This article by Nick Hornby struck a few chords with me. He writes as an obsessive music fan who knows nothing about the ‘top ten’ – the albums which ordinary people are actually buying. So, he listens to each them and reports back. He makes one particularly telling comment when he is praising the Alicia Keys album: “One of the strengths of the album is Keys’s recognition that there was black American music before Whitney Houston”. I haven’t heard the album, but I know what he means – modern ‘Soul’/’R&B;’s lack of resemblance to classic 60s and 70s soul is one of the main reasons why I dislike it.