by 
Chuck Berry, who is responsible for pretty much everything you’ve ever danced to in your entire life, has died.
In response to the news, the devil has already relinquished his claim to have all the best tunes, conceding that there are some things even he can’t compete with.
Chuck Berry’s influence extends like a bolt of lightning through the attitude of every swaggering rock lead for seventy years, with even performers as diverse as Celina Dion and Olly Murs adopting his stylings.
Despite the passage of time, the sound Berry created still sounds wild and audacious, which is all the more impressive because most people can’t manage that much beyond their twenty-second birthday.
However, Berry was no stranger to controversy, most famously a claim that he took his ‘new sound’ from a skinny white kid at a school disco in 1955, although reports that the kid had come forward in 1985 were rejected as he hadn’t aged a day.
NASA has confirmed that they included his music on Voyager, so if the aliens find it and think about invading they will be too wrapped up in the enigma of what his dingaling may or may not have been.
Chuck never let adversity slow him down and it is hoped he takes death in his stride in the same irrepressible way; if anyone can coax chaos out of a harp, it will be him.
