the majority of new pop music leaves me cold, but that is not to say I don't find new music to enjoy.

Nowdays I find the music that truly moves me tends to originate from places other than the UK or the US... Tinariwen, for example, whose music is as good as anything I've ever heard.

Maybe it's me.

I think it's that old chestnut 'authenticity' rearing its head again. The Human League are simply 'pop' to soem people and are not reagrded as proper authentic music that comes 'from the heart'.
I can dance to Don't You Want Me at a wedding disco alongside grannies on one side and small children on the other. The same is not true for Steely Dan. However those two birds in Human League probably couldn't find their way around a mixylodian major seventh scale (if such a thing exists) although I'm sure the Dan do that before breakfast most mornings.
The search for musical authenticity leads down the path of delusion and arrogance.

Birds??
And, pray, how can you presume that these 'birds' don't have a solid grasp on musical theory?

My feeling is there was a time from around 1964 to 1974 or thereabouts when the best (predominantly UK and US) pop and rock was made. I believe this was mainly due to the possibilities of doing new things opening up and being exploited. You look at the albums and songs made during that period and compare them to everything since and tally up the quantity of highest quality material produced and I think it's pretty clear. But there's been great stuff since and still is, just less of it and much less that's original. I am talking about rock and pop, singles and albums, soul, the whole range of what is really just pop at the end of the day.

I don't see that as rose-tinted spectacles or an older person's skewed perspective, whereby one looks back at previous decades according to some law or theory (as has been suggested elsewhere). I just think that's the way it is, for better or worse. I know music is a subjective thing, but I do know that what I like to listen to and what I believe to be great are not necessarily the same. It is absurd to say certain recordings are great in absolute terms in an absolute hierarchy, but it is hard to argue with the sheer volume of great stuff made during the period I refer to versus the volume in the time since. But I still want to listen to what's new just as much as ever really.

Oh and I like 'Don't You Want Me?', it's a pretty good pop song IMHO.

I still like a lot of current music, and 'that pathetic sound, those gutless hairdressers with a toy kazoo' is as precise a description of DYWM? as can be written. Horrible song, horrible sound, though I quite like some Human League.
Wasn't it rated the best Number One single in one of those Word best/worst charts which are invariably 50% wrong?
De gustibus non est dispautandum.

Of course there's lots of good new music. And of course there was lots of crap old music.

New stuff? Bon Iver, The Felice Brothers, Little Jackie, The Handsome Family, Fleet Foxes, Ralfe Band, Nat Johnson..... And then there's the song that Tom Waits will probably finish writing in about an hour.
It's all new.

Noooo! Not to me! I still adore "Don't You Want Me?", just as much as when I first heard it. IMHO it's a cracking song.

Still enjoy discovering new music, but not as much as I used to. Have more demands on my time now which makes it harder to give my new music the breathing space it deserves; it's easier to listen to something tried and tested.

Although, having said that, recent new discoveries that I love include MGMT, Elbow (a recommendation from fellow posters on this website), the Decemberists, Liam Finn... I've not given up just yet...

(as the record by M goes) - is mainly for young people. Older listeners are NOT supposed to like it. When a grumpy old man like me hears some of today's sounds blarring out of a car stereo I tend to react in the same way my dad did to my musical tastes. Don't even get me started on today's charts.

Yes a lot of it is repetitive and written to a formula but so it has always been. Just look at all the bands that were a gnat's crotchet from the Mersey and had not a cat-in-hell's chance of emulating their big Beatle brothers. I bet the Tin Pan Alley merchants of sheet music in the past were exactly the same. So will it be in the future. It's upto you to like what you like.

I emerge soaking after the crashing wave of your white-capped ( and vanned no doubt ) bloke-ishness.

But there are two Pat's.

Told you.

...authenticity seemed to go completely out of the window as a worthwhile concept. It became more important to be the next most 'now' band in the world ... until the next one and style and image became more important than substance. I've always felt the UK cares more about the haircut than do the US, when it comes to music. In the sixties in the UK, blues, folk, jazz, pop and rock all existed at the same time and was really popular. In the year I was born John Coltrane was right up there with Elvis.

Maybe there is too much choice but too little distinction - there is plenty of good stuff - like Fleet Foxes, Sufjan Stevens, the Eels etc etc but often it's like trying to find the Sky Arts channel without a contents page.

You are completely & utterly wrong. DYWMB is one of those brilliant turning points in pop. And the album Dare is still a brilliant new-sounding record.

And lets not forget what the character you are quoting turned out to be - so I wouldnt hold him up as a beacon of good taste!!

And (another thing!) as for that old "authentic" chestnut - aaargh! Is a group from post-industrial Sheffield playing electronic music based on German electronica, English pop sensibility and US disco any less authentic than a bunch of long haired english public schoolboys playing the blues? I dont think so.

...with Mr Faulks and Bruised Mike on The Human League.

Soft Cell....ggrrrrrr!!

Its an age thing.

The Human League were genuinely inventive and interesting. Dare is up there with The Lexicon Of Love in my humble.

I think Mr Faulks is really making a clumsy point about the time in your life when you realise that Radio 1 DJ's are soulless, witless babblers who can't tell the difference between this weeks new thing and music of lasting quality. I recall Paul Gambaccini talking of Kajagoogoo as the future when they were popular when it was obvious to everyone that they were not. That would be reason to throw a radio out of a window, not a top drawer 80's pop song.

Worth pointing out these are Engleby's thoughts rather than Sebastian Faulks' - I guess the insinuation is the author shares these views but it isn't a given. Also, the bulk of the novel is set in the 70s and 80s, and this is Engleby's somewhat knee-jerk reaction to the new electronic music of the 1980s, the Human League and all, rather than Faulks looking back from the present as such.
As for the general point, it seems a bit sweeping to write off 20-30-odd years of music, there is surely plenty to discover in any era. Fair enough everyone will have their own picks and while 64-74 might be seen as the classic era for rock, since then you have had punk, disco and hip hop, all of which have produced extraordinary stuff.
A great book though, and great character. Well worth getting.

There, that's settled that. Let's move on.

Just realised that DYWMB actually starts "You were working in a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met you". (and I'd argue that it's one of the best opening lines in pop ever, but that's a often repeated whole other thread).

Mr Faulks is quoting the second verse.

How many pedant points do I win??

What else could it be?