Pop Exodus: Happy All American Weekend! (A Pop Playlist for You and Your Parents)

Carson Bear

mariaxms.pngCourtesy of Atlanta Black Star.

Happy Monday, babes! In honor of parent‰’s weekend, I decided to make up a little playlist chock full of songs for the ‰rents, but also for you.

I think there‰’s a debate within the pop community about whether or not we should be paying attention to classic pop alongside new pop. After all, pop is basically the epitome of current, up-to-date, and trends. But it‰’s weird to me that we sometimes ignore those classics of pop, because they represent the best of it. Oldies represent the music that‰’s transcended the wear of days long passed, they‰’re what proves that pop music can be eternal.

It isn‰’t just this trend-driven genre; people probably aren‰’t going to forget about Elton John in the next hundred years, in the same way people haven‰’t forgotten Beethoven or Mozart (who were very much pop artists in their own time). And so, I decided to just smush a couple of epochs of pop together into one very convenient playlist.

“Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy”
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“Electric Lady”

What do Janelle MonÌÁe and Elton John have in common (other than a tendency towards the performative)? “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy” and “Electric Lady” are both about a titled but unnamed superhero character, described in abstract terms.

They both exist in a realm outside of themselves dripping with allusions and metaphors that disguise some of the subtleties of the songs. While the similarities are great, I think what makes Electric Lady different from Captain Fantastic is more compelling than what draws them together. While Captain Fantastic and Electric Lady are both really generic characters (they‰’re just average joes, never expecting to amount to anything in particular), the tonality of the songs drives them apart.

So, where Elton John admits immediately that Captain Fantastic is “hardly a hero/just someone his mother might know‰Û, it takes Janelle MonÌÁe half the song to admit that the Electric Lady is “wearing tennis shoes or in flats or in stilettos‰Û. But Captain Fantastic is still individualized, even though he could be anyone. He‰’s the unexpected hero of the drama, and it‰’s questionable whether he even is a hero, or just someone in the right place at the right time.

So many of John‰’s lines are pessimistic: “broken young children on the wheels of the winners‰” and “all this talk of Jesus coming back to see us/couldn‰’t fool us‰” – for someone creating a heroic character out of Captain Fantastic, Elton John really doesn‰’t value him. The morality of Captain Fantastic is seriously called into question; John looks like he‰’s drawing attention away from the Captain, saying “look at all these other issues people are experiencing‰Û, asking why we aren‰’t focused on them.

MonÌÁe‰’s shoe line is more about the universality of the Electric Lady; she could be anyone, any marginalized person has the ability to be “illuminating all that she touches‰Û. If that weren‰’t enough, MonÌÁe makes “Electric Lady‰” decisively universal at the end of the song: here is the revelation, that “we‰” are all Electric Ladies – we‰’re in this together.

And of course, the Electric Lady is an inarguable hero; the gods literally approve of her “look‰Û, which is pretty much the highest praise you can hope to get, you know, throughout your short and meaningless life. MonÌÁe does say yeah, there‰’s “glass on the ceiling‰Û, which I kind of see as a feminism conch shell type of device.

However, she‰’s keeping the song positive overall, a far cry from the pessimism in “Captain Fantastic”.

“Chain of Fools”
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“The Wire”

There‰’s a really obvious connection here, and it‰’s literally in the titles: they‰’re both metals, a chain and a wire. The metal stuff metaphor doesn‰’t seem important (because honestly Aretha Franklin could just be talking about a paper chain, I guess), but there‰’s something so solid about them.

Aretha was a link in the chain of spurned women, and that‰’s something that won‰’t go away for her. And for Haim, that wire (no matter how thin it might be) is their limit for these childish, needy boys. I always read “Chain of Fools‰” as an empowering song, even though it‰’s about not wanting to leave a man who “treated me mean/oh you treated me cruel‰Û, in fact resisting everyone‰’s advice about that. Don‰’t get me wrong, okay: I am not romanticizing an abusive relationship – while it can be hard to tell what Don Covey‰’s intent actually was when he wrote this song (or what Aretha‰’s was when she sang it), I don‰’t think that she‰’s planning on staying with this jerk, especially from the way it‰’s performed.

Why is she talking about being in a chain of fools so much, and spending so little time on how much she wants to be with her man? “Every chain has got a weak link/I might be weak, yeah/but I give you strength‰Û? He even “told me to leave you alone‰Û, but there‰’s Aretha, standing outside his door and howling this song, night after night. She‰’s staying with him out of some sort of desire for vengeance: you want to treat me like this, and then just expect me to go run away? I don‰’t think so, bub.

I posted the live versions of these songs so we could look at what they‰’re doing in performance, because even though Aretha screams out “strong lady soul tune‰” and Haim screams out “sassy empowered indie chick tune‰Û, they both perform the same way.

Aretha might be wearing a glittery gold dress and wagging her finger, inviting soulstress friend Mariah Carey on stage to share in some self righteous lady anger. And Haim might be made up of waif little white girls with distractingly nude makeup, covered up with giant guitars, and Este‰’s making the best bitch face when she screams into the mic.

But Haim also has the lady anger – their song is witty (not that Aretha‰’s isn‰’t) and catty, but it‰’s so full of bitterness and disdain, “I‰’m sorry I do what I did, but it came naturally‰Û, followed by “I know you‰’re gonna be okay anyway‰Û. Sorry not sorry – just like Aretha, their apologies are harsh and hollow, laughing at their subjects rather than relying on sincerity.

Onstage, everyone is punching out their notes, slamming into their guitars, full of emotions that hover in the space between rage and derision.

“Vienna”
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“Shame”

“Vienna‰” is maybe probably my favorite Billy Joel song, and it was introduced to me by a boy I had been seeing who – most incorrectly – believed it to be about a girl, when it‰’s actually about Billy‰’s dad who high tailed it to Vienna when his son was eight.

So, of course there‰’s a lot of bitterness going on in this song, there isn‰’t really a tone of reconciliation I think my guy found in it. I like it so much more, knowing it‰’s not a love song.

That said, it‰’s not a hate song; it‰’s sort of an advice song, and it‰’s also about Vienna the place. Billy said that “Vienna was always the crossroads – between the Ottoman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire‰Û.

His message is politicized, and you learn that it‰’s not just about his father, or even just about Vienna. It‰’s definitely telling a story, a story about being in that borderline, lacking that identity. Which is really interesting because the identity confusion isn‰’t coming from inside Billy at all, or at least it doesn‰’t seem to. He‰’s talking to someone else, saying “why don‰’t you understand that you‰’re tripping around in circles, you‰’re stuck at this crossroads and you don‰’t even know it?‰” And more than angry or spiteful he‰’s just…disappointed.

And “Shame‰” is a story too, and there‰’s a similar catharsis that Robbie Williams gets out of the song. Only, instead of positioning it at someone else, Robbie‰’s positioning “Shame‰” at himself. Once upon a time, Robbie Williams was in this band called Take That. It was British and it was a boy band, and as things tend to happen, it did not end well. “Shame‰” is about the bitterness from the feud between Robbie and Gary Barlow, and the song also features Gary Barlow.

It includes a lot of in-references I don‰’t really understand because I‰’m not British, but the gist is there. They were in the band, the band split up because reasons, and then this awful feud happened where Robbie Williams really hated Gary Barlow for an incredibly long time. It‰’s cute because they actually ended their differences through the creation of “Shame‰Û.

It‰’s what I‰’d imagine would have happened if Billy Joel and his father (or maybe Billy Joel and the country of Vienna) got together to make their own song saying “this is what happened‰Û. And I think for that reason Robbie and Gary can afford to be incredibly specific – “and with your poster thirty foot high in the back of Toys-R-Us‰Û, or “I told you through the television‰Û.

The closure in “Vienna‰” is probably a lot more subtle than that of “Shame‰Û, but it still exists. There‰’s a certain finality in “Vienna‰Û, even though it ends in the question: “Why won‰’t you realize Vienna waits for you?‰Û, and I think that Billy anticipated some weird sort of send-off through this question. He‰’s not really expecting anything to change, but he‰’s come to terms with that. And there’s where his tone of disappointment comes in, a very finalized feeling in itself.