Less Vera Lynn, more Adam Ant

Yesterday I overhead the following conversation:

“Been settling Mum into the care home. Have bought her some more DVDs today. There they play war songs all the time but actually she likes music from the 1950s and 60s..” 

It’s a good point. How often do we see images of elderly care homes with the residents sat around in a circle listening to music from the 1940s and singing along to Vera Lynn?  Yet if you do the maths, even our current generation of 80 year olds were young adults in the 1950s and 1960s – very different music eras.

And there does seem to be an assumption of homogeny when in reality we often don’t have the same musical tastes as our spouses, let alone a group of strangers who just happen to be our age. And with the huge range of music now on offer, this diversity is likely to increase as we all get older.

So maybe we will all be sitting around in a circle with our iPods plugged into our ears instead!

What do you think?