Last night I sank into a nostalgic haze while listening to some music that appealed to me when I was growing up:  These Were Our Songs: The Early 60’s.

The lyrics seem preposterously naive by today’s standards, of course. For example:

You come on like a dream, peaches and cream,
lips like strawberry wine:
you’re sixteen, you’re beautiful and you’re mine.

You’re all ribbons and curls, ooh what a girl,
eyes that sparkle and shine:
you’re sixteen, you’re beautiful and you’re mine.

But, as a callow youth, listening to this did manage to sum up what seemed at the time to be the profound attachment I felt towards my fifteen year-old girlfriend. Alas, it turned out not to be true love, so my romantic gushing was soon to be transferred to her replacement.

Unfortunately, for the last 20 years or so, popular music has laboured mightily to dispel the sentimentality of its progenitor: romantic pretension has been expunged by a crass unrelenting assault on the sensibilities:

Your bark was loud, but your bite wasn’t vicious,
And them rhymes you were kickin were quite bootylicious,
You get with Doggy Dogg oh is he crazy?
With ya mama and your daddy hollin’ Bay-Bee,
So won’t they let you know,
That is you fuck with dre nigga you’re fuckin wit Death Row,
And I ain’t even slangin them thangs,
I’m hollin one-eight-seven with my dick in yo mouth, beotch

Which, I have on good authority, could be roughly translated into the slightly less obtuse, but no less revolting:

You talk a lot but you can’t back it up,
You can’t rap well,
You must be crazy to try and mess with me,
I will kill you. Your mum and dad will be crying at your funeral,
If you mess with Dr. Dre you are messing with every rapper on our record label.
I don’t sell drugs, I will yell murder as you perform oral sex on me. Bitch.

If that wasn’t bad enough, here is Me So Horny from 2 Live Crew:

It’s true, you were a virgin until you met me
I was the first to make you hot and wetty­wetty
You tell your parents that we’re goin’ out
Never to the movies, just straight to my house
You said it yourself, you like it like I do
Put your lips on my dick, and suck my asshole too
I’m a freak in heat, a dog without warning
My appetite is sex, ’cause me so horny.

Romantic illusions have been replaced with pornographic illusions.
Take me back to the ’60s.