With society increasingly taking to the skies and awaiting Simon Cowell's next must have album for mums everywhere, there is surely some link between the rise of the budget airlines and naff romantic music.

Yes, short of those edible toothbrushes dispensed inside toilets, there seems very little difference between the humble airport and the warbling pop ballad so favoured by romantic compilation albums and reality TV shows everywhere.

 Could it be then that air travel itself was devised all those years ago as some elaborate ruse to trap us in a heightened emotional state, leading us to happily buy any old tosh for our record collections?

 
Ok, probably not, but picture the scene.  There are two passionate lovers embracing longingly before being separated by sea and air for a period of days, weeks or months, which no doubt feels like an eternity either way.

 
As they attempt to whisper sweet nothings into each other’s ears, or at least a reminder to feed the cat, highly emotional words appear to pour out of the heavens, or more specifically, a nearby speaker.

 
“So take a look at me now, oh there's just an empty space,

And there's nothing left here to remind me,

just the memory of your face”

 
Only this is no longer a romantic scene, but the queue for an airport bus.  As the song appears endless, the couple’s goodbye, by comparison, is cut short, leaving the rest of the bus is left wondering whether to laugh or cry.

 
Within a minute or two, the gentleman in question is alone, emotional and stuck half way up a motorway with nothing but a pretty awful Phil Collins song for solace.  It’s enough to make you long for ‘Susudio’.

 
However, the torment doesn’t end there.  Even upon reaching the airport, overtly sentimental ballads appear to await anyone longing for a drink or coffee.  Whitney Houston and Lionel Ritchie post-‘Hello’ permeate through the airport's sound system, be it intentional or just through the radio, there seems to be no escape.

 
Now it’s fair to say that we all have our need to be crassly sentimental at times and music tends to play a large part in this.  But there is almost certainly a rule within the Geneva Convention forbidding Mariah Carey songs to be forced on someone during moments of emotional trauma or duress.  If there isn’t such a law, then there should be for the type trauma that only air travel can inflict.

 
Now it may seem crass to link music played in and around airports to the practice of covert torture, but sometimes you have to be as subtle as Westlife covering yet another Barry Manilow number.

 
Just last year, performers such as David Gray complained about the use of their songs in alleged torture practices by US military and intelligence forces.  They called for an end to the practice and weren’t too happy about the torture element either.

 
But there is only so many causes rock and middle of the road stars can partake in. Maybe it’s time then for the more morally redundant of us to take a similar stand in our music.

 
So, never mind this environmental jive, lets boycott air travel for the right reasons; lets do it to save pop music.

Posted In Comment, Mar 22 2009. Words - Neil