If you work in an office you're probably aware of Kisstory, the little ray of sunshine that comes into your life each weekday at 11am, just as you're starting to regret that fourth pint from the night before. It's an hour on Kiss FM where they take a brief respite from playing back-to-back Rihanna songs to play old school R&B classics and 90s dance tracks that first premiered on the station in its pirate heyday. It's basically a daily dose of the best music ever made, seemlesly mixed together into 20 minute sunshine segments. They have a knack for playing songs you love more dearly than your father, but would never actually put on yourself. For example, while I've been writing they've played Mesmerize by Ja Rule and Ashanti, the garage mix of Shola Ama's Imagine, Fish Go Deep by The Cure & The Cause and Buggin by True Steppers.
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This week Kiss launched a new Kisstory station - so the format now runs 24/7. On Freeview the station replaced the permantly dire Q Radio, so instead of hearing Embrace and The Dead 60s, you can now listen to En Vogue and Shanks and Bigfoot. But having lived with Kisstory for a couple of days, I'm not sure how I feel. Sure, it's pretty great to have pure joy streamed into your ears whenever you want. But I want it all the time, and unmitigated access is starting to lessen the effect - the same as with heroin or dwarf porn. One hour a day was a treat, all day every day is going to make me a junkie.
Revellers at the monthly Kisstory clubnight. That'll be me soon.This isn't just a problem that Kisstory created. Five years ago it was almost impossible to hear R&B on a night out that didn't take place in a converted community centre or a regional nightclub where GHB was on draught. When the Work It clubnight launched in London back in 2008 with a strick 90s only policy it was a relevation. Incredible music played without irony or dickishness.But now it's impossible to go out without hearing Nelly at least 29 times. 90s R&B has replaced "chart" as the default setting of most clubs. DJ Luck & MC Neat headline nights across the country every week. Every doctor's waiting room and small claims court seems to have Aaliyah blasting in the foyer. And now Kisstory day and night, like some really hot babe who just wants to have sex all the time, even when there's something good on TV. At one point it's going to reach a tipping point, and the best music the Western world has ever created is going to curdle from overexposure.
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