Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Signs Of the End Times: Taylor Swift Thinks We're All Stupid

She knows she should smile at you..but she doesn't
want to...
Since the second death of 101.9 WXRP, I've been stuck in the store listening to a variety of pop and dance-oriented pop radio. That's the only choices you have if you're interested in English language music in New York City, unless you like hearing rock music from thirty years ago while a succession of old grey haired white people start pontificating on music history endlessly. The incursion of sports talk radio onto the FM dial here, beginning with WEPN and ending with WFAN has driven modern and alternative rock music off the dials save for weird pockets where, let's say, Mumford and Sons and Goetye show up on 102.7, the adult light contemporary station 'Fresh FM.'
 
It's listening to Fresh FM that made me come to this conclusion...namely that Taylor Swift Thinks We're All Stupid.

No, really.

You see, apparently Ms. Swift decided this year she needed to reposition herself as a pop star. No longer happy with being a country-tinged folkie with some mild pop crossover appeal, she's gone full out in her new album, Red to make herself on the level with Katy Perry, Pink, and all the other pop tarts in the modern firmament. And her first step towards pushing her peers aside was 'We Are Never Getting Back Together.' It's a female empowerment break-up anthem, which is a pretty safe bet for a mission statement when becoming a pop diva--Alanis Morrisette managed to squeeze a several album career out of one song where she equated breaking up with movie theater blow jobs, and some would say that Pink's entire later career is built around her insisting she's through with her ex-husband.

And it's a thoroughly, absolutely wretched misfire of a song.

I feel bad for this guy...and I shouldn't.
There's a number of reasons why, as an artifact out of the context of the times in which Ms. Swift had it released, it fails. Her vocals are awfully artificial, wavering back and forth between a strange mannered sing-songiness and very snotty plainspeak. The melody is just a repetitive drone punctuated by Swift's 'ooooooo'ing--and it frequently stops and starts, most significantly towards the end when everything pauses so a lo-fi Taylor can 'act' her way through a brief soliloquy that ends with her reciting the song title for the nineteenth time. And the lyrics are supposed to be pump-the-air-cause-gals-are-doing-it-for-themselves....but the POV character comes off as nasty and borderline sadistic. By the time the song is over, you have sympathy for that Kennedy boy, or John Mayer, or whoever it is this song is directed at. That's right; this song is so obnoxious it makes me feel sorry for John Mayer, a man I have utter loathing for.

But what may be the worst sin is the way the rise-and-fall repetition ends up earworming us--because it's just drones round and round, and Swift's vocals amplifies its hypnotic quality that it settles in your reptilian brain and kicks your frontal lobe for a couple of hour before the melody finally fades.

Look, I know Taylor Swift isn't the first country folkie who tried to cross over into mainstream pop. But what makes her bid for the Big Time so wrong-headed is how....calculated it is. Say what you want about, let's say, Jewel's 'Intuition,' but at least it was concretely a Jewel song, albeit one that featured her dancing around in a spangly dress (I think it helps when looking back at that moment in Jewel's career that she did it not because she wanted to be a Big Stah, but because she was curious if she could). 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' is soulless, a breakup song written by someone didn't want to get anything off her chest, but wanted to write a breakup song. And in trying to emulate the perfect Dance-Oriented Pop breakup song, Ms. Swift inadvertently strips away the thing that sets her apart from the other pop stars of this age--that delicateness and genuineness that made everyone want to root for her. The Taylor Swift of 'We Are Never Getting Back Together' is fake and false and cynical...and expects you to not care that she didn't put a lot of effort into this song, because all you care about is the beat and how pretty she is.

Which is why Taylor Swift thinks your stupid. And you shouldn't let her continue to do so and turn your back on her.

But you probably won't. Which is why These Are The End Times.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Another Music Dream

I've had another music dream I want to share with you. As before, I invite you to interpret the dream in your way, and ask you to share some of yours.

I wake up lying on a floor in a strange barracks-like room. I am told by someone that this is my dorm room, which seems odd considering my dorm room was a small, monk-like room that was barely large enough to contain me. After trying to get some more sleep, I hear some faint playing of music and head out through the window.

Funny, he doesn't look like a blimp...
I move through the streets of Queens County in the direction of the music. I eventually find my way to what appears to be a basketball court. People are gathered around the basketball court sparsely, but what alarms me is that in the middle of the court, performing with a small band, is Kurt Wallinger, who was in The Waterboys and World Party. Wallinger, however, has apparently ballooned up to extraordinary proportions (in this dream reality, he's easily 350 pounds, if not heavier), and he's breathing heavily as he bounces around like the aspiring Bono he used to be and singing some of his more well-known songs. He's wearing a mumu, and looks a horror. The people are all laughing and mocking Wallinger, and I try to move forward to dissuade him to stop....but then I wake up.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

36 Songs, 36 Days (2012 Edition), Day Thirty Two: Murder For The Money by Morphine

Yes, they're dwelling in darkness...and that's totally appropriate.
This week, as we rapidly approach the end of this year's cycle and begin the special Seasonal Round...it's one of my favorite avant garde bands.

I sadly got into Morphine at the end of this band's life. A number of my horror writer friends had recommended this Massachusetts-based group for its dark soundscapes and the quirky lyrics of vocalist Mark Sandman. Based on these recommendations I picked up their latest album, The Night--just days before Sandman collapsed on stage in Italy and died. I was so entranced by the weird mix of film noir crime stories, swinging 50's orchestration and sometimes moody as all Hell gothic sensibilities that I ended up determined to discover their entire ouvre. Luckily, the legendary jazz music store J&M down on Park Place had a rather massive Rykodisc sale that allowed me to pick up the bulk of their albums, and they're still treasured items in my collection.

It's hard to describe Morphine to someone who has never heard them. This was all going on during the time when I was a freelancer. One of my last jobs as a freelancer, and one of my favorite overall due to the rapport I had with my client, was at a financial reporting firm located in the World Trade Center. I was working late one night to help close out some outstanding accounts when my client came over to where I was set up. I had Like Swimming, the album from which this track comes from, on my Discman. He listened for a second and chuckled to himself before saying, "What are you listening to, Tom? It sounds like jazz for serial killers." Another descriptor came several years later from Jennifer, a girl I was engaged to, who dismissed it as 'stripper music for hipsters'...and then proceeded not to talk to me because obviously I liked thinking of strippers.

It's both and it's neither. Take this song. It's certainly in the crime novel sensibilities of Sandman and company, and yet it's not telling a complete story. There's something larger on Sandman's mind, and he's reducing it to its lowest common demoninator. I can't help but think that what's 'murder' in this song is life itself--to the singer, life itself is pain, it's horror, it's...murder every single moment of the day, every inch that you move forward. It's a slow slog that will not let up, and it will always, always hurt. And while Sandman may have avoided the ultimate termination of this perpetual Hell, he's seen enough people felled to know that it's a matter of time for him to fold.

Members of Morphine still perform sporadically as...well, The Members of Morphine. And to the best of my knowledge, all these albums are still out there, floating around, waiting for another poor sap with a passion for darker matters to discover them when he least expects it.

Here's a video....