clue me in, hipsters pt I

The Guardian newspaper website has run an article about how a pop single has been at the top of the UK pop charts for a record breaking 19 weeks, yet a large contingent of people in the UK claim not to have heard it. The single in question is called "Rein Me In" by Sam Fender and Olivia Dean. Its lack of impact on the UK public conbsciousness was noted in the Guardian article which reported how a "swathe" of social media commenters were expressing ignorance of both the track and artists' existence. The "monoculture" that those of us growing up in the 60s to the 90s experienced no longer exists, it posits. In those decades, exposure to new music was via magazines/music papers, radio and television shows, or going to random gigs. So a lot of music was subject to gatekeeping by these, uh, gatekeeping institutions. Music papers like The NME, Sounds and Melody Maker would relentlessly champion certain bands and completely ignore others. TV and radio were at the whim of the record company…