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3 Songs: “Evil Little Ditty” Edition
I’m writing this 3 Songs post at my parents’ house, where I’m visiting for a few days because they got a brand new kitten named Solomon and he’s the cutest thing on the goddamn planet. He is a big ball of fearless, funny energy, and as I write this he’s currently exploring the basement furniture and attacking all the shoes he can find. Every so often he gets lost and sorta screech-chirp-cries until I go find him.
But I digress. If you want more kitten photos and video, my twitter feed is stuffed with Vine videos and pictures because I am obnoxious that way. This post is meant to discuss a different type of obnoxiousness: the type that occurs when an artist crafts a song that has an incredibly catchy tune, but is paired with abhorrent or offensive or nasty or just uncomfortable lyrics. We had a particularly virulent case of this sort of thing last year, with the incredible popularity of Robin Thicke’s rape-culture-happy “Blurred Lines”; all my friends agreed that the lyrics were disgusting, but they just couldn’t help but love the beat and the rhythm. It may have been the most recent case, but it’s definitely not the first.
Rooney – I Should’ve Been After You
Rooney is a group of California rockers who look and sound uncannily like they should have come from the British Invasion era, right down to the bowl cuts and long eyelashes and crooning vocals. When I first came upon this song, I loved it; it’s catchy and fun, with a lot of energy and a fantastic chorus that I assumed was about a man realizing that the true woman for him was right in front of his eyes the entire time—it’s one of the oldest tropes in the book.
But as I listened more closely, I found that the narrator of the song sounded more and more entitled, until I realized with a start: this dude is a Nice Guy. He’s straight out of a “Worst of OkCupid” Tumblr. This song is about a dude who’s been friendzoned (ugh, that word, it’s nauseating); he goes through all the classic steps. He expresses his frustrations that “It makes no difference / what I do, think, or say / There’s no way to convince you girls / That just ain’t how you play”. He pushes that the girl needs to choose between him or her friends, and then when she rejects he admonishes “Go along with your new boy, / go be a sex toy / I could have been after you.”
It’s sad, because it’s still a very catchy song and I like it a lot for the melody. But I wish the subject matter wasn’t such a mess of male privilege; it hurts my feminist heart.
Scissor Sisters – I Can’t Decide
Is it a metaphor for a breakup? A piece of American Psycho-esque black sitire? It might be. But as it stands, this incredibly catchy fun song is nonetheless about brutally murdering someone in a variety of different ways. It’s darkly funny, sure, but it still makes me a little uncomfortable when I want to sing along out loud.
Meat Loaf – Paradise By the Dashboard Light
I’m frankly surprised I haven’t written about Meat Loaf sooner; Bat Out of Hell is, without shame, one of my favourite rock albums of the 70’s. He taps into my love of theatrical music, forming a nice counterbalance to the low-key indie rock that I usually listen to. And “Paradise By the Dashboard Light” is one of the true masterpieces of Bat Out of Hell, an eight-and-a-half minute ode to the classic American experience of losing one’s virginity in a car. The first part of the song is mostly Loaf, convincing his lady love to go all the way, and after an extended and brilliant baseball commentary interlude, just before the “home run” (as it were) Ellen Foley screeches “Stop right there!” and demands eternal and undying love, or else no sex. Meat Loaf gives in, because he’s horny, and the song concludes with both parties “praying for the end of time” because now they’re stuck together in a relationship and miserable.
I love this song, but god, its views on women and sex are fucked right the hell up. Young women in North America are fed tons of lies, half-truths, whispers and warnings about sex, and losing one’s virginity is a big fucking deal for a girl; it’s implied that if you don’t choose the right man then you’re ruined forever. Many girls feel they can only ever have the one partner, and since teenage hormones often override the intention to wait until marriage, these sorts of situations are all too common. The perspective of the song paints the female voice as a shrewish, demanding, unrealistic bitch who uses sex as a bargaining chip to get what she wants. It paints the man as the victim, emasculated by the mysterious powers of vagina. It’s a reductive viewpoint that does no one any favors when it comes to having a healthy sex life, which should instead be founded on mutual communication, trust, respect, and education.
I absolutely adore “Paradise”, and it’s part of an album that’s full of pubescent sexual mentality and the whole thing is rockin’ awesome. But each time I listen I feel like I need to donate to Planned Parenthood or something. “Paradise By the Dashboard Light”’s sexual viewpoints should be considered historical and not contemporary, and considering the abysmal state of sex ed in certain parts of the U.S., we’ve got a very long way to go before that becomes a reality.
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Track Listing – May 10
I confess, I began this show still slightly hungover. We were up late playing video games. But I really enjoyed the music this week.
Again, THANK YOU to everyone who listened and especially those who donated to support my show during Fundrive. I am shocked and so happy that I got recognized as Rookie fundraiser of the year, and I plan to continue bringing you guys music for a long time to come.
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Track Listing – May 3
Man, this show turned out to be fantastic. Can’t wait to hear more of these new albums!
Ages and Ages – Big Idea (Divisionary)
Echo & the Bunnymen – The Killing Moon (The Killing Moon)
Darren Korb – Build That Wall (Bastion Soundtrack)
Stars – 14 Forever (Sad Robot EP)
John Mann – Prayer List (The Waiting Room)
Aimee Mann – Pavlov’s Bell (Lost in Space)
The Wild Ones – Come Around (Come Around 7″)
Harlan Pepper – TV (Let It Slide) (Take Out a 20…)
Sam Cooke – Another Saturday Night (Portrait of a Legend)
Noah and the Whale – Heart of Nowhere (Heart of Nowhere)
Language Arts – More Than Amazing (Wonderkind)
West My Friend – The Cat Lady Song (When the Ink Dries)
Black Keys – Stop Stop (El Camino)
Aftermidnight – Scales (Where Two Become One EP)
Eulogies – Out of Style, Out of Touch (Tear the Fences Down)
M83 – Midnight City (Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming)
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3 Songs: “5-Car Pileup On the Failway” Edition
For the past two posts, I’ve crossed over from my usual obscure fare and talked about mainstream pop music; first with the stuff I legitimately felt guilty about liking, and then the stuff I love without shame. I was going to go back to my planned schedule for 3 Songs, but it turns out I have even more to say about the stuff I will never ever make you guys sit through on my show.
See, pop songs fall along a continuum of stupidity, and my reaction towards them follows a similar path. There’s the popular-but-well-made stuff, like Adele; there’s a brand new grouping of artists who get called “indie” (to the snobbish amusement of assholes like me), like Imagine Dragons or Fun. There’s the mainstream stuff that everyone likes, and then on the other side of the bell curve things start to get interesting. Pop music is traditionally some of the simplest stuff to write and record, and its stars are more product than person. But the increasingly outrageous celebrity culture in America has caused desperate, deluded, or otherwise deranged musicians to release songs that are almost dadaesque in their atrocity. When pop music goes bad, it goes bad with spectacular insanity.
I’ve been meditating on the notion of these irresistibly awful songs ever since Avril Lavigne released her new music video for “Hello Kitty” last week. I won’t link it here, but if you haven’t heard it, go find it. See how long you can last. I can’t continuously bear that train wreck for more than 45 seconds, but I’ve gone back to the music video a handful of times since my initial viewing. Why? Because despite the fact that I am mortified on Lavigne’s behalf, I’m fascinated by just how much of a clusterfuck the entire venture is, from start to finish.
So today’s 3 songs are more examples of that schedenfreude-driven rubbernecking that I can’t seem to tamp down. I loathe all three of these songs, and I’m sure you will too. It’s not even like “Blurred Lines” was for some people, where they liked the melody but hated the lyrics; I hate everything about these songs, but they repulse me in such a way that I can’t not look at them.
Courtney Stodden – Reality
I’m not usually a reality TV or tabloid fan, but I’ve been a little bit obsessed with Courtney Stodden ever since she burst onto the scene a few years ago. She wasn’t a Laguna Beach alum or even a Teen Mom; Stodden was famous because she married a 51-year-old D-list actor while she was only sixteen. Courtney and her hubby Doug Hutchinson were the best sort of tabloid train wrecks: absolute lunatics with no connection to reality, convinced of their own importance and totally incapable of feeling shame. The oversexed Courtney celebrated her eighteenth birthday by getting several plastic surgery procedures, creating this music video for “Reality”, and then filing for divorce—and trying to get into porn (hilariously, porn said thanks but no thanks). “Reality” isn’t as offensive musically as the other two songs in this post, but it entrances me as the nadir of a girl’s delusions, fueled by money and sex and the promise of fame. It’s almost profound in its shallowness—but then she starts writhing around in pigtails against a backdrop of candy.
Cher Lloyd – Swagger Jagger
This Brit X Factor contestant is just something else. Words genuinely fail. She samples motherfucking “O My Darling Clementine”. I watch this video and feel like I have to challenge this whippersnapper to a cool-music-walkoff or something. I feel better because it reaffirms that I’m an adult with adult tastes. I just…goddamn watch this, it’s like a day at the circus for free.
Avril Lavigne – Girlfriend
Yeah, this isn’t the first time that Avril’s pulled this shit. After her relatively mature sophomore album Under My Skin (which I genuinely don’t mind), Lavigne seemed to be growing out of her punk-princess Sk8erboi phase. Then came 2007’s Best Damn Thing, in which she ran right back into her immature high school rebel role, slammed the door, and never ever came back out. Best Damn Thing‘s lead single, “Girlfriend”, was just a cavalcade of tired cliches, by a woman who was already too old to be singing about it. But nonetheless I’ve watched the music video a whole bunch of times, because, like Cher Lloyd above, I look at Avril and think man, she is trying so hard to be cool, it’s a little adorable. I am so glad that people like Stars, The New Pornographers, and Emily Haines came around, because it proved that Canadian women could make amazing music. The world moved on, Canada moved on, and Avril Lavigne has stayed exactly where she was when she debuted at eighteen. One of us is winning at life, and it isn’t the girl dancing in a school bathroom set.
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3 Songs: “Guilty Pleasures I’m Not Really Guilty About” edition
In my last post, I talked about some of the songs I’m legitimately embarrassed to love. This post has no such pretensions of shame; these three songs are just freakin’ fantastic.
Christina Aguilera – Candyman
Christina Aguilera has worn a lot of hats in her time—bubblegum pop princess, sultry vixen, robot, reality show host—but it was extraordinarily refreshing to see her transformation from Dirty to Back to Basics in 2006. The Xtina who humped a water hose during an (ostensibly) pro-woman anthem was gone, replaced by a jazzy, classy lady perfectly suited to wield that belt-happy voice. “Candyman” was a huge hit, and with good reason. I love it because it uses the aesthetics of WWII-era girl-group pop, which is such a rare and refreshing nostalgic throwback. That particular Boogie-Woogie-Bugle-Boy thing always gets points with me, and Aguilera absolutely nailed it at every turn—the Andrews Sisters-style harmonizing, the horn section, the scat-solo vocal bridge, the military cadence backing track, and especially the music video.
Mika – Grace Kelly
Okay, so picture this: you’re at the movies, at the IMAX to be exact, sometime in 2007. After the onslaught of ads and pre-film filler (Guess the actor! It’s always Tom Hanks!), the lights go dark and the screen comes to life with images of a whimsical party, driven by an infectiously energetic piano hook. A young man with tousled brown hair and a supermodel pout steps up to the microphone and begins to sing a catchy pop tune—and then, as the song shifts into its chorus, he opens up his mouth and belts in a falsetto that sounds e-fucking-xactly like Freddie Mercury.
Such was my initial experience of British pop star Mika: the music video for “Grace Kelly”, randomly tossed on the IMAX pre-film reel. I went out and bought the entire album, and it remains in my collection to this day. Listening to Mika’s music feels like being bombarded by a bunch of very excited 10-year-old rainbows; he’s not subtle in the slightest, but he’s also a shameless and earnest embodiment of everything pop music should be. I still listen to “Grace Kelly” because it’s a reminder that, despite what every understated indie folk group would have you think—music is supposed to be joyously, simply, unironically fun.
P!nk – Funhouse
P!nk (fuck it, Pink) has managed to maintain a fairly consistent level of rebelliousness throughout her decade-plus career and still make pretty damn good music. Where Avril Lavigne’s teenage look-at-me-I’m-wearing-a-tie angle got ridiculous as soon as she became old enough to rent a car, Pink has graduated successfully from teenage quasi-punk to your cool Harley-riding aunt, and maintains a sense of humor about herself that allows her to recover more easily from her failures. The title track from her 2008 release, which came after her separation from husband Cory Hart, was full of anger and woman-scorned wrath as only our lady of Missundaztood can do. It’s got energy and bounce while still being emotionally honest, and it’s accompanied by a pitch-perfect music video featuring a piano-playing cameo by No Doubt’s Tony Kanal. Can’t go wrong with a burned-out house crawling with creepy masked weirdos; it’s the very definition of catharsis.
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