Dear Grant,
Such a funny thing for me to try to explain …
I can remember coming back from our half-year in Russia and hearing ‘Crazy in Love’ on Radio 1 for the first time. I couldn’t believe it. This tune felt like the one we’d all been waiting for, a tune that sounded totally of the moment, yet suggestive of the future: danceable, yearning, innovative. It seemed like a song that had stepped straight out of pop mythology, a vindication of the belief that magic can be unearthed in the unlikeliest of musical places. I listened to it over and over again throughout the summer, and for the next couple of years. At terrible, terrible club nights during my university years, just one play of this tune would be enough to salvage the entire evening. In poetic terms, I thought (and still think) that if ‘Crazy in Love’ were a physical substance, it would be liquid gold. It was the last CD single I ever bought.
I know our Tunes of the Decade list isn’t in any particular order, so ‘Crazy in Love’ isn’t technically our number one tune of the decade. I know you think Amerie’s ‘One Thing’ is the better tune, and you might have a point.
But for me, this has got to be the last tune on the countdown, the final word on our cack-handed, seven-month-long attempt at micro-macrocosmic cultural summary.
A conclusion then, of sorts.
The Tunes of the Decade countdown, and the website as a whole, has been terrifically important for me, and I really hope it has been for you too. This year hasn’t been a walk in the park for either of us, but when all is said and done (and at the risk of sounding like a sentimental gobshite), I feel like The Grain has underlined and crystallized a whole lot of important stuff.
The Grain, of course, has many connotations, but one of the main ones is the idea that in these postmodern, ultra-convoluted, hyper-hedonistic times, we lack a simple, direct understanding of what makes art so unique and meaningful. The Grain tries to sweep away all the stuff that comes between us and the sort of life-affirming validation of existence you get with the best music, to strip things down to an essential level where irony and relativism do not hold sway, to home-in on just a single grain of truth. The Grain is about celebrating something that really matters to yourself and at least one other person.
Back at high school, passing musical ideas and responses and thoughts between the two of us felt like the highest form of sophistication (in a totally pure, unworldly sense) and for me, this year, it has been a revelatory pleasure to have found out a way of continuing this exchange. The Grain is the sum of a creative collaboration that has been easy, productive, and downright fun from the very beginning, which seems all the more remarkable to me when I contrast it with some of the spectacularly one-sided and exploitative partnerships I’ve witnessed in the recent past. All this gay shit aside, I’ve just really enjoyed reading your witheringly funny articles. Believe when I say I think you’re an absolutely cracking writer.
There’s a scene in a film I really enjoyed this decade – Mike Leigh’s Happy Go Lucky – that takes place in a Salsa dance class. The first thing the Hispanic instructor does is to get all her pupils to assert confidence and independence by gesticulating and repeating loudly over and over: this is my space. That’s what The Grain reminds me of. I worry that the internet breeds a sort of manic atomistic individualism, and I’m really not sure what the long-term implications are for music and art generally. But I also think that, used correctly, a website or a blog or whatever can be a means of self-empowerment, a sacred place where executives would never dare to tamper, a place where it’s possible to embolden and humanize yourself through boldly marking out a space of your own. This has been my experience of The Grain. What I’m trying to say is that it’s our space, free from intrusion and compromise, and I’ve found out this year, if I didn’t know it already, that this really is the most crucial, most redemptive thing. If you haven’t got an autonomous space of this kind, a place to express yourself with impunity on your own terms, you really are fucked. If you submit to dilutions and middle-ways and persuasions because of laziness, or in the hope that this will get you where you want to be, it might take years, but sooner or later you’ll wither away.
I’m sorry if I’ve gotten over-wrought about things at times, sorry if I’ve let my pessimism get the better of me. If I’ve been negative about things on occasion, that’s largely because I’m so fiercely optimistic about what music can be. Pop music means everything to me, and I speak as someone who, like yourself, has had a pretty good look at the nothingness that is death, and been forced to think about what is really worthwhile in life. I get so angry when I look at the draining of idealism and meaning from music over the past twenty years or so, so please forgive me if you feel that some of this has spilled over into my Tunes of the Decade articles. For my part, I think I’ve managed to strike a balance between celebrating the musical moments that have illuminated the decade, and pointing to some of the most damaging developments, in the hope that identifying what does and doesn’t need fixing might brainstorm ideas for a new and more hopeful future. There may be troubles ahead, but if we all come together and try to think at least some of the same things at the same time, we might be in with a shout. If the two of us can do it, then surely everyone else can.
Grant I’m so sorry we’ve had to go through some of the same nightmares this decade. My response to tragedy over the past few years has been to try and transform terrible experiences into something positive and life-affirming, and I’ve found that if you have the help of another person, this is possible. On your own, or with inadequate support, it becomes a total impossibility. I hope The Grain will stand now and forever as a living testament to this principle.
With mad love and crazy thanks,
From
Al.
Beyonce – Crazy In Love (Official Music Video) – Watch more top selected videos about: Beyonce, Dangerously_In_Love
