Popular culture, I am by no means the first to point out, has become so atomised that the term is now an oxymoron. I’ve never seen your unmissable binge-watch. You can’t name a single song by my favourite new band. The last film you loved at the cinema completely passed me by. The book I’m currently captivated by would bore you stupid.
The other day, on a Teams call, a cherished colleague suggested that, for Esquire’s next cover, we should photograph the rapper Dave. I gave her one of my small but, I like to think, devastating selection of disapproving looks: Withering Incredulity, I call this one. “Dave?” I said. “No, we won’t be doing Dave.” I may even have waved my hand in front of my face, as if swatting a fruit fly.
It’s not that I haven’t heard of him. But the only thing I know about Dave is his stage name, which, in classic Annoying Dad style, I obviously find hilarious. What happened to rappers called Snoop Dogg or Ol’ Dirty Bastard? Dave? Really? Who else is in his crew? DJ Reg? MC Brian? The Notorious Kev? When we first heard of Dave, my son and I were reminded of a dog we often see in our local park. All the other spoilt pooches have cute doggy names. There’s Skylar the Australian Shepherd. Rosco the German Shorthaired Pointer. Hera the Rhodesian Ridgeback. Duke the Labrador. Woody the Whippet. (That’s our one.) And there’s a beautiful and quite terrifying-looking Dobermann Pinscher. “What’s his name?” I asked the Dobermann’s owner, when we first met. “Paul,” he said.
When he was safely out of earshot — I don’t want to offend anyone, least of all a man holding a fearsome beast on a chain — my boy and I had a good laugh about that, while trying to come up with names for our next hound: Wayne, Phil, Gary…
Dave the rapper on the cover? What an idea! Then, later that day, feeling a bit guilty about dismissing out of hand my cherished colleague’s suggestion, I Googled Dave. And, of course, she’s right: he’s a massive star, handsome and talented and cool, and we should be so lucky to have him on the cover. But would that appeal to you, the Esquire reader? Are you a fan of Dave? Or would you, like me, have to Google him in order to decide?
As I write this, my house shakes to the sound of Guts, the brilliant new album by the freshly minted American pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo. I think Olivia Rodrigo is terrific, and so does my daughter, who is responsible for the racket coming from upstairs. That’s two of us here who would love to see Olivia Rodrigo on the cover of Esquire, pronto. But, again, others will suggest that a 20-year-old pop star whose chief constituency is teenage girls would be an odd fit for a magazine aimed principally at grown-ass men who are, in many cases (like mine), old enough to be her father.
