Has music died? If not, where are the new decent pop tunes?

I am suffering, as we all do from time to time, from a shortage of decent new tunes. Of course, ‘suffering’ may be a slight exaggeration here. Very little physical pain has been involved. But research has shown that music obsessives need a constant upgrade of their personal tunebanks in order to perform at full capacity. It’s all very well going back and playing the Electric Light Orchestra’s Out of the Blue at top volume and singing along to every vocal harmony, as I might have done once or twice this past week, but a long-term solution it is not.

It’s where to find these new tunes that has become the problem. I try radio station after radio station, and then I try them all again in a different order. Radio 1 has set its stall out to harvest the young of the species, with an amiably constant 4–4 bump of dance tunes, all of which sound the same as each other.