In the week that music lost one of its greats, R&B singer Natalie Cole, I wonder how many people will suddenly begin to listen to Natalie's music, who never listened before.
I'm not knocking this at all as I've been guilty of it myself. After Nina Simone died in 2003, I entered a sort of musical awakening and became obsessed with Nina's music. And whilst I had always listened to Whitney Houston and went to see her in concert, I found myself listening to her music a lot more after she died.
I think that the death of incredibly talented musicians is often the awakening and discovery of their talent for people who didn't know of them before. But I'm not sure it is just on those sad occasions that music is awakened in people.
I've been undergoing a new musical awakening recently, beginning with reading an article about Carly Simon. For her new book, she was interviewed and gave some insights into the men she wrote about in "You're So Vain", which made me want to listen again. And so began my new obsession with her music and I instructed my husband about the songs that had to be on the albums that had to be on my Christmas list. And then followed Kate Bush. Again, there was a trigger in the form of a documentary about her and I began listening again (and in the process driving everybody in my house up the wall as I played her songs over and over and over again).
I love music and I listen to a wide variety. I sometimes feel very out of touch with today's popular music, not being a 'youth' anymore, and instead of it being right at my finger tips to name who has sung a new song on the radio, I often find myself having to look them up. But I also love music from decades gone by - Simon, Bush, Fleetwod Mac, Streisand, The Bee Gees. You can't beat them, even now with the wonderful new singer-songwriters we have, there is something about the old stuff that you can't touch with new music. It appears timeless.
Perhaps the triggers for me are my 'Oh Yeah' moments. The moments I realise I loved that singer but forgot them for a while, or that, horror of horrors, I never knew about them to begin with.
I imagine I'm not alone in that and I bet there are a lot of people this week downloading Natalie Cole's wonderful music; young and old and hopefully experiencing their own new musical education.
For now, I'm off to the music shop to begin my next obsession.