Music: Lyric Sheets

A poll of Radio 1's all time top 100 has finally kissed goodbye to the old rock classics. The only two chestnuts in the Top 20 are John Lennon's "Imagine" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". The old guard have been deposed by artists such as The Verve, Massive Attack and REM

The Old Guard

They grew long hair for your sort

Kids. Pah! What do you know?

In a flared be-denimed heaven

Does age begin to show

As She puts on Cat Stevens

And He puts on The Who?

They can't stand all the new stuff

They go with Radio 2

And it's all got far too frantic

Since the beat went up a gear

They remember buying Stairway

But do not shed a tear

Salute the new Top Hundred

Goodbye to the old guard

Who cares what Radio 1 says

They've always tried too hard?

One stop behind the fashions

And strictly anodyne

We eschewed it in the old days

For Radio Caroline

And songs we took as anthems

Which our parents called a noise

Gave export figures vigour

And knighthoods to the boys

Remastered but redundant

Our album tracks and singles

The cris-de-coeur of mopheads

Are advertising jingles

We rejoin them on the dancefloor

At an age when we should slow down

For a heart-attack watusi

At some tragic Sixties hoedown

The thing about pop classics is

They won't bear carbon-dating

Give it two decades my dears

Your cardigans are waiting.