Unknown unknowns

I skipped bookclub tonight and went to the gym instead.
I can't believe how lame the previous line is. At 34 years old on a Thursday night I did not go and hang out with a dozen other people to discuss "Loving Frank", and with the free time that was awarded to me I ran on the treadmill and rode the bike.
My life is awesome.
Speaking of awesome: Elbow is awesome. Bought the album yet? So good. Anyways, as I was sprawled on my couch totally cheating at Sudoku (again: my life. awesome) this song came on that was just terrifying. It is called "Botch-A-Me" and Rosemary Clooney was singing it. It was singularly one of the most moronic and irritating songs I have ever heard, ranking not much higher than the peanut butter and jelly song.
It's off the "Mad Men" soundtrack Michael got me and it got me thinking about music in history. Two hundred years ago people were just loving Beethoven's Symphony No.5. Some dead guy said this about it: "How this wonderful composition, in a climax that climbs on and on, leads the listener imperiously forward into the spirit world of the infinite!…No doubt the whole rushes like an ingenious rhapsody past many a man, but the soul of each thoughtful listener is assuredly stirred, deeply and intimately, by a feeling that is none other than that unutterable portentous longing, and until the final chord — indeed, even in the moments that follow it — he will be powerless to step out of that wondrous spirit realm where grief and joy embrace him in the form of sound. "
So two hundred years ago people loved this song and it is likely a good representation of that era.
Fast forward 150 years and we have "Botch-A-Me" which, in 1952, Clooney's version of it spent 17 weeks on the Billboard charts and reached #2. People danced to it and sang along with it and bought the album.
Then, currently, we have, say, "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground. Do you ever think what the people in the 40s and 50s would have done if that song came on the radio?
And what if Rosemary Clooney came on after Ludwig and started belting out "Botch-A-Me"?
I don't prefer classical music, and I don't love all the music from fifty or sixty years ago, but isn't it amazing how much it has changed and evolved? And right now, sitting here and listening to electronica or jazz or alternative music I wonder where music will go in the next fifty years. "Botch-A-Me" had to have been inconceivable to people listening to Beethoven's 5th.
Unknown unknowns.
Finally, "In Search of a Midnight Kiss" was really good so if you've got Netflix you should give it a whirl.
Botch-A-You.