Tuesdays are the in-person day for my office. We generally eat lunch together in the conference room as a way to build back some of the camaraderie that was lost with COVID/remote work. Today, I decided to run a little experiment based on Tim's statement:
I find it really hard to believe that “My Sweet Lord” is new to anyone over 30. Seems awfully unlikely.
My staff know that I'm weird and post on a magic football message board, so I briefly described the utter disbelief I encountered here last evening. Being a professional researcher, I did not give specific details nor try to sway my fellow diners in any direction. I simply played one minute of
My Sweet Lord and one minute of
Woke Up This Morning . I posed a single question after each: do you recognize this song?
First, a few demographics. Today's crowd was smaller than usual thanks to leave and work-related travel, and even if the full group had been assembled, it certainly would not compromise a representative sample. No projections to the population can me made from the results. The 13 respondents comprised:
Age <30 One male and one female
Age 31 - 40 Two males and four females
Age 41 - 50 One male and one female
Age 51 - 60 One male and one female
Age >60 One male
All are college-educated, with 11 of the 13 having an advanced degree of some sort. All were born and raised in the U.S. The old guy is a Deadhead, but none are music nerds in the sense of this thread. I would bet that if I played
How Soon Is Now, maybe two would know it's The Smiths, a half-dozen would say "oooh, it's the theme from
Charmed, and the remainder would look perplexed. Anyway, on to the findings...
Only 3 of 13 people recognized
My Sweet Lord - the 60-something Deadhead, the 50-something woman, and the 25 year-old woman whose mom and dad love the Beatles. Two of the three knew it was George Harrison. No one else hazarded a guess.
Meanwhile, 9 of 13 people recognized
Woke Up This Morning - all but the 40-something woman, two 30-something women, and the mid-20s man. No one, however, knew the actual name of the song or the identity of A3/Alabama 3.
What does this prove? Absolute nothing.
Does it somehow excuse my ignorance of beautiful classics from the decade of my birth? No way, no how?
Does my 18-year old son know who George Harrison is? "Didn't he direct Star Wars? Or wait, he played Han Solo, right?"
How old was I when I learned
Sympathy for the Devil was originally by the Stones? 18. It was my favorite song on Jane's Addiction's XXX record. A couple of years later, I played it in the restaurant kitchen and someone said that it ruined a great RS song. I was like, what?
Should I run the same experiment when I visit our Philly office on Thursday? Probably not. I don't need those folks to learn about my posting hobbies. Philly people are mean. Go Eagles!