Like many people, I suppose, I admit to getting a little swept away with the ‘new-broom-sweeps-clean’ rhetoric that has surrounded the recent change of decade. We all bashed the hell out of the noughties, despaired at its frivolity and then moved on, wide eyed, to face the future. However, a typically untimely Spotify advert[1] for the song (and album) in question here, served as a healthy reminder to me that the brave new world we all hoped had descended upon us may, in some cultural quarters, may be a little delayed.
This song – TiK ToK by Kesha – came out some six months ago but, being a cultural hermit, I’ve only recently heard it with the promotion for her recent album. I can confidently say that this song contains some of the most odious lyrics ever written – lyrics that conjure up some sort of dreadful hangover of the worst dregs of the previous decade – the non-stop partying, the celebration of celebrity, of ‘not taking things too seriously’ (least of all one’s self). In a strange and horrific way, it almost feels like a pastiche – or worse, a homage – to the party girl (Paris Hilton et al[2]) ethos. Jesus, has post-modernity caught up with itself to the point where the ‘current’ from only a few years ago is now the subject matter of loving nostalgia?! One hopes that, in fact, Kesha’s song is actually a hopeless hangover – a relic before it has even outlived its own lifespan. One hopes.
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Chasing the shitegeist might be a bold claim to mark on these boys, given they did have an undeniable influence and impact on the UK music scene, albeit a brief and negative one, but then again that’s exactly the point. As we look back on the decade, the most depressing thing about The Libertines and their subsequent projects is the god awful averageness, the forgetableness, the empty nothingness, the void of quality that followed and the descent of music into gossip and sideshow. Its not that their particularly offensive (although Carl Barat does some across as a strangely self satisfied cock), they’re just a mediocre band held up to be some sort of creative renaissance for UK indie, if not a zenith for the music scene as a whole on these isles, and continue to be by the NME (#2 on the albums of the decade). Obviously you can’t hold the way a band is publicised, reported and strangely revered against them when this is clearly the act of third parties, but the real problem with The Libertines was not only did they believe it, they propagated it; a band so astutely conscious of their mythology and narrative that they forced it on us at every turn, until they were completely substanceless. They thought they were this important and everyone bought into it . . . we believed the myth, but reality was a dire thing.
Every story has a beginning, and so it was that the ever reliable shitegeist-o-meter that is the NME called them the best British band of the year before they had even released a single to get the ball rolling, and the Guardian (broadsheet sheep taking up a central role in the propagating of myth and record label PR in the decade) could introduce an interview with them in 2003 with this gushing spiel; “The Libertines might be the product of a cult novel: they’ve lived in a brothel, quote Oscar Wilde and are obsessed with Albion. Dorian Lynskey meets pop’s likeliest lads”. Add to this the rent boy myth, and the romantic vision of the intellectual down and outs is on the verge of completion. There was a shallow resemblance to cult and refracted image of rebellion: the ‘branding’ of fans, drug addiction, the footage of them sneering at a neighbour who dares to try and break up and impromptu home performance because she has to work the next day before the ’spontaneous’ rendition of ’Guns of Brixton’ as the Police entered, but with just a few months hindsight it started to seem, well, infantile.
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No one has devoted themselves to the pursuit of the shitegeist with quite the same vigour as the Black Eyed Peas; to tirelessly producing offensive derogatory crap for 4 solid years, but who knew that in delivering their souls so completely to the shitegeist, they would achieve the most unexpected outcome; genius.
It’s hard to remember now, and wikipedia only allows 4 lines to sum up the years 1998-2003 of the Black Eyed Peas career, but they were once a respected (well, sort of . .) conscious hip hop group aiming to follow more in the foot steps of Common, other Spit Kickers and the Native Tongues, with soulful samples and back to basics lyrics that everyone from Dilated People’s to Ugly Duckling were embracing at the time. It was en vogue in a certain retro scene and was shortly after Jurassic 5 had gained a following on the back of their excellent debut. So it was that the Black Eyed Peas, consisting of will.i.am, apl.de.ap and Taboo (their names should have said it all), dropped their debut. Often referred to as ‘backpacker hip hop’, it was full of the sort of soulful samples, old school rhymes, and sense of positivism that is supposed to define this sub genre. Yes, the rhymes were fairly simplistic, but this was (and still is) more common than you think with various critically acclaimed groups [1]. Slum Village, for example, may have gained some attention in their time for their part in the ‘alternative’ hip hop scene, but surely only the poverty of their verses over a beat as good as the late J-Dilla’s ‘Raise it Up [2]’ (based on a twisted sample of ‘Extra Dry’ by Thomas Bangalter) could have prevented it from becoming the hit it surely deserved to be. So yes, the rhymes don’t have anything notable going on in the way of word play, but the overall sound still held its own, relatively speaking. In particular they took cues from the likes of The Pharcyde, and the record has a strong correlation to their superior labcabincalifornia released a couple of years earlier. Take a listen to the closest they got to a hit below, ‘Joints & Jams’, where they even offer an attempt at an interesting video, and allow 30 seconds space for dance moves of varying quality. This is the Black Eyed Peas I have a soft spot for, they weren’t that good, but they were trying, they knew a nice soul or funk sample, and it seemed they didn’t take themselves too seriously, but you only need to check their flow to see they still aspired to be proper MCs.
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I don’t really like writing negative things about shit music. However, I have just heard a song on the radio so bad that I have been moved – physically moved – to write about it. The song in question is ‘I’m Yours’ by Jason Mraz. Where to begin?
Having not heard the song before, I had to find a video on YouTube (see below) to confirm my initial reaction that this song would comfortably sit atop the pile of ‘worst songs I’ve ever heard.’ It did. It does. There are probably more annoying songs, more clumsily written lyrics, songs that inspire outright hatred etc, but the thing that gets me about ‘I’m Yours’ is that it is, from start to finish, totally devoid of any meaning whatsoever. Now, I know I’m at risk of sounding pretentious. I know that this is ‘just a pop song’ and many would moot that ‘meaning’ is not necessary (or crucial) in such an art form. It is what it is – a fairly innocuous, summer pop tune. This stance I am vehemently opposed to. Every song must mean something – it is the only currency for measuring the value of music. It is clear from listening to (and actually watching the video for) this song that no thought or meaning has been given to the chords, arrangement, lyrics and delivery of this song. It is meaningless (I can’t stress this point enough – I will continue to make this point!) it is valueless. It is shite. That it is a ‘pop song’ is no excuse. What Mraz has done, and it seems to be quite a common mistake by all accounts, is he has mistaken the concepts of ‘feel-good’, ‘easy-going’, ‘laid-back’, ‘Summer-y’, and ‘honest’ for ‘inane’, ‘repetitive’, ‘self-indulgent’, ‘smug’ and ‘shite’. But to the details. Here is a not exhaustive list of the things that upset me (and this is an accurate word for how this song makes me feel) about the song.
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Jesus wept.
That was my first thought after this song was thrust into my otherwise pleasant life following the recent replacement of the ipod dock in my office with a radio. I can only object with every particle in my being to sampling the entire chorus of an incredibly popular track that has maintained prevalence in popular culture since its release in 1982, even if it did so by being used as the soundtrack to sell us coffee, shit sofas and most recently, fish fingers.
I too can only assume Madness sanctioned this wholesale transplant of their entire song in order to flog this donkey for every penny they could get out of it, fund their comfortable retirement and ensure some pre-teens turn up to their summer festival tour after their acclaimed (by mainstream media at least) reformation (which must have come once Suggs realised he couldn’t make a career selling fish fingers, releasing god awful solo material, and appearing in the BBC’s ill informed attempt to make a music version of Question of Sport that still gives me shudders). But possibly the worst thing about this group/song is my deep suspicion it is the product of bored music executives similarly attempting to squeeze whatever is left from the music industry, and this inevitably means appealing to under 10s.
I can see it vividly; ‘we need something to appeal to the kids, with some British street cred, talking about real things that kids can relate to . . . oh . . . and it needs to be a guaranteed hit’. Thus they are called ‘Kid British’ so that you know they are British, and they are talking to ‘the kids’, they have taken a hit in its entirety and reconfigured it, thus creating that hit again, and their album is titled ‘It was this or Football’, to ensure they can cover the now well established ‘lads’ market – Soccer A.M here we come. The fact that their album is being released in ‘two halves’, first half out now, second half later in the year, smacks only of cynical marketing strategies.
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