I guess I'm experiencing the first wave of a new generation. A few weeks ago I was listening to John Tesh, and he mentioned the lowering attention spans of Gen Alpha have led to shorter lengths for new pop music, too. Something around 3 minutes tops, maybe even less...
When they have been raised by the phone (and most teens don't use it to benefit on real-life knowledge...they scroll the TikTok's and the YouTube Shorts on end), no wonder.
At least a few knew who the King of Pop was in that classroom...but others didn't. The new normal, I guess!
You did say FIFTH grade, right?
Those are TEN year olds.
Since we've been talking about musical awareness, let me outline mine (your mileage may vary).
Through fifth grade, I wasn't really paying attention to music. If there was a song on the radio that I liked, fine, but I didn't really know about charts (my parents weren't Top 40 listeners). I figured songs just kinda happened organically and I didn't know if anything was particularly new or not, unless a song that caught my ear was introduced---like maybe on a TV show like Ed Sullivan---with "here to perform their new record...."
Still, maybe two or three songs in a year penetrated to where I noticed, cared, and thought "I like that."
And since my parents weren't Top 40 listeners, the songs that caught my attention weren't all rock and roll (which I'd hear at friends' houses, or with my cousins, two of whom were older).
My parents just happened to be MOR and Jazz listeners, but the same thing played out in households where my friends' parents were Country listeners, and I would expect the same for those who listened to Beautiful Music or Classical extensively.
Ten is a little young to start rebelling against your parents' taste---or at least it was then.
So what got through---what did I like in fourth grade? Probably Roger Miller's "King of the Road" and Horst Jankowski's "Walk in the Black Forest".
Third grade? Probably Rolf Harris' "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport" and Kyu Sakomoto's "Sukiyaki".
Before that? Most likely "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" and "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall".
A big boost to my awareness of what pop music was all about came around the beginning of the school year for sixth grade when The Monkees premiered on NBC. They were funny, so I watched. And I liked some of the music.
Another step up in awareness and involvement came when I got a better-quality radio for my room for a birthday gift when I turned 11. I'd had a $2.99 pocket transistor up until then that I mainly ued to listen to baseball. I started dialing around more (it had better sensitivity) and heard more things, including Wolfman Jack.
That summer, KHJ-TV did its afternoon pop music/dance show "Groovy" live from the beach every day. So I watched and drank in a little more of pop culture.
And it just sort of grew from there. Some of my friends got more into music in that 11-12 range, too, but I was 14 before I could tell you most of the records on KHJ's Boss 30 that week. And a LOT of my friends all through high school never got
that into music. They'd have three or four songs (or albums) that they liked at any given time and that was about it.
They did know what DVDs were. And of course, their favorite source of TV...Netflix. I can tell you there's little chance they know VHS unless their great-grandparents are still alive and have a VCR on top of their Zenith console down in the basement. That wouldn't surprise me in any way.
Yeah. That would be like me in fifth grade knowing that TV used to be all in black and white, but having no clue what a crystal set or a wax cylinder recorder is.
This is time doing what time does.
