Years, The Way We Were, Dueling Banjos, You Are the Sunshine of My Life, and Give Me Love (ditto George Harrison, thanks very much).

1974: Takin' Care of Business, Everlasting Love, Radar Love, Rock the Boat, Midnight at the Oasis, The Night Chicago Died, Come and Get Your Love, I Shot the Sheriff, Kung Fu Fighting, and Sweet Home Alabama.

Lots of songs. Some good, some great, some next to Godliness, and some pretty bad. But all memorable.

And so 1976 brought us Dancing Queen, More More More, Turn the Beat Around, Disco Duck, and can anyone give me a valid answer as to why Disco Duck wasn't the death of disco? Boy the money it would have saved me in the day, and I would have probably discovered Television, Patti Smith, and the Ramones a lot earlier than I did.

The late 70s were all full of one orchestrated disco hit after another. And then, my salvation, the 80s. Or so I thought. Let's look at the wonderful, revolutionary, mind-bending music of my halcyon days.

1980: Every Woman in the World (Ah, the Air Supply Years), The Tide is High, Tired of Toein' the Line, Little Jeanie, Into the Night, All Over the World, I Love a Rainy Night, Love the World Away, Magic, Giving it Up for Your Love, and Sailing. Sure, we had Celebration, Funkytown, Whip It, and Fame that year, but you can see the slippage. I hope.

1981: Kiss on My List, Morning Train, Let's Groove, Take it on the Run, Stop Draggin' My Heart Around, Harden My Heart, We're in This Love Together, Theme From "The Greatest American Hero" (BELIEVE IT OR NOT IIIII'M WALKING ON AIR!), Physical, Queen of Hearts, and Don't Stop Believin'. It's not the 1981 I remember riding around in my car skipping classes.

1982: Even the Nights Are Better, Eye in the Sky, You Can Do Magic (America was still around?), Do You Believe in Love (Huey Lewis rears his head), Freeze Frame, Up Where We Belong, Open Arms, The Girl is Mine, Maneater (even Hall & Oates were slipping), Don't Talk to Strangers, and Pass the Dutchie. (Now, I will admit this year also had Rock the Casbah, Stray Cat Strut, 867-5309, Steppin' Out, We Got the Beat, and 1999.)

Oh, but then the mid-80s hit, and it was Katy bar the door. Really. Bar it, Katy, and don't let any of this stuff in.

1986: Shake You Down, Livin' on a Prayer, Mad About You, Nikita, Heartbeat (by everyone's favorite, Don Johnson), Like a Rock, Is This Love, On My Own, Be Good to Yourself, The Glory of Love, Take Me Home Tonight, Typical Male, and Love Touch. the hell? They did have Holding Back the Years and Sledgehammer, but that can't begin to make up for that papfest.

1989: Another Day in Paradise, Get on Your Feet, Opposites Attract, Batdance, Blame it on the Rain, The Look, Like a Prayer, I Drove All Night, The Living Years, I'll Be Loving You Forever, Shower Me With Your Love, The Best, and, well, and a bunch of other crap, too. Of the 50 songs on that quiz, I got 19. Number of songs I couldn't tell you ever even existed? 11! 11 that were news to me, boy.

As you can imagine, when it came time for the 1990 quiz, I was giddy with dreadful delight. Would I do worse? A new low? Then a miraculous thing happened. I went to the sporcle page, and the quiz was - 1967! Could it be? Could the hand of God have tapped Mr Quizmaster (or Ms Quizmistress) on the head and said, "Hey, Bet's out of her element. Get right on that."

I was back in Wonderland again. I was listening to the songs I knew from the radio of my childhood and getting high scores. Then the next night was 1966. And the next night was 1965! I was 42 of 50, 44 of 50, and 44 of 50.

And then 1990 showed up, and I was bummed, getting an embarrassing 16 of 50, and I hovered around the 23 of 50 mark on the rest, until today. 1993 - 12 of 50.

Anyone know any of these golden greats?

1993: All That She Wants, Please Forgive Me, Breathe Again, Can We Talk, Hero, Gangsta Lean, Ordinary World, Hip Hop Hooray, Slam, What's My Name, I Don't Wanna Fight, Kickin' It, Rain, One Last Cry, The River of Dreams, and even a one-hit wonder that's forgettable, Whoomp There it Is.

The 90s was the biggest suckfest in music history.

Well, until the 2000s, in which I predict there will be a year I don't know one single song.

The Quizmeister promises to go back to the early 60s, and it won't be a minute to soon for me.

Five important things one learns, though, when being addicted to these music quizzes by year.

1. Music sure enough did get sucky, and it's not unsucking as the years go by.

2. Almost every James Brown song sounds exactly alike.

3. Chicago and Barry Manilow stayed around long after their sell-by dates, and towards the end, their songs are totally unrecognizable. Not unrecognizable as them, unrecognizable as music.

4. Bryan Adams should never have been allowed to make one single record.

5. If one is considering comparing quiz scores with Mike the Blogless, well, don't. Mike wins every single time.

So endeth the music lesson.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* I saw the sun today! It was right there in the sky, shining!