I'm pretty out-of-it when it comes to current popular music trends, as if my periodic music video embeds didn't clue you into that. I did, however, have the misfortune of forgetting my iPod while taking a road-trip to visit my mom in Virginia, so I heard the execrable Grammy-nominated Shake it Off by Taylor Swift. I don't have anything against Taylor Swift, on the one occasion on which I met her, I didn't even realize that she was a soon-to-be-famous songstress (so I have to assume she was pretty down-to-earth) and I have a fervent desire that she achieves actual immortality so she can become Taylor Swift IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE and break up with every guy in the universe- I just can't stand her crap music. Shake it Off, a solipsistic song about (you got it) Taylor Swift is especially horrible, just check out the lyrics:
'Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play
And the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off
Heartbreakers gonna break, break, break, break, break
And the fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake
Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off
Ugh, it's tailor-made (better yet, Taylor-made) for the soundtrack to Gitmo, or Malebolge, or (even more hellishly) Sarah Palin's Iowa speech.
The other front-runner for song of the year, Stay With Me by Sam Smith, is not offensive at all, and I wish Mr Smith, a "blue-eyed soul" singer from the UK, all the success he deserves. I think he is exactly the right guy to become the 21st Century's Rick Astley, and foresee a time twenty-five years from now when kids smithroll each other.
Personally, I think the Grammys are a crapfest, a perfect distillation of the utter crap that the music industry extrudes like so much pink slime. Everything you need to know about the Grammys can be summed up by Christopher Cross' sweep of the 1981 Grammy awards (though, again, I have no personal animus against Mr Cross, and actually dig the fact that he played a gig with Deep Purple once).
This year, you know the Grammys are a total sham because Darkey and the Keys haven't been nominated for a single Grammy, even though they are a billion times better than Taylor Swift:
My favorite member of the band is the big dude with the short hair and the bushy eyebrows... he looks like he's wandered in from another band's recording session, or from another planet altogether. I have come to think of him as "Tiny", the cousin of the lead singer and that the two had this conversation before forming the band:
Darkey: Hey, Tiny, you still got that electric guitar of yours?
Tiny: Sure, I occasionally play songs from Frozen to entertain our nieces.
Darkey: Well, I'm forming a band, think Tamil death metal, with a Ronnie James Dio meets Shiva as Ascetic aesthetic.
Tiny: Darkey, I dig the idea, and you know I'll always have your back, but we have a dress code at work.
Darkey: Tiny, I really need you, you're the best guitarist in the neighborhood.
Tiny: I'm in, as long as it doesn't interfere with my job at the Kuala Lumpur Municipal Water Authority.
And the rest was history, in my imagination.
A-TATIKITATIKITITIKKITITIKKITITATIKI... WHOAAA!!! 1! 2! 3! 4!
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8 comments:
I don't get any of the inside jokes - I think that makes me happy, perhaps proud - but I've never watched an awards show, and if I was ever to start it would most certainly NOT be the Grammys.
I've never heard of any of these people and I'm doing just fine, thankyewverymuch...
Heck, B^4. I rely ON YOU to tell me what the hepcats and kitties are listening to.
~
That band is fab — but I think you’re missing the point of the Grammy’s, as similarly-tasteful people also miss the point of the Oscars.
The idea, here, is not to reward excellence, but to create an ouroborous of commercially-available pop culture that simultaneously advertises and creates a public spectacle of the Normal for the lost hordes of mall-dwelling Americans who still buy records and movie tickets to relate to. They need to know what to laugh at. They need to know what be outraged about. They need to know what specific actors and singers they’re supposed to be in love with this year. They need to know where the boundaries of popularity lay, specifically, so they can reinforce these attitudes at school and work & in social contexts. It’s how they know they’re alive.
Trust me, here, I’ve got a Tumblr. We just go from one underfed white goofy-looking RP-honking British guy to the next, one beautiful 'strong’ light-skinned black chanteuse to the next, one set of liminal captioned memes to the next. That doesn’t mean that any of those individual things/songs/artists (or "artists," if you like) are terrible or unworthy of attention. Just that they’re signifiers rather than actual objects.
…Hater.
I've never heard of any of these people and I'm doing just fine, thankyewverymuch...
I was doing better before I heard Ms Swift's oeuvre. I liked her a lot better when she was the slight, polite kid I met at work.
Heck, B^4. I rely ON YOU to tell me what the hepcats and kitties are listening to.
Thanks for the accolade... all of the real cool people are listening to Malaysia's greatest Tamil speed metal band.
The idea, here, is not to reward excellence, but to create an ouroborous of commercially-available pop culture that simultaneously advertises and creates a public spectacle of the Normal for the lost hordes of mall-dwelling Americans who still buy records and movie tickets to relate to
It's a reverse Ouroboros, a snake with its head up its cloaca. I guess I'm just guilty as charged, my pop culture sensibilities are pretty far from the mainstream.
Cloaca is a good word.
If anything here is going to be musically "shaken", I'll stick with Florence and the Machine shaking it OUT.
I pretty much ignore the Oscars because a bunch of old white farts decide what gets awarded to whom, I stopped watching the Grammys back when they awarded Jethro Tull (a band I DO like) the metal award -- because well, for pity's sake, REALLY?
Award shows always seem so self-congratualatory to me that it seems like public masturbation!
The Beatles never won a Grammy. That pretty much sums it up for me!
Big bald dude
That band is freaking out there I watched both videos and it's something I may never be able to erase from my mind. I'm an old long haired bastard more used to more civilized music like The Alice Cooper Band or something...... Wally
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