Week 25: Lucero - 1372 Overton Park (2009)

Country music, as evidenced by the classic cliché, “I listen to everything, except country and rap,” is one of the most regularly dismissed genres of popular music. Like rap, country music is also one of the most stereotyped, calling up images of White cowboys with shit-kicker heels and an NRA membership just as reliably as hip-hop brings to mind Black men with knee-height pants, big sunglasses, and an uncomfortable lust for “bitches”. Needless to say, both of those images are rarely accurate.

The reason why both rap and country music so easily fall into clichés and stereotypes is their focus on story and personality. Unlike the other lyrically focused mainstream genre, rock, both rap and country focus more on narrative than on raw emotion; while this can make the songs more interesting, it also means they often take more time to make their point. A rock song can often summarize their point in one chorus, while some country songs take a few full verses to get interesting; ditto with classic rap music, which required the listener to pay close enough attention to decipher the rapid-fire lyrics.

When rap crossed over to the mainstream for good, it did so by slowing the tempo and putting an emphasis on hooks. Hooks are the choruses of modern rap music, providing something to get stuck in a person’s head and make them stop the dial when surfing the radio. Eminem arguably mastered the trick, using it to embed “My Name Is” so far into the popular consciousness that it essentially guaranteed his future career. Similarly, “In Da Club” turned 50 Cent from an underground hero to a superstar by keeping him from rapping at all.

Songs Of The Days: Week 25

June 18: The La's - There She Goes (The La's, 1990)



June 19: White Zombie - Electric Head: The Agony (Part 1) (Astro-Creep: 2000, 1995)



White Zombie - Electric Head: The Ecstasy (Part 2) (Astro-Creep: 2000, 1995)



June 21: Alanis Morissette - You Oughta Know (Jagged Little Pill, 1995)



June 22: The Police - Message In A Bottle (Reggatta De Blanc, 1979)



June 23: Underworld - Born Slippy .NUXX (single, 1996)



June 24: The Smiths - What Difference Does It Make? (Hatful Of Hollow, 1983)

Week 24: The Walkmen - Heaven (2012)

Pop’s getting old. The basic styles and tropes of Western pop music, depending on how you define their origin, are around 50 years old, and unlike other artistic mediums we’ve done little to reinvent the wheel. Even Michael Jackson, the last true watershed artist for the pop world, had his grounding in the harmony-rich, rhythmically driven music of classic R&B, as did Madonna, his close successor.

As such, modern-day pop music tends to build itself as lavishly as possible, creating gothic facades over mundane, sometimes rickety foundations. Layers upon layers of synths, guitars, vocal overdubs, and general effects are used to create songs that were technologically impossible even 5 years ago. Invention over innovation; new tools created simply to be looked at and gushed over.

Not the other road of resistance is much better. Rather than paint oneself up with makeup and fancy dress, some artists chose to strip themselves down to the bones. Modern punks and the basest of garage rock revivalists revel in their ability to become walking skeletons, refusing to innovate or even invent ways to make things sound new.

Songs Of The Days: Weeks 23 & 24

June 4: Richard & Linda Thompson - Withered & Died (I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, 1974)



June 5: Willie Nelson - Ou Es-Tu, Mon Amour? (Where Are You, My Love?/I Never Cared For You (Teatro, 1998)



June 6: Matthew Dear - I Put A Smell On You (Black City, 2010)



June 7: Fleetwood Mac - Hypnotized (Mystery To Me, 1973) (not available on Spotify)



June 8: Beck - The New Pollution (Odelay, 1996)



June 10: Alice In Chains - I Stay Away (Jar Of Flies, 1993)



June 11: Calvin Harris - Merrymaking At My Place (I Created Disco, 2007)



June 12: The Kinks - Strangers (Lola Versus Powerman And The Money-go-round, Part 1, 1970)



Wye Oak - Strangers (AV Undercover, 2010)
Wye Oak covers The Kinks

June 13: No Doubt - End It On This (Tragic Kingdom, 1995)



June 14: Fiona Apple - The Way Things Are (When The Pawn..., 1999)



June 16: David Bowie - Stay (Live At Nassau Coliseum, 1976) (Not available on Spotify)



June 17 (Father's Day): Harry Chapin - Cat's In The Cradle (Verities & Balderdash, 1974)



Bruce Springsteen - Adam Raised A Cain (Darkness On The Edge Of Town, 1978)



Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue (At San Quentin, 1969)



Buckethead - Watching The Boats With My Dad (Colma, 1999)

Week 23: The White Stripes - White Blood Cells (2001)

“Jack told me more than once not to make it sound too good."

-       Stuart Sikes, recording engineer on White Blood Cells, “A definitive oral history: Revealing the White Stripes”

Punk tends to favor personality over talent. For a genre that treats any form of instrumental virtuosity beyond playing three chords and yelling with suspicion at best and outright hostility at worst (The Clash were pushing it with “Complete Control” already, and were essentially cast out of the clan when they released London Calling), the charisma of the performers tended to be the most important factor in the overall band’s success. Those who broke from that idea were either called The Ramones (who relied on playing great, simple pop songs really, really fast) or became the core of the New Wave and, later, New Romantic genres.

The power of personality that John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) and Joe Strummer personified had its root in the pre-Beatles pop music era. Back in the day, bands rarely had anyone capable of writing their own material, let alone at the rate needed to match the then-thriving industry of Tin Pan Alley. Buddy Holly & The Crickets were one of the first groups to manage the feat, and the British Invasion broke the industry wide open a few years later, but the 40s and 50s were dominated by songwriters who approached pop music in the same manner as blues, classical, and musical theatre: as something to be performed.

Week 22: Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights (2002)

“I'm sick of spending these lonely nights/Training myself not to care”

-       Interpol, “NYC”, Turn On The Bright Lights

Few bands were as hated for their quality as Interpol was in 2002. Low-level music snobs were united in celebration; finally, there was a good, popular band that wore their influences so obviously and openly that their quality could be dismissed out of hand by even the least well-listened hipster. It was like a connect-the-dots puzzle for dummies, with a straight line between Joy Division and this band of charlatan mimics. People waved off the band, laughing while wearing a Closer t-shirt from Hot Topic: “You only think they’re good because you think they’re original.”

You may have guessed that I was one of those sneering snobs, for a while at least. I enjoyed the bigger singles from the album (“PDA” and “Obstacle 1”) when they were originally released, but the more I read about the band, the more irritated I became. I was outraged that they had allegedly ripped off Joy Division (despite never having heard one of their albums all the way through at that point) and The Chameleons (who I started listening to due to their claimed similarities to Interpol), and I quickly dropped the album out of my rotation.

It was at that point that I attempted to enter the off-putting world of post-punk, one of those cheerful genres that actively works at being alien and intimidating. The effort was short-lived; I enjoyed The Chameleons and have a firm, unyielding love for the Bowie albums that contributed a basic foundation for the genre (the Berlin trilogy and Station To Station, namely), but found the rest of the genre rather masturbatory.

I realize that’s a bit of an odd term to apply to a genre that was apparently focused on reducing music to elements even rawer than punks, but even a cursory glance at the genre reveals that the idea faded rather quickly. Post-punk and punk have in common two things: intent to rip up popular music and start over again (devolution, in other words) and a complete and utter failure to do so. Post-punk had been scooped on the idea of radical minimalism and primitivism in music decades ago; Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring” did everything post-punk sought for in 1913, and incited a riot in doing so. By the time Public Image LTD rolled around, John Cage had already mastered the idea with “4’ 33””, a ‘song’ devoted to exploring the natural aesthetics of a quiet room.

There’s also the simple fact that the post-punk music that is today well-known and respected is still pop music. Like the best punk music, post-punk lacks the reckless courage of John Cage and other avant-garde artists in the way it clings to basic pop structures. A more accurate mission statement for punk would have been that they were seeking the devolution of Western pop, a mission in which they arguably succeeded.

Songs Of The Days - Pop Week! (Week 22)

May 28: Madonna - Beautiful Stranger (Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me OST, 1999)



May 29: The Kinks - You Really Got Me (Kinks, 1964)



May 30: Crystal Waters - Relax (Storyteller, 1994)



May 31: Aaliyah - U Got Nerve (Aaliyah, 2001)



June 1: The Cars - Just What I Needed (The Cars, 1978)



June 2: Steely Dan - My Old School (Countdown To Ecstasy, 1973)



June 3: George Michael - Careless Whisper (Make It Big, 1984)



Gary Wright - Dreamweaver (The Dream Weaver, 1975)