Feeling your Rage

I am watching the Rage Top Fifty (so named it seems because it is calculated to enrage anyone who actually likes music) and Britney is telling me that it is her prerogative to be "nasty". This doesn't seem to be the message parents would want their teens to hear, especially since "nasty" is pr0n talk for "promiscuous" (hey, I'm avoiding "slutty" -- no value judgments here). The film clip itself is semipornographic, displaying Britney to good advantage.

Here's a mystery that I've never quite got to the bottom of. Pop stars are hot. They display hard young bodies that their audience would like to have (no sniggering at the back, I mean they'd literally like to look like Britney). But they make music. Does the music inspire the same aspirations as the video? In this case, I can't see how. It's weedy, semi-urban chaff. Britney barks rather than sings (it's all she needs to do because her voice is just distinctive enough -- on her records she need only identify herself as Britney: my theory is that content is of no particular concern to the audience or creators for this kind of music -- you're buying Britney product and what it consists of isn't important (in the same way that you buy Coke and it doesn't matter that it's almost tasteless fizzy water). How else can a record in which Britney exhorts her man to hit her one more time be explained? Metaphors of hitting aside -- hey, maybe Britney likes blackjack -- it's clear that the song can be interpreted as the siren song of the woman who loves her man even though he's violent).

In the same vein, Destiny's Child ask their man if he can "lose my breath". To make this admirable sentiment scan, the words "make me" has to go. The skill of a poet, though, is to make all the necessary words fit or find another way to say what you want to. If I'm asked "can you lose my breath?", I'm confused. Well, no. Why are you asking? Don't you want it any more?

Beyonce is hot though. Without doubt she is the beyonce-est thing in pop music. If I were her I'd take a cast of my arse, and keep it in the garage, in the hopes that I could achieve a Dorian Gray type effect. Beyonce would strike 60 and be as pert as she is today. She wouldn't want to let anyone else park her car though.

The music will, of course, be feted. I recognise that it is produced by someone hot, even though I don't know who it is. But it is not actually very good. It's very thin, which a lot of contemporary R&B and urban is. Yes, the sounds are cutting edge and if pushed, these people probably would agree they are making the new Motown or perhaps the new Stax. Maybe. Maybe they're just making pisspoor Northern Soul though. I simply offer the possibility for consideration.

Delta Goodrem is not at all beyonce and she's definitely not nasty. She's not aiming at the same audience as the other girls, although you'd be hard pressed to work out exactly who she thinks will like this run-of-the-mill emotopop (maybe her granny?). Delta is a nice-looking girl but she's not hot. She is poorly directed in the video, which she largely spends rolling around and pulling funny faces. Why do these people bother? I often wonder that. Yes, it's nice to have a career in popular music, to be famous and have famous boyfriends, but what is your contribution to our culture? What are you giving? I know, you make people happy. But let's face it. If you and others simply didn't bother, the people might discover Aretha and Marvin, and instead of watching you getting "nasty", they could do the sweet thang for themselves.

Mind you, there are worse things in life than useless soap stars who make dreary records. Some chav called Joshua Turner (and a band laughably named the Modernday Poets, just in case we don't understand how sensitive they are) lectures me for three minutes about how homeless young people are caught in a struggle. The problem is, I'm yelling at the loser in the video to lose the fucking lip ring and get a job, you lazy good-for-nothing. There is nothing like an earnest youngster to bring out my dad's genes in me. Joshua mutters and whines about life's unfairness and how, rilly, if we'd just open our hearts and shit, perhaps donate a large chunk of our royalties to shelter programmes or maybe just say, shit, let's not bother with this awful nonsense and give the two hundred grand the video cost to the guy on the street and his troubles are over... nah, Joshua's solution, as most teens is, is that "someone else" should do "something". But Joshua, do think about the video money solution, because with a bit of honest parsimony, two hundred grand would keep a teen off the streets for ten or more years. Surely the guy could find a job in that time? I had to go and make coffee at that point because not only had someone begun a 1980s guitar solo for absolutely no reason (except one presumes as a desperate and misguided attempt to broaden J's appeal to the rawk crowd) my scheme for pimping Joshua -- a nice-looking lad -- to make money to help the genuinely in need had grown to a fully costed programme and that's sick.

Worse than Joshua, by far, was the bilge they inflicted on me next. I have a hypothesis that no "rock" star ever improves once they pass 35. Indeed, decline is inevitable. In other areas (luckily for me) artists just get better with age. Picasso was brilliant in his twenties, and his genius did not flag for his entire life. The list of writers that become wonderful in their forties is very long. This is probably because painting and writing are arts of insight, which are only improved by experience (which we all know tends to bring more insight -- okay, that's purely theoretical in most cases, because no one with an IQ in three digits actually believes they grow wiser as they get older. Or is it just me? I knew everything when I was 25, now I'm confused. The more I know, the less I understand, in the wisdom sense of understand rather than the I know the words sense). But in rock, youth is all. It's about fire, energy -- and these are things you have at 25 but have to fake at 45 (there are compensations, don't get me wrong -- at least I hope so... perhaps 45 will be much bleaker than I'm thinking. To be honest, I'd settle for still having some teeth). Most older rock stars churn out just more and more turgescence (I was going to write "turge" because I thought, hey, "turgid" should have a noun for stuff that is turgid, so I dico'd it and bingo, it does and it's fantastic). They don't top the last record, they bottom it. Sometimes, recognising this, the rock star will do an acoustic album or "pay their dues" by murdering someone else's songs. Simply not bothering just doesn't occur to the idiots. Their loyal fans buy the stuff, of course, but let's face it, if you buy all of U2's output, you don't like music anyway. Yes, we are talking about the "mountain goat" and the dreary pub rockers who background his groaning nonsense. You know, it's unseemly for men of a certain age to wear shades and leathers. I don't believe in being "young at heart". I believe in acting your age. The Hindus believe each part of life should be lived, that there is an appropriate phase for each stage of it. I think they are right. Bonio disagreees (English injoke, don't fret about it if you aren't lucky enough to be one of us). He thinks his new record is exciting. You and I know it's more of the same. This is how far Bonio and I are from having the same conception of the world: he kicks off his new record by counting in "unos, dos, tres, quatorce"... what the fuck? What meaning does it have to count 1, 2, 3, 14 (insultingly badly pronounced), except to have people point at you and say "stupid cunt"? I mean, really? Tell me. Bonio, you're an artist, with something to say, right? Well, what were you saying? It's okay, I'll answer for you. You were saying, I was doing a silly joke. Everyone in the studio laughed. Bonio, you are paying everyone in the studio. They all think you're an arsehole. So do I. Now I can't turn on the radio, the TV or even risk going outside without being assailed by your (entirely misconceived) idea of what kick-ass rocknroll is. I am stuck at home for three months because you are the antichrist of rock. Hordes of youngsters in tight trousers should mob you and kick you to death. I'm not kidding. Look, do you see a smile, Mr Fucking Hola, here we go, I'm feeling dizzy?

Then Eminem comes on. There's a school of thought that Eminem is a modern-day commentator of note (well-meaning Hampsteadite wankers whose conception of the world could kindly be described as "cushioned" mostly). Some say he's a fine poet, a genius wordsmith, who dissects the modern condition and gives us profound insight into how young men face a world of hurt. Yes, and the emperor has a coat spun from silk so fine it's, erm, transparent. Dudes, he's not ironically hating women or espousing racism. He sings it because it sells. He's a novelty act, barely literate, no more coherent or insightful than his audience. Hello?

I turn the whiny fuckhead off. The programme worked. I'm thoroughly outraged. We live in a world that so treats our youngsters that they lap this shit up. I don't want them to sit quietly in the corner reading Proust, but fucksake, can we not love them a bit more than this? Yes, I am saying that if you encourage the likes of these, you hate children. I'll go further and say that if you encourage Eminem, you probably eat children. Bastids.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:11 am