Here at (t)wn, we often bring you things worth noting for their attempt at substantive beauty, truth, or some combination of both. But we did not start out that way, necessarily. Although it’s very poetry heavy now, when we started out, we just intended to have a group blog about anything in particular. Asides, observations, witticisms, lists, etc. So this blog post is in some ways a return to some of the neglected spiritual roots of this blog.
Today, someone over at invisiblecreature.com (a graphic design firm that specializes in album art) posted a link to the below video on twitter (@icreature), saying “Kinda sad that a YouTube clip could literally ruin a day.” I was expecting something like a video of a puppy being run over, or some kind of Current Event. Instead was this (You may need to go over to youtube to watch it, it’s not being kind to our layout):
You only need to watch about half of the video to get the idea, so if you become nauseous, feel free to stop. You can even stop after the first chorus, if you’d like. I retweeted the video, appending my own comment: “Scrap the human race and start over again.” The inimitable and astute music and culture-critic Joel Hartse remarked that watching the video, he couldn’t figure out what I found so objectionable about it. So I posted the following diatribe on twitter, which I have lightly edited and collated, and forms the body of this post:
“Let’s set aside the winking day-glo aging hipster pastel faux-punk of the video for a sec. (A lot to set aside, I know). But let’s. The backing track on the verses doesn’t even pretend to do anything but vaguely hint at a chord progression, leading to an anemic chorus that tries to substitute orchestra hits(!) for a hook, the autotune slathered on the singer’s voice like so much mayonnaise. Is there a song underneath somewhere? I can’t tell, but I can’t be bothered to even check. There’s no way of appreciating or even approaching this song. It’s a Clarke’s monolith of pop trash nihilism, impenetrable and inscrutable. Oh my god, it’s full of stars!”
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by fredghansah. fredghansah said: @icreature Your posting of this video inspired a blogpost: http://bit.ly/bEI4ya [...]
Fred! What happened to a poem a day? I was looking forward to your words…