They Called Him 'Daddy'
A large part of who each of us is has been etched piecemeal by popular song and such remains the case whether any given one of us likes it that way or not. In the early days of popular recorded music, songs meant to be released on 78rpm shellac to a mass buying public seldom came in at over three minutes, as with the slammin’ bangers of our current times, whether we’re talking about the Carter Family warbling away at “Keep on the Sunny Side” or Robert Johnson running the devil’s own extended technique on “Hell Hound on My Trail.” A popular tune is finessed real slick so that is can be palatable to the majority even if its every last detail has been fussed over by ace players and technicians. An earworm can crawl inside the whole wide world and eat its damn brains. When it dropped as though hot in the year 2000, “Who Let the Dogs Out” by Baha Men seemed to be playing in every public place I happened to visit, including in the infamously snooty town of Montreal, and that raucous and idiotic tune never ceased to amuse and delight me even though I sure as fuck wasn’t about to go buy anything by Baha Men. This may be a controversial sentiment, but I believe, having grown up in the golden age of music videos, that commercial music that has been packaged adroitly can be very, very special. As a kid, I had no interest in the music-qua-music of King of Pop Michael Jackson, and yet the legendary videos for both “Thriller” and “Bad” revamped everything I believed and indeed was quite comprehensively. (It was only later that I would properly discover and go all gaga over the unimpeachable musical genius of the Jackson 5.) People who act like they are above popular music are like grumpy people at a party. They have all the charm of Jordan Peterson with his endless whiny Kermit the Frog-sounding lamentations. I would pick “Hey Ya!” by Outkast over this year’s Booker Prize winner any day of the week…even if it is almost four minutes long. When I was young people were always trash-talking Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys and I was always like: Oh yeah? Then why am I tapping my foot, fool? Backstreet's back, alright?
No comments:
Post a Comment