It’s the small things in life, they say, that make a difference. I drive to work most days, across the lovely Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. I really mean lovely – you usually get a great view of Mount Rainier. Anyway, this means I get to spend a reasonable amount of my time in stop/go freeway traffic, looking at Mount Rainier.

In Europe, like in America, cars are equipped with a special set of rear lights which are intended to show to other road users what the driver is attempting to do. There’s a white one to show that the car is in reverse. There are two, perhaps three large red ones to show that the car is slowing down. And there are two orange ones, one on each side, which employ a time-honoured blinking action to demonstrate that the driver is intending moving in that direction. This system works great.

In America, there is a similar system. Similar, except for the fact that the lights intended to indicate motion are not orange, but red. The sharp-eyed among you may notice that this is the same colour as the brake lights. Perhaps orange is an unsually expensive filter. Perhaps orange was once regarded as unlucky. Still, not to worry. They still blink. Surely anyone who could confuse a single blinking red light with several solid red ones ought not to be on the road in the first place.

This is a reasonably sensible conclusion to draw, until you are furnished with two other pieces of information. First off, Americans primarily drive automatic cars. Automatic cars don’t slow down appreciably when you lift off the accelerator, so you often need to give the brake a little tap when trying to maintain pace with traffic. Or perhaps two or three little taps. This introduces a behaviour not unlike flashing in your brake lights. Secondly, unlike most other countries, America doesn’t require any sort of roadworthiness test alongside its road tax. This means that there are oceans of cars out there with one single operational brake light.

These two facts conspire with the red-only lights to produce an effect which could fairly easily be confused for a turn signal, especially in stop-go traffic. In order to save confusion, I propose that every car is fitted with one large, centrally mounted red light. The light comes on automatically whenever the driver moves the gear lever or steers. Not only will this save money, it will also mean there can never again be a confusing signal. Unless the light is broken.

Before I get started on this, let me say two things. First off, I am complaining about what Wikipedia calls “Contemporary R&B”, not real R&B. Mariah Carey, not Marvin Gaye. Secondly, I am aware that this isn’t a purely American phenomenon, but it’s American enough that I can stick it up here and still sleep at night.

That said, here goes.

I’m not a music afficionado. I like listening to things like Coldplay and Badly Drawn Boy. In my head they’re the music that cool people listen to, but in twenty years my kids are going to regard them with the same sort of scorn as I currently regard Phil Collins. It’s old people’s music, with easy-going chords and three minute songs. I understand that. Hey, I’m not really a music guy.

I’m enough of a music guy, however, to realise that the dribbling genre of musical wallpaper paste that calls itself “R&B” is an offense against taste so vicious that hanging must surely be the only valid public response. If you’re driving along listening to the radio, there are several ways to detect that you’ve accidentally stumbled upon a contemporary R&B station. Check for the following:

• Ability to predict the next line of a song you’ve never heard before (“you’re the one I love / you’re the one I’m dreaming of” et cetera)
• Use of the words “brother” or “sister”
• Song lines followed by clarifications like “yes he did” or “oh no, no”, just in case you couldn’t grasp the depth of the lyrics and required some further clarification of what was going on
• Prodigious use of “mm-hmm” or “ooh” when a suitable “love-of”/”heart-apart”/”you-true” rhyme is unavailable
• Did that song finish? Is this another one?

Perhaps the most offensive aspect of this Bud Light of musical genres is the fact that it stole its name from a completely unrelated and perfectly decent form of music. In the 1950s, R&B music was the great creative outpouring from a misrepresented black America – as it took off in popularity, it became the unifying sound of the grass-roots civil rights movement in a way that nothing written or spoken could easily manage. There was real feeling behind it, and real power in what it said.

By contrast, contemporary R&B appears to be the disembodied voice of dumpy, angst-ridden fourteen year olds with ill-concieved chips on their shoulders about what a hard time in life they’re having. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the elevator music of the next decade. Watch out, Phil Collins.