A good start - demolish The Beatles and U2 in one go

Am I the only person on the planet who thinks the Beatles weren't all that good? Sure, there's a good, solid back catalogue of absolute classics - but, in nearly every case, these are the ballads (Fool on a Hill, Eleanor Rigby, etc) or the bittersweet comments on life (like Nowhere Man).

The 'rock' songs, like the unutterably tedious - peace and love, man - Revolution ("cos you know it's gonna to be alright, alright" - I'll bear that in mind, next time I talk to a Chinese dissident or a victim of the South-Asia Tsunami) just don't hold up to critical scrutiny 30 years on. Most of their early work - whilst containing some devilishly clever chord sequences - should have been consigned to the dustbin of pop history long ago: She Loves You (Yeah Yeah Yeah), I Wanna Hold Your Hand, etc, etc

And then there's the cringe-inducing peudo-intellectual bollocks that is I Am the Walrus and - surely a prime candidate for the worst song ever written - Hey Jude.

As for their 'masterpiece', Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (lets face it, that title is annoying enough in itself), this terrible album is chock-full of drug-induced oh-so-clever whining dirges (see Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds and A Day In The Life) and completely throwaway, self-consciously 'amusing' crap, like Lovely Rita, Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite! and When I'm Sixty-Four.

And don't you just hate the way in which those terrible local radio-style pander-to-the-boring-tastes-of-our-forty-something-target-audience-who-preen-
themselves-in-their-complacent-view-that-only-music-when-they-were-teenagers-is-any-good-
and-lets-call-it-'Gold'-or-'Classic' play that 60s/70s best-forgotten music as if it were Bach or Beethoven? Like those friends of mine who say: "why don't you listen to some real music" (read 'The Beatles' - yawn), when they come home and their teenage children are playing a modern pop gem by any one of the fantastically original 21st-century artists who they need to wash out their tired old brains and listen to.

But at least the (reasonably) Fab Four deserve their automatic entry into the UK Music Hall of Fame.

Unlike U2. Now, don't get me wrong, I think this outfit are a pretty good rock band. But did the music industry really have to flatter the egos of Bono (first name or last??) and something called 'The Edge' - who seems to think that a cosy woolly hat is absolutely de-rigueur wear in all weathers?

But what got me started on U2 was hearing - probably the most depressing piece of news this decade - that Bono has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Can you believe this? It so smacks of middle-aged men in grey suits trying to put a populist young people's spin on something which is dripping with corruption, blindness and vanity.

As if the hubristic self-image of this self-satisfied, jumped-up little man, in his pretentious hat and shades - who seems to think that it's uncool to smile - needs any more stoking up. Why must we give these people - who are just pop musicians, after all - so much ego-preening?

Because he's serious about 'important ishoos', you might reply. Yeah? He just writes songs and poses on stage singing them. He isn't saying anything remotely important, but journalists hang on his every word, like he's some modern day Martin Luther King, or something.

On the other hand, maybe it's one of the best jokes of the decade to sneakily give him a middle finger, by bracketing him with famous Gandhi-esque peacemakers like Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger (ask your parents). Nice one, guys!