Deconstructing Gotye

Here's an interesting post that deconstructs Gotye's (still ubiquitous) hit, "Somebody That I Used to Know."

"My astute co-thinker on the matter pointed out to me that when Kimbra appears, while she approaches Gotye, and while she is singing right into his face, he doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t look at her until she moves away from him. Both lyrics and video imply that he is trapped in a neverending cycle of longing for the lady who left him, but that she is able to break free and shed the emotional trappings of their erstwhile relationship."

Full disclosure: I sort of loathe this song, not necessarily for the  creepiness factor -- though that's a part of it -- but more because the dynamics of the relationship seem so suited to younger people. Not exactly the universal "young people new to the workings of serious relationship" tropes,  but young like "not of my own generation," something that has become increasingly evident as I age. Isn't it great when pop music ceases to become irrelevant to one's own life? (end slash-sarcasm)

Hi, you're old. Love, The Internet

Last.fm

While I truly believe this tweet that Justin Bieber is bigger than Kurt Cobain as evidenced by his number of Twitter followers is the work of a not particularly clever troll, I had to cringe at the thought of a preteen calling out a long-dead icon from her parents' generation. At the risk of sounding like a bitter, aging member of Generation X, "Really? I mean, come on. Are we actually that old?"

I'm a hypocrite. I'll acknowledge -- and write lengthy posts about -- music fandom being the domain of elitists who like to impose their own standards on just about everyone with the gall to call themselves a music fan, but I like having a canon. I feel a little unmoored without one.

As for the tweet, I've been trying to come up with an embarrassing anecdote from my inchoate music listening days where proclaimed the Monkees greater than the Beatles (although Mike Nesmith remains one of the world's greatest unheralded songwriters), or insisted Green Day invented punk, and.. I can't. Maybe it's just a case of selective memory, or the luck of growing up in an era where my embarrassing pop culture transgressions were kept locked away in diary somewhere, but growing up in a family of music fans. I didn't dare. I'll also add I was pretty lucky to have been exposed to a variety of music and was given some pretty good "history lessons." But I still listened to top forty pap.

Actual embarrassing pre-teen journal

I can pinpoint when exactly I went from being an average preteen whose musical acumen began and ended with what was playing on the radio to realizing there was something else out there: this, that elusive, mortifying diary entry with cool, scary Robert Smith sharing a page with The New Kids On The Block, and the NKOTB of my mom's generation, The Monkees. I'm not sure if I even knew The Cure's music yet -- I probably saw his picture in a magazine and thought, "Cool. Definitely not mom-approved." I laugh at this now, but it made perfect sense then. Who says you can't listen to goth and pop? No one. (And I'm sorry, but the Cure was pretty damn poppy even if their lyrics were a just bit too funeral.)

So I'm not too worried about seventh-graders who think Bieber is greater than Cobain. Assuming this isn't a troll, but a living, breathing kid who decided to take to her Twitter and call out some some old farts and their old fart music, maybe someone will hand her a punk mixtape, or she'll discover a the vast jazz collection at her local library, or broaden her musical horizons some other way. Or not, and that's probably okay too. (Just stay off my lawn!)

We Are All Stars

It's tempting to think that your audience is essentially... you. Or, I mean, about the same age as you, therefore, no need to adjust your cultural references for relevancy. ('Cause you know somebody out there also bought that Reef CD, right?) Sometime during the half-decade or so, I officially became an "old," meaning there are scads of other people writing about music and pop culture, and many of them are young enough to be, well, my much younger siblings.

Particularly with music, I sense a big generational divide. Not necessarily the bands or artists being blogged, but the way the topic of what's "good," or even what's "cool" is approached. This comment on GenerationXpert  (note: the original post veers dangerously close to slut-shaming, and some of the other comments are downright homophobic), I think, sums up the difference between X and Y when it comes to music:

In music, for example, I thought X'ers's formative experiences covered a wide spectrum, from the hair metal days (which I seem to recall you being a fan of, and which certainly used sex to sell) to the more "authentic" grunge revolution, which didn't. In the Eighties, pop icons could use sex and be "outrageous" (Madonna, Prince), or not use it at all (R.E.M, Springsteen).

I think you could take that further and say during the 80s and 90s, the chasm between commercial music and indie was wider, and if you were someone who preferred the latter, you'd rather have root work done than listen to radio music. Even more importantly, there was no great equalizer like YouTube. Rebecca Black wouldn't have existed in 1987, or if she did, she wouldn't have been that season's Tiffany or Debbie Gibson (that would be Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, respectively), she could have been playing in a punk band or penning a zine. She wouldn't have been famous, or "internet famous," because her kind of fame didn't really exist.

I don't think this is truly a bad thing. If it weren't for this internet thing, I wouldn't be blogging, or probably writing at all. I'm just as much a part of the problem, though I'm not sure I consider it a problem. But I do find it a little disheartening that everyone seems to want fame, even a small part of it.