So begins at last my list of the finest songs of 2011. Last year I was all upset about the whole idea that one could even begin to honestly determine the very best songs put out in a year. Not because tastes differ too greatly, but because there’s just too much good music.
This year I realized I could have thrown together a list in late December, which is what everyone wants. No one gives a damn about 2011 in February, right? But for some reason I couldn’t stop myself from pouring through everything I’d played on my radio stream, in search of something I’d missed. Some time in January, I realized that I don’t do this for you (sorry, readers). I do it for me, so I can be sure nothing gets lost in the music world’s relentless drive toward newer-better-bolder. So these songs of 2011 may be five minutes ago, but they’re worth looking over twice.
The Best Indie Rock of 2011 PART I
There’s just too much goodness to fit in one post. In no particular order…
At last, the best electro of 2011. I’m not ranking these, they’re in alphabetical order. Forthcoming is the second half of this list, as well as the Best Indie Rock and the best Dance and the Best Chill Music. It’s about time, eh?
This morning the 9th Circuit Court overturned Prop 8, the proposition that outlawed gay marriage in California. There was one dissenting opinion from Judge Randy Smith. He argued that traditional marriage can be harmed by changing the definition to include same-sex couples. I’d like to argue the opposite: opposing gay marriage harms the sanctity of traditional marriage.
When I was dating women, marriage was never a possibility. To take the relationship to the next level was to move in together, and in typical lesbian fashion that happened pretty quickly. We didn’t give any thought to whether we wanted to be together for all of eternity because we’d known since the time we came out of the closet that that wasn’t an option. If being queer meant being swallowed in a lake of fire, so be it. We’d accepted it.
Now I’m in an entirely hetero-normative relationship. One man, one woman. And guess what? I still don’t think about marriage. I know that it’s an option, but I don’t fantasize about wedding gowns and bridal showers like some of my straight friends do. To them, marriage has always been the measure of love, because that’s what people do when they love each other. To prove they love each other. But it is hard to believe in the sanctity of marriage when you’ve been in love, and done just fine without it.
But that’s a young person’s game. What every queer wants, even a Godless heathen like myself, is equal rights. The right to leave our pension to our partner, the right to visit them in the hospital, the right to add them to our health insurance, the right to file jointly on our taxes, all of the rights that straight couples get when they sign that piece of paper. Most Americans, even those who support the sanctity-of-marriage argument, recognize this as an injustice that should be rectified. Arguing against giving queer couples the same rights as married couples is a losing argument. Too many people saw If These Walls Could Talk II I suppose, or they have a gay friend, or they get their hair cut by a friendly-but-opinionated gay stylist. Over and over statistics show that the younger generation has no problem with gay people, thinks they aren’t going to stop being gay just because you guilt them, and believes they deserve equal rights.
Enter civil unions. Civil unions seem like the perfect compromise to keep our grubby, queer, little hands off your precious wedding rings. But it seems obvious to me that civil unions are only going to further destroy the sanctity of marriage. Let me tell you why. Continue reading →
It’s possible that this is all a trick of the lighting in the club, but even if his mixer were turned off, I still wouldn’t buy that Guetta is a total fake. After all the guy’s been live Djing since he was seventeen. Surely if he didn’t know how to operate a mixer, someone in that time would have noticed. Even if his mixer is completely turned off, it’s possible that he had technical difficulties and had to throw on a mix CD. These things happen.
But the very existence of this video and the support it’s received tells us that for every one of Guetta’s fans there’s a hater. He may not be a fake DJ, but is David Guetta a sellout? Let’s examine the evidence.
It seems he will collaborate with anyone, on his last album alone he worked with Usher, Sia, Taio Cruz, Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj, Chris Brown, Lil Wayne and Timbaland. He even collaborated with a fifteen-year old kid famous for lip-syncing on YouTube …but hey, maybe he’s just a friendly guy…and all his friends happen to be the biggest names in pop music.
Actually, it’s unfair to say this is all happening by accident. Guetta was told that dance music would never succeed in the American market, so he sought out the biggest names in pop. Now you can’t turn on the radio without hearing “Tonight’s going to be a good night” or that “Sexy Bitch” song he did with Akon, or whatever Guetta’s next single is. Instead of complaining about the lack of electronic music on the Billboard charts, he saw an opportunity and he took it.
Selling out can be defined as making music for money instead of answering the call of your artistic muse. Guetta described it this way: “The more melodies and chord changes, the less good it is for the clubs, but the better it is for radio, because it makes it really emotional…Yet, what gives dance music energy and drive is that it’s hypnotic and repetitive. My battle is to find the balance between the two.” Here he’s freely admitting that he changes the music he makes to appease the radio drones.
This all comes down to the age-old battle between professional and amateur artists. Whether you’re a dancer, poet, or photographer, if you want to make money practicing your art, you’ll have to learn to craft work that fits the needs of the person paying you. If you’re a writer, this could be cutting your profanity out of the articles you write for the local paper. If you’re a film-maker it could mean using the producer’s band for your soundtrack. And any DJ who’s ever worked a wedding can tell you the booking where you snub “The Hussle” and only play underground dance music you won’t be getting a referral from the bride. Maybe David Guetta truly believes auto-tune is the sexiest thing ever, but it’s more likely he puts up with it to have an opportunity to make Lil Wayne’s next hit a little less R&B and a little more four to the floor.
Meanwhile, those of us not out their making money can turn our nose up at those who do. Is David Guetta a sellout? Yes, and he probably has been for almost as long as he’s been making money.
It makes no difference to me if you hate on Guetta, what bother me is the idea that becoming a world-famous DJ and producer is somehow easy, if only you’re willing to sell out. The comments are along the lines of “All you need to become the next David Guetta are iTunes and swagger.” This marginalizes the hard work Djs are out there doing every day. Dammit, selling out his hard work.
This is song #3 of a playlist for my LYLAS Kat. The subject is great indie lyricists. Each week I’m focusing on the lyrics of one band and why those lyrics are worth delving into.
Hi Kat,
Since you’ve been obsessed with the Mountain Goats lately, we’ve been talking about who some of our favorite modern lyricists are. This playlist was made specifically to answer that question. Today’s band is Metric.
It’s no secret that Metric is one of my favorite bands of the decade. One may compare them to chick-fronted rock bands like Blondie or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. But Metric wins bonus points in having captivating, socially relevant lyrics. I first got hooked on the mysterious “The Police and the Private” and became fanatic with “Patriarch on A Vespa.” I say it’s socially relevant but it’s more poetry than preaching. She’s writing about the world she sees, and as a socially aware person, this is reflected in her writing.
Take the aforementioned “Police and the Private”. She sings:
Didn’t make this up I learned, I learned it from a friend
My friend is coming clean, she told me
Keep one eye on the door, keep one eye on the bed
Never expect to be sure who you’re working for
It’s clear she’s talking about some black market world. Is it drugs? Prostitution? Does it matter which, or does it matter more that the larger point is that “the whole world wants what we’re on…the police and the private, the doctor, the lawyer, the garbage collector“? The tone is desperate and dangerous. Never once does she ask why something the whole world wants is outlawed, as that would be preaching. I liken it to the Talking Heads song “Life During Wartime,” in that capturing the dangers of the lifestyle is more telling and more interesting than a sermon about the morality of those who choose to live in the underworld. The clincher in “Police and the Private” is the last line, Got to get to you the orphanage is closing in an hour. Such a haunting line. Does the character in the song live this dangerous lifestyle in the hopes of making enough money to get her child back? It’s unclear, merely suggestive that criminals lead desperate lives because there are other more innocent lives at stake.
Another example is “Gold, Guns, Girls.” The lyrics All the guns, all the gold, in the world…couldn’t get you off seem to be directed at a certain president and his cabinet that were in power when she released the song in 2009. Did she sit down to write a song about a particular politician, or does her pen naturally gravitate to such subjects because they interest her? Would the song be better if she namechecked Bush or Cheney? No, the song is better because it is about a certain type of person that Cheney happens to be an example of.
The lyrics to Patriarch On A Vespa wouldn’t be out of place in the latest urban literary magazine. I’ll print them in full so you can imagine them not in a rock song but within your favorite poetry anthology.
Patriarch On A Vespa
Promiscuous makes an entrance
Her mouth is full of questions
Are we all brides to be?
Are we all designed to be confined?
Buy ourselves chastity belts and lock them
Organize our lives and lose the key
Our faces all resemble dying roses
From trying to fix it
When instead we should break it
We’ve got to break it before it breaks us
Fear of pretty houses and their porches
Fear of biological wristwatches
Fear of comparison shopping
Dogs on leashes behind fences barking
Pretty little pillows on floral couches
Until our faces all resemble dying roses
Stop trying to fix it
Patriarch on a Vespa
Runs a red and ends up
Crushed under the wheel
I can imagine this getting high marks at the next Berkeley poetry slam, can’t you? But on the contrary, she sings this while playing the keyboard solo and kicking her legs in the air in total bad-ass fashion. The “it” she refers to I presume to be bullshit suburbia and when she shouts “Stop trying to fix it…we should break it” she has created a couplet not matched in the history of rocking out since The Who first shouted “Meet the new boss! Same as the old boss!” If this song had been popular enough to hit heavy rotation on corporate radio, surely it would have inspired some chair throwing and bra burning.
If you want to see some chill-inspiring rockage, check out the thrills she throws down at 1:40. It will give you a sense of why Emily Haines is one of the goddesses of indie rock:
Bonus: If this rocks a little hard for you, check out Emily Haines solo career with her backing band The Soft Skeleton. Or if you just can’t get enough, she’s also a sometimes-singer for Broken Social Scene.
