Protect them. Lovely thought, robin. But biology militates against that, as increasingly they look to their peers before their parents. Tough, but it has to happen.

Yes, I suppose with hindsight that does sort of look odd. What I really meant was that I want to be one step ahead. (I spent 40 minutes with the Urban Dictionary researching the exact meaning of 'milkshake'. No agreement to be found, I'm afraid.) I want them to get decent values from somewhere and that is becoming the current theme over here, I think. Too young for War and Peace, too old for Postman Pat. Wait a minute, this is turning into a post. See what you did there, Peter?

You can certainly make sure there are values there for them to pick up on, and other musics for them to hear, but one thing you can't do is make them listen. If you're lucky they will, and in the long run your guidance will almost certainly leave some residue in them, but I'm sure you know you need to be prepared for them to wander through lots of rubbish too and probably pick some of it up.

Rather than having modern pop music inflicted on your ears, why not play your music to the children. My father did on numerous long driving holidays in France, especially Bob Dylan, which as you can imagine, didn't go down too well with two adolescent boys. But now I'm old enough to understand the lyrics a bit more, I have nothing but respect for my father for making me listen to music with a message rather than the nonsense I wanted to listen to (or was on the radio). And I even like Bob Dylan as well.

Cool Dad that.

Didn't think so at the time!

Yes, that's one of the problems I'm wrestling with.

Popular music has always had a strong fascination with - how shall we put it - courtship. And as sex has become openly marketable the safe lyrics of "I wanna hold your hand" and even the once controversial "Let's spend the night together" are left behind. But if you've ever listened to 2-300 year old popular songs [e.g. the City Waits' _Pills to Purge Melancholy_ CD] you'll find that todays material is no more raunchy than it was in earlier times - all that's changed are the euphemisms.

Away from the commercial world, there still is a lot of good new music being produced, usually lumped under the generic heading of "post-rock" which bundles together essentially everything vaguely challenging (I'd not label Sigur Ros, Labradford and Dirty Three as the same musical genre). But it's mostly music, rather than song, and hence is less catchy.

However, if I cast my mind back 30-plus years to when I was a teen, I can safely say that some of my tastes at the time were guided by how fanciable the singers were [Ann and Nancy Wilson from Heart, Lynsey dePaul], with their producing good music [I still spin the disks from time to time] being the bonus. That is what the charting acts seem to have the lock on, if the number of tasty looking young women on music-shop posters are any guide.

Hello Steve. Good points all through there, and some interesting recommendations. I don't mind euphemisms. They're fun and imaginative, and if they are playful they can be quite tender. I mind explicitness and brutality. Esp from Blazin Squad who aren't even allowed in pubs yet.