Reason #782 Why I'm Old

I like to think that I'm up-to-date on pop culture. Somewhat through my kids, I know most of the current pop hits. When a friend posted on Facebook recently that his son predicted that Dua Lipa would perform at the next Super Bowl halftime show and the friend admitted that he had no idea "who or what is dualipa," I replied by naming several of her biggest songs that he had probably heard. While I don't watch many movies, I'm generally aware of those with the biggest box office numbers. I also follow sports and television rather closely.

Now that I got that out of the way, let's show how unaware I am. My kids watched the NBA All-Star celebrity game the other night. Here are the rosters:

From this list, I know the three country singers, Walker Hayes (he sang the Applebees song), Shaboozey (from Northern Virginia and singer of Tipsy), and Mickey Guyton (can't name any of her songs but she's performed the national anthem at several major sporting events). Matt Barnes and Baron Davis both played in the NBA, and Terrell Owens is a Hall-of-Fame wide receiver. From there, I know that Noah Kahan is a singer, Kai Cenat is a YouTuber my kids like, and I think that Oliver Stark was a character on Game of Thrones. While there were a couple Olympians in this group that I probably watched last summer, I don't know more than half of these celebrities. How many do you know? Or am I just old and out of touch?

Friday Video: White Town

I've listed to a lot of pop music this summer. On our drive on interstate 95 (more on this next week), the kids constantly wanted to play the Hits 1 station on SiriusXM. One of the songs we heard is "Love Again" by Dua Lipa. It's not her best song, but it's fine. 

The point of this post is the sampled music in the song above that is very familiar to 90s music fans. After seeing Green Day and Weezer recently, maybe I'm just on a nostalgia kick right now. In any event, I still like "Your Woman" by White Town.

Friday Video: Levitating

While this song has been out for a while now, I dig "Levitating" by Dua Lipa featuring DaBaby. 

They were great during the performance at the Grammys too. 

I'm half-way through my 30 blog posts in 30ish days challenge. Just curious, do you like these more frequent, but less detailed posts, or do you prefer the longer posts that come out once or twice a week?

Old Spice?

When driving last week, the song "Dreams" by The Cranberries came on the radio. My 10 year old (The Moose) asked me to change the station because he hates when we listen to old songs. (The actual quote was "I hate when you listen to old songs.") A few months ago, I wrote that we started dancing to Just Dance songs on YouTube for exercise on cold and rainy days. I recently played "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, and The Moose again criticized it for being an old song. He then asked if the members of the Spice Girls are still alive. After I replied yes, he asked how old are they? In their 70s?

To be fair to The Moose, both Dreams and Wannabe are about 25 years old. That is old to him. Plus, he really doesn't comprehend the age of songs or anything else. In his mind, the Spice Girls, Rolling Stones, and even Mozart could all be contemporaries. 

Still, I have failed as a parent in teaching The Moose and my other kids about music. I rarely play music in the house. I don't use Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Tidal, or any other streaming services. I never had an iPod, and I don't have any songs on my phone. This might be surprising, but I have never downloaded any music either. Sure, I bought tapes and CDs in the past, but I don't think I've bought a new CD since The Moose was born. So much of the music The Moose listens to is from the radio when he's in the car. Therefore, he knows your Dua Lipas and Harry Styleses (Stylesi?), but I don't think he's very familiar with Prince or Tom Petty or The Beatles or really anyone from before 2010. 

This is the part of the blog post where I ask for advice. How do I get The Moose and his brothers to appreciate and listen to more music other than what's currently playing on pop radio? 

Photo by Getty Images.