Forgive me. I know this seems a little late, but somewhere between the destruction of the global financial shell game, the transition drama of a newly elected President, Brett Favre interceptioning Eric Mangini out of a job… this happened.
This hipster elite were (naturally) apo-fucking-plectic. This proves that Kanye West has no talent! He can’t sing! He’s not playing instruments! This isn’t “real music”! I don’t need to transcribe these fucktards in full. You’ve probably rolled your eyes at similar comments so many times that they’ve spilled out of your sockets once or twice, leaving you to hunt for them on the ground like a figurative Mr. Magoo. Or maybe you are one of those people.
But either way, screw them. Where you saw a guy you hated exposing himself to the world as an overhyped fraud, I saw one of the realest moments out there. Here we’ve got somebody on stage singing in front of a pastel pink nightmare cartoon generator with tacky shades and a god fucking awful haircut (and a dude that raps about Gucci so much should never been seen looking like that) looking obviously uncomfortable, can’t dance, can’t sing, doing it anyway and still managing to pull out a few decent moments. And so what? This isn’t American Idol, this is, um… music.
If we’re looking at a lazy, cynical schemer out to con the public with preconcieved catchy one note garbage while getting a media machine to convince the world we are looking at the best musician ever… why isn’t he using a tape for all the high notes? For all of the hype of this being an Ashlee Simpson moment, this is the exact opposite, because whether he can sing or not, he’s putting himself out there. And he doesn’t have to, because there would be plenty of money in pulling a Bad Religion and rewriting the same fucking album for 15 years. So he wants to do something new and he fouled it up. Believe it or not, folks, everybody can’t do everything well, or even decently. We’ve been exposed to years of studio engineering and smart marketing that’s convinced even the most hardened cynic on a subliminal level that you’re supposed to be able to do all that. Bob Dylan can’t sing for shit, your favorite lead singer plays rhythm guitar for a reason, and deep down in a place you won’t wanna admit, the band he’s in was best when they had a decent producer to hone all that “artistic vision” they’re always harping about into something coherent. CD sales have dropped like a motherfucking rock the last few years, and why? Because, people insist, there’s not enough real out there. It doesn’t pass the smell test. After hearing variations on the same Nickelback song for years before I finally gave up on FM radio, I agree.
But real doesn’t equate to great all the time. Sometimes real wears shades that are too big with a talent level of 8 that they think is a 17 and three quarters. Sometimes real puts itself on a limb and it snaps, stumbling fumbling and bumbling all the way back down.
I hope that doesn’t stop any of us from making that effort. I hope that spirit of at least trying to try is the one that makes up our 2009.
Tags: Ashlee Simpson, Bad Religion, Bob Dylan, Brett Favre, Kanye West, NFL, Nickelback