On Pride And Pop

It was Pride this weekend in Toronto. It started out kind of crappy: one of my best friends was mugged after leaving a gay club night on Friday, and we have some suspicion it was gay-related (they seemed more interested in beating the shit out of him than in actually stealing anything). He's generally fine now, but he still has a swollen face and a big shiner. Even without that dragging our mood down, our entire experience of Pride felt kind of lame: it was just a bunch of parties that we could go to any week of the year. Not to sound too Carrie Bradshaw, but had we come so far from coming out that celebrating our sexual diversity was, well, dull?

But then it changed. Then I actually started meeting people I didn't know, and was pushed out of my comfort zone, and as cheesy as it sounds, I experienced the true meaning of Christmas - I mean, Pride. Since most of it related to pop music, I think some of you will be interested in hearing about it. (Some of you will be bored. Sorry!)

"Manic Monday"

I went for some drinks with a friend and a gay couple he knew but I didn't. I can't give more details about them because both men are in the closet to almost everyone they know. They are fine with this situation, and their families fully accept that they are "partnered" in some way, but due to cultural reasons, they can't come out as lovers. They expressed no regret at this and seemed happy with their lives and with each other.

However, what really got me was that whenever I and my friend would blithely talk about gay life and coming out, one of them would say, "This is so nice! You don't understand how much I appreciate this. We never get to talk about gay things with other gay men." This was good enough, but then they mentioned that they had to fly back home and work on Monday, and I started singing "Manic Monday." Even that got to him. "No really, this is great! We don't get to hear gay men singing 'Manic Monday'!"

Think about how amazing this is. How often do you get to make someone feel free by singing a silly pop song from the 80's?



"Spice Up Your Life"

I went with another gay friend to a club. While we were sitting and drinking, two girls sat next to us. They asked if they were disturbing us and we said no, and from there we began talking. I don't know their age, but they were young. They mentioned that they were from the suburbs, and how much they hated them. We also talked about music, and they were so enthusiastic about everything that you couldn't help but adore them. There was no pretense, no attitude, just a desire to be part of this gay Toronto world, to be into music fully and completely and as an escape from the boring sameness of suburbia. They were friends with the drag queen who was DJing and kept chatting to her all night. Even better, although they loved Hole, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and New Order - in other words, "cool" bands - they unashamedly sang along (and did the hand gestures!) to "Spice Up Your Life" when the DJ played it. I loved them just a little bit more for their willingness to look silly.

I can sometimes be a little bit of a bitter and disillusioned fag about Pride, but the whole situation made me realize that, duh, Pride was actually important for straight people, too. These girls can feel just as oppressed by sexual cultural homogeny as I can be, and they need to step out and have a gay old time, as well.



"Rehab"

At another bar, the music cut out unexpectedly at about 3am. The DJ complained that she couldn't get the music working again, so, to try to keep everyone dancing, I tried to lead the dancefloor in a rendition of a song I thought they'd all know: "Rehab." We were a pretty diverse and varied group, but everyone knew at least some of the words. We laughingly screwed up verses, messed up the melody, kept repeating "no no no" and drunkenly gave up halfway through. But it worked: for a moment, we were all excitedly speaking the same language. We weren't forced into this same language. There was no coercion or oppression. We just wanted to have a good time, to enjoy ourselves.



"Umbrella"

It's always thrilling when such an idiosyncratic song like "Rehab" seems to become an enormous cultural phenomenon. It can spontaneously excite people in incredibly personal ways and yet, as I mentioned, it also unites people in enjoyment. "Young Folks" has recently accomplished this, and Rihanna's "Umbrella" is doing it too: I heard it no less than seven times over Pride weekend. The girls I mentioned above expressed love for "Umbrella," and even my friend who tends to be more into bands like Adult. and Lesbians On Ecstasy expressed grudging approval of it.

When it first came out, I was more theoretically happy with "Umbrella" than practically. Like "SOS" it feels mechanically cold and fun at the same time. However, after seeing its robust and electrifying effect on dancefloors all weekend, I can't deny that it's a powerful song. Music appreciation is science: we always need to test our theories with practical appreciation. And like science, the best discoveries are the ones that flout our expectations. What's a better lesson from Pride than the reminder that you haven't figured out the world yet, and that pleasure is unexpectedly staring you in the face?

On The National Vs Spoon

I listened to The National's Alligator when it first came out two years ago. Although I generally found it middling at best, the lead single "Abel" was bouncy enough for me to include it on a mixed CD I made for some friends at the time. On the strength of that song, I classified the National as a nice if somewhat uninteresting band, one of those "Oh, they're fine" bands that seem to overpopulate sites like GorillaVsBear (although Chris has been taming his worse excesses lately). I was shocked, then, when the National's new album started getting such rave reviews. Especially since the new album seemed to extend some of their worst tendencies from Alligator, and had no memorable tunes equivalent to "Abel." In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I began to see the current fete-ing of the National as indicative of a certain irritating strain in indie rock criticism.



First of all, listening to The National's Boxer, I am struck by how anonymous the band's sound is. Without Matt Berninger's vocals, the band's style would be completely unidentifiable. It's impossible to say what the band's influences are. They sound like everyone and they sound like no one. Although you don't know who they sound like, you do get the feeling that this is what "important" music should sound like: the guitars, horns, piano and various percussive elements exude classiness. The music feels grown-up, intelligent, classic.

Berninger's vocals add to this effect. Here, the National do show influence. Berninger sounds like an able cross of Johnny Cash and Springsteen. The takeaway message of this vocal inheritance: I come from a more serious time, when things were important; therefore, I am important, and what I am singing about is important. The lyrics are yet another layer of this, with their references to Victoriana and American dictionaries. Clearly, this is not a band interested in dwelling on the mundane or the marginal or the contemporary. Referring to Victorian times in indie rock is the equivalent of shouting I AM IMPORTANT, LISTEN TO ME.

What, exactly, is wrong with this? Nothing, really, except that a) importance is not a style and never has been; b) "important" music may burn brightly but it will not last; c) the music's "importance" is tied much too intimately to a particular socioeconomic group for it's success to be free of certain queasy moral implications; d) "important" music is anti-progressive.

Compare, for a moment, Spoon. I'll use their new album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga as a reference, since it is roughly contemporary with Boxer. Spoon uses essentially the same instrumentation and sonic palette as The National, and yet even without Britt Daniel vocals, the band's signature style is vividly present even on their most generic songs: the percussive piano and melodic bass recall disco, the sexual tension is lifted from Prince, the songs' horizontal sound is inherited from The Wire. Even more signature is that all of this is filtered through their idiosyncratic jerky minimalism. Spoon's influences are worn clearly and sharply, and the result is that they create a sound that is completely new and unique to Spoon. Listen, for instance, to any song from Ga Ga, and the song is easily identifiable as Spoon. I challenge anyone to claim the same for any song from Boxer (especially before Berninger's vocals begin).

This isn't just some freakish effect - it's a sign of Spoon's importance relative to the National. Spoon's musical importance comes from their ability to remake genres. They don't sound important; they are important because their style will influence others. The National's style won't be copied because it's not a style (although their "important" posturing, sadly, will). Even worse, the National's music, as time goes by, will be gradually forgotten. There are no hooks, no memorable melodies, no piercing stylistic moves to inspire or force us to remember the songs. Can you imagine anyone doing a cover of a song from Boxer? How could anything living and breathing be extracted from the National's sonic murk, it's miasma of classiness? Ga Ga may not go on to be a classic album, but covers could be done of every song on the album.

In other words, Spoon try to make people recognize their importance by actually producing something practically important: new genres, solid and memorable melodies, songs that are structurally tight enough to be replayed and covered in new configurations. The National is merely trying to exude importance as a posture. It's the difference between saying, "I am the fastest runner in the world" and, you know, actually being the fastest runner in the world.

But I think one of the deadliest problems for the National is that's it's "classiness" is quite clearly classy to a particular socioeconomic and ethnic group: white, upper-middle class, educated heterosexuals. Now, there is nothing wrong with appealing to a certain demographic. Most music is directed at particular groups of people: Hilary Duff has been singing to tweens for years now, My Chemical Romance has the depressed teen demo all tied up, and Celine Dion's fans are also, apparently, Hilary Clinton supporters. The problem arises because the music is so comfortable it doesn't make you question how parochial it is.

The National doesn't make you think about their music at all. The National is trying to submerge all recognition that music is essentially artificial, a style or pose we put on. It's just there to comfort you. You sink into the music of the National like you would a warm, soupy bath, and you ignore the band's signature lack of melody by just letting its sonic classiness envelop you. Comforting music is nice and necessary, but it becomes problematic when you forget that its classiness is really only a classiness for upper-middle class white people. The problem gets worse when you start to demand that other people be comforted by what comforts you. When that happens, when The National is deemed important because of its insular, comforting style - and not, for instance, for being stylistically innovative - that judgment paints the speaker as culturally narrowminded. And worse: a bit of a snob. You are liking the National because it reaffirms your identity at the top of the social heap.

Now, Spoon will never sweep the BET awards or become a big band in India. But by trying to make their music melodically accessible - pop-y! - they are at least meeting adventurous souls from non-white demos halfway. Everyone can dance to "The Underdog"; try dancing to anything from Boxer. The white, upper-class cultural trappings of Spoon's music, rather than being the reason for liking them, are a somewhat easily discarded impediment to enjoying their authentic melodic and rhythmic vitality.

All of this is important, but for me, the most important reason to fear the lure of "classiness" is its anti-progressive nature. Spoon may have not created the Demoiselles d'Avignon with Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga - in fact, I find this album less innovative than Gimme Fiction - but the album is often undeniably new. "The Ghost of You Lingers" is startling enough to sound incomprehensibly unlikeable when I first heard it and is now one of my favourite tracks from the new album.



Art should create new worlds in you that you couldn't imagine needing before you encountered it. Before Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga I didn't know that I would need "The Ghost of You Lingers" in my world, and it has now expanded my world and made it better. The same is true for all the music that has made the sharpest cut to my heart: New Order, Animal Collective, Magnetic Fields, Arthur Russell. Who could have predicted that the bizarro techno of the Knife would become necessary for me? That Medulla's screaming and whispering and cooing would be the equivalent of therapy for me? Isn't this amazing and astounding? That something so beautifully unexpected has redefined what I can hope for in this world? Isn't this better than listening to music that just re-affirms my own white male classiness to myself?

But I didn't really need to write all of this. Britt Daniel already perfectly described the lure of classiness (he calls it "convention") and it's attendant problems on "The Underdog":

I want to forget how convention fits
But can I get out from under it?
Can I cut it out of me?
It can't all be wedding cake
It can't all be boiled away
I try but I can't let go of it
Can't let go of it
Cause you don't talk to the waterboy
And there's so much you can learn
But you don't want to know
You won't back up an inch ever
And that's why you will not survive.

UPDATE: People seem to be getting very upset and they are under the impression that I am calling them racist for liking the National. No one is doing any such thing. I understand how aggravating it is to be accused of this, so let's just confirm it: You are not racist for liking the National.

What am I saying? I am saying that their songs have no structure and they have no musical style or appreciable melody. They are also not progressive or innovative in persona or lyrical content. This is fine. My only concern is that when you like something not progressive you are liking something for its familiarity, and if you suggest that other people should like it because it is familiar to you, you risk coming off as sounding closed-minded or worse. That is all.

Personally, I'd rather like something progressive and authentically melodic and avoid this whole issue.

UPDATE TWO: After some careful consideration, I have realized that I have made an error in judgment that has been the cause of why so many people have reacted so defensively, which was definitely not my intention.

I was simply trying to identify what I felt was a form of parochialism, and I was mixing abstract arguments with what I felt was an accurate assessment of the National's predominant audience. I should have just stuck to the actual abstract argument (that identifying something as "classy" is bad) rather than identify a particular group of people. It doesn't matter who the National appeals to; it could be green people from Mars. It could be anyone. The point is that the classiness is the awfulness, and that the demand that I like something because it is "classy" that smacks of cultural parochialism. I was just identifying the cultural group that usually responds to that "classiness" to make my point more concrete, and that was a mistake. It distracts from what I'm saying, and it makes people in that group feel attacked. I apologize for that.

I compounded that error by talking about that cultural group as a shorthand when I should have just remained abstract. That was a big mistake. I understand that a lot of people feel sensitive about this, and I blithely trod on some sensibilities.

My only other regret is that some commenters could have avoided name-calling and personal attacks as some of them have said some nasty and untrue things about me, and they could have made this issue a lot less combative. It took ten words from Matthew Perpetua to make me realize my error, and it's because he used calm reasoning.

Update Three: Although the level of debate has gotten much better, people still seem to be missing the point. I don't want to bash people for liking The National. Please, enjoy away. I wrote some of the following in an email to someone, and I think it elucidates the issue more.

I am in marketing, so I'm used to saying, "Oh, this brand will appeal to young males 18-35" or, "Sales of East Indian food products will rise in the near future due to immigration." It's obvs understood that these demos are not exclusive or fixed, and that everyone is in at least one (and usually many). Part of the excitement of marketing is to track how cultural attitudes are changing. However, I didn't realize that many people are not used to these terms and it (understandably) freaked them out. No one is suggesting that people aren't capable of liking things outside of their demo; it's just that statistically, they are behaving in this predictable way. If you think this idea is awful, I hate to tell you that it powers most of the effective marketing in the world. To sell a product, you have to find your target demo.

It's also understood in marketing - it's beyond a cliche - that people often consume products to confer status upon themselves. "I am better because I choose brand x." The perfect example is beer. Many people buy beer because the brand confers status on them. There's nothing wrong with choosing a high status product because you like it - for instance, you have a physical addiction to caviar and champagne. The problem arises when you like the product not for its internal properties but for its status-seeking ones. That was my issue.

Take a concrete example: Stella Artois is marketed as being classy. In Europe, it's just a mass-market beer. In fact, its one of the biggest selling beers in the world. Now, you can enjoy Stella Artois because you like it's flavour, but the suggestion that it is the "best" beer in the world comes off as slightly pretentious, particularly among North Americans, because the beer is fairly bland and it has all of these classy signifiers. If you are going to promote or boost it, you'll have to realize that many people will be put off by these classy signifiers because they seem so obnoxious to outsiders. In fact, you'll have to show that these classy signifiers have nothing to do with the authentic enjoyability of the product.

Finally, people seem to think that liking things that are popular means you are averse to complexity or can't understand complex things. Coke is popular not simply because of its marketing: it actually has one of the most complex flavour profiles ever invented. Whenever people try to invent colas to match Coke, they invariably fail because the balance of flavours is too spiky. Hellmann's mayonnaise and Heinz Ketchup also have exceptionally complex flavour profiles. Popularity does not mean simplicity: in fact, it usually means that the complex product has been designed to look appealling simple.

On Listening to Kanye's "Can't Tell Me Nothing"

You Don't Know Me - it's not just a variation on a hip-hop title, it's a general sentiment in much of hip-hop. It's probably why I have such a difficult time getting into a lot of hip-hop, because the sentiment is both teenager-y ("Mom, you don't understand me at all!!!") and forbiddingly blank - it's true, I don't know you, so why do you keep talking about yourself as if I did? I also don't like how it's due to a fear of internalizing criticism. Don't even try to tell me what to do, the rapper says, because you don't even know. But then, who can criticize you? And who said you have to know know someone to criticize them?

Which is why the new Kanye single is refreshing - and frightening. "You can't tell me nothing!" - it's not expressed as a boast, but as a recognition of his own blindness. "I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny/And what I do? Act more stupidly." It's the self-recognition of the king who is aware that the more power he has, the less help he can get from other people, and thus, the more vulnerable he is.

Traditional rap triumphalism is so often a pyramid scheme: I'm on the top because I'm getting others to believe in my topness. In this respect, topness needs to be continually renewed, that any faltering step will collapse the matchsticks. Kanye, on the other hand, believes he's great - it's his most maddening characteristic after all - and he doesn't need your support to believe that (well, except if you are the MTV Europe Awards). We just happen to be hearing him. But this constant, unsupported greatness (has the term begun to lose meaning yet?) means he has no means of accurately gauging yourself, of listening to others properly, of seeing when he is going wrong or going right.

In other words, rather than greatness being something Kanye's running towards, it is, just a little bit, something he's running away from. It's an object of fear, and it's what makes this one of the most melancholy and lonely (and audacious!) lead-off singles I've heard recently.

On Watching "I Could Fall In Love With You"

Erasure's new album sounds like the ecstasy is starting to wear out Vince Clarke's neurons: everything is the same, but louder, harder-edged, and with a lack of finesse. It's a perfect album for gay men in their late 30s who've lost all hearing in their higher frequencies due to too much shirtless, drug-fueled dancing. Listen to "I Could Fall In Love With You": although there is nothing terribly wrong with the song, Vince Clarke's sonic palette is narrowing, and to compensate, he's pushing the buttons he knows well really, really hard. The song's only penetrating charm comes when Andy Bell kind of struggles to hit the low notes in the verses. (BTW, what is wrong with his face? Andy's always had a bit of Cro-Magnon profile, but he used to be attractive. Now, he just looks ... odd. And unlike himself. Plastic surgery?)

The video, though, is entrancing: it's basically porn for romantics. Whenever anyone takes a loaded signifier like a kiss and repeats it endlessly, it tends to rob the signifier of its meaning. It's like repeating a word over and over again until you wonder why you ever found it meaningful. And the video does rob "the kiss" of its significance somewhat. Why do strange monkey creatures think bumping orifices is so important? But I think, in the end, the kisses are saved from this fate of chilly defamiliarization. Since the kisses aren't acted (at least, not wholly), they are continually recharged with meaning.

I mean, most of the people - and especially the women - seem embarrassed to show their love. I don't think it's because they are being coy; instead, I think it's because they are aware of how such a show can totally ruin the emotion they actually feel when they kiss "for real". Kissing is such an important cement in a relationship that becoming aware of its importance - especially when someone else is saying it is important enough to film - threatens to destroy it. That many people in the video - and once again, particularly the women - laugh at their own romantic gestures only underlines this fact. The participants want to pretend that their kiss isn't important because the importance of the gesture is too enormous to contemplate comfortably. "I'm not really kissing you seriously because I can't let this kiss stand for everything I feel about you." This tender embarrassment, this simultaneous expression of love and the terror of its loss is awesome to watch.

I Put On My Swan Dress

Well, after some gentle encouragement from a certain someone, I've decided to add my voice to the growing chorus of OeuvreBlogs (and not OuvreBlogs - I don't know why it keeps getting spelled like that). It is, like all good writing projects, mainly for myself, but I am going to try to make it as rigorously outward-looking as possible. I like the idea of a fairly rigid structure that I have to break in, and an OeuvreBlog is both a huge project and a very manageable one. I think it will be exciting and weird, and I hope others enjoy it, too.

I chose Bjork for my OeuvreBlog because she is one of the few artists whose catalogue I not only know well, but have a strong emotional connection with. Bjork's "first" album (the quotation marks are there for the purists) came out when I was fifteen, so I've been there since the beginning, and I have followed her career up until the present day. Her work has shaped and influenced the way I think about music and my life. Thus, exploring her work will help me reflect on why music is important to me, and I hope, for people in general.

I am also not an apologist for Bjork. She's made some bad choices, and some boring ones. I don't think I need to gloss over those. There will be sections of Vespertine where I will have nothing to say, and I'll point that out. But that's the fun of a project like this: tossing darts, as well as bouquets.

As for what will be included/not included: I have decided to concentrate on her "canonical" works. In other words, I'm writing about Debut, Post, Homogenic, Vespertine, Medulla and Volta. Bjork has a lot of "non-canonical" work and I want to cover some of it, but I decided I didn't want to do every goddamn song the woman has stuck her finger in. That would just be pointlessly stupid.

So, for the non-canon stuff: I will do at least some of Selmasongs (I haven't decided if I'll do all of them, but I probably will). I will also do two songs off of Drawing Restraint 9, "My Spine" from Telegram, "Generous Palmstroke," maybe one or two Sugarcubes songs, a live song or two, and whatever else strikes my fancy. I'm making up the rules, after all. I'm also thinking of doing a few surprises (hint for one of them: It'll knock you out). Anything to do with Bjork, after all, has to be a little fun and unexpected.

That's it! Ooo...except for this: 'pologies for the ultra-crappy format. I'm no design whiz, but my brother is. I'll see if he can whip me up something good. And! I'm going to sprinkle my posts with some remixes, extras, etc, if there's something I especially want to pass along.

Once again, I hope you find it as interesting as I do, and I look forward to any dismissive comments about how deeply wrong I am about tiny particulars.

On The Songs of Summer

So, there's the Summer Song. You know, that big, popular song that everyone knows, and is emitted from anything capable of producing noise - like radios, televisions, cellphones, friend's mouths, and, in the latter stages of the affliction, from lawn mowers, ocean waves and that buzzing in your ears when you are trying to fall asleep. Even more frightening, it almost seems - despite the fact that it has no relation to your personal life and the fact that the song was written several months before the summer - that the song more deeply expresses how you felt that summer than any actual personal reminders you have from that period.

Last year, Stereogum quoted the NY Post and their assessment of what would be the summer jam of 2006. A nameless Tower Records marketing wonk (poor jobless sap!) gave his assessment:

"A summer hit has to have a unique upfront hook, a great beat, and it has to sound great in a car," says Jim Kaminski, who works in marketing at Tower Records. "You'll find yourself singing along even if you hate it."

I think this is a good start, but there's more to it than just that. So, here's my take on the issue: the following are a list of attributes a good Song of the Summer will maximize. I don't consider pre-2000 Summer Songs - I think the criteria has actually changed since then.

Criteria



1. Be Irritating. "My Humps" is the best Summer Song that was not released in the summer. "Sexyback" is a very irritating song; "Hot in Herre", "Lean Back", "Hollaback Girl", "In Da Club": they all do their best to be as irritatingly in your face as possible. There are some songs that are popular in the summer and that are not irritating, but they rarely feel associated with the particular summer they were popular. "Crazy In Love" was topping the charts in the middle of July 2003, but I had to doublecheck to see if it was actually released in the summer; "In Da Club" had already peaked on the charts at that point, but I remember its omnipresence at clubs all long that summer. And irritability doesn't prevent a song from being good: "Hollaback Girl" is both an irritating song and a good song.

Irritation is not just a way to peak in the summer; it's a way to peak at any time (hence "My Humps"). People - like Mr Kaminski - think that irritation is an accidental byproduct of being popular. I think it actually helps make songs popular. Many people just assume that their deep, abiding annoyance is a critical reaction, a sign that the song is good. ("It must be good - why else am I thinking about it so much?") Even people with wider musical vistas get sucked in by their annoyance - how can you criticize a song that no one seems to esteem but that everyone has to talk about? In other words, when you throw your hands up in the air at a dance club to "Lean Back", it's more out of a collective hopelessness than any actual laissez-faire enjoyment.



2. A Song of the Summer is all about attitude. Summer Songs don't do well with emotion, or any particularly complex emotion beyond boredom or cynicism. Even sexuality or fun aren't required, and are somewhat distracting. The songs are usually about how great and sexy and important the singer is, which is probably why hip-hop has so many Summer Songs. "Bootylicious", "Sexyback", "Hollaback Girls": the attitude of the vocalist is what makes people enjoy the songs. In fact, when it's combined with the extremely irritating quality of the song's music, the song becomes a defiance of aesthetic standards. People play it as a way to carve out space for themselves and use the vocalist's attitude as a defense against any aesthetic attacks:

"I'm going to play this song loudly from my car's speakers as I drive down the strip because I have decided that I am onside with the singer's attitude. I know you don't like it, but that's part of the reason I like it, because, secretly, too, I despise the song. I want to be as resolutely defiant of other people's judgments as this song proclaims itself to be, and like the song, be as popular as the song because of (not despite) the song's obnoxiousness."



3. The song will either have very few "musical" qualities or will be resolutely backward-looking or retro. Consumers will be instantly able to understand the music (if there is any), or will feel comforted by the feeling that they have heard the song before. "LDN" was a big Summer Song last year, and although it was less irritating than many of the other previously mentioned Summer Songs, its retro signifiers and cynical attitude on the part of Lily Allen certainly boost its Summer Song attributes. (It is also, it should probably be mentioned, probably the most irritating song off of Alright, Still.) "Hollaback Girl" relies on nostalgic memories of school bands; "Sexyback" is an attempt to bring Electroclash, not sexy, back. The rest of the songs mentioned have barely any music to recall, and are pretty much just chants.

And this, it seems, is the key to a Summer Song. Summer Songs are about the release of emotion one feels in the summer - about our collective attempt to experience life to the fullest. People assume that this means that they are about fun, but it's not really that. It's more about maximizing loudness and stimulation into a state stripped of emotion so that we can fill it up with whatever emotions we are feeling at the time. That's why they seem to encapsulate our feelings for that summer. They are just everywhere, grabbing our attention when we are experiencing intense emotions. And since everyone wants to have intense emotions in the summer - to have that wonderful time that everyone feels they should have - Summer Songs get loaded with a collective emotional weight that similar songs released at other times of the year can't match. "My Humps" should have been a Summer Song, but since it wasn't, it was just irritating.

Phew! So, with our new criteria down, let's vet some 2007 songs for their Summer Song potential. Higher grades indicate a better Summer Song.

Teenagers - "Homecoming"



1. Its ability to irritate is mostly due to it's misogyny and the complete vacuity of the female singer. The music and melody are actually quite pleasant when they kick in properly. The band themselves are also highly irritating, simply due to their hipsterism. However, most people don't give a fuck about hipsters, and it's unlikely to ever be played on radio, due to the cuss words, thus reducing its ability to irritate people who don't like cuss words. Grade: C

2. This song reeks of attitude. You can't call a woman a cunt in a non-rap song without being either a jerk or ballsy about it. Scratch that: you are a just a jerk. Grade: A

3. This song is both retro and pretty much un-melodious. Grease is a huge OMG LOLZ love for a lot of hipsters, so anything that riffs on it can do well (cf "Jabuticaba" last year). And how much more unmusical can you get than verses that are simply spoken (and not rapped)? But that being said, there are a few pretty synthesizers and the chorus is actually nice, despite the "cunt"/"tits" issue. Grade: B-

Total Grade: B-
It'll be a Summer Song for a lot of hipsters; for everyone else, it will simply not exist.

Mickey Avalon - "Jane Fonda"



1. The song has already gotten a lot of hate from the Idolators - I'm not such a huge downer on the actual music, but I can see why it grates. It will also encourage "London Bridge"-style, "What the hell is a Jane Fonda?" questions, which I'm never fond of. If you are making up slang, at least make it cool. Grade: B-

2. The guy is obvs a big douche, and he has the standard douche blindness about his own douchiness. Grade: B+

3. The music is sort of retro, in that sex-obsessed-douche-from-LA-ripping-off-Beck sort of way. It also has surf guitar and a barely sung chorus, making it both super-retro and fairly unmelodic. Grade: B

Final Grade: B+
It will be played at college mixers and it will be popular for white people in general; everyone else will think it's actually Beck. In eight years, Mickey Avalon will be offered a permanent position hosting Entertainment Tonight.

Lil Mama - "Lip Gloss"



1. Incredibly irritating: Lil Mama raps in a squeaky, high-pitched voice; "lip gloss" and "popping" are repeatedly endlessly; the song is basically an ad for MAC and L'Oreal. Also, who the fuck cares about lip gloss this much? Is this such a big deal in high school? Is this like conspicuous consumption baby steps - today Lil Mama wants lip gloss, tomorrow she'll be sprawling on Louis Vuitton luggage or reclining in a Rolls? Sigh. I can't believe I've just written so many words about lip gloss. Grade: A

2. It takes a lot of attitude to rap about something as utterly pointless as lip gloss and turn it into your defining feature. I mean, lip gloss costs, what, $20? I guess this is the point - it's meant to be a universal sentiment that all consumers can buy into: with a $20 tube of lip gloss, I can be popular too! And when teenage girls buy that lip gloss and put it on and hum this song, thinking, of course, that their lip gloss is popping, this action reinforces their opinion that Lil Mama, by originating the sentiment, has even more justification for thinking her lip gloss is popping. The lip gloss both defines Lil Mama's attitude and magnifies it: crazy. Grade: A+

3. The song is basically "Hollaback" with less melody, which is a fairly amazing accomplishment. Lil Mama also has about a Ciara-level rapping ability - meaning that I could probably rap it at karaoke, and I failed miserably at "Ring the Alarm" the last time I went. Grade: A+

Final Grade: A+
We have a winner! After a million repetitions, Iran will declare war on Lil Mama in September. Order will have barely been restored when the largely indistinguishable Crazy Frog remix hits the stores a month later.

On Rock As Dance And Vice Versa

A friend of mine recently complained that "Young Folks" is dance music masquerading as rock. It's an odd (and fairly rockist) complaint, but I can see his point: he wants people to classify music not only by its superficial signifiers but by its spirit. And I would argue that most of what hipsters think of as "dance" is very atypical dance music: it's often more "rock"-like than "rock" itself. In the past, Simian Mobile Disco has appealed to hipsters, and I think it's because of the rock-like aspects of "Hustler" and "We Are Your Friends" (they used to be, after all, a rock band). In contrast, "Sleep Deprivation" from Simian Mobile Disco's upcoming album Attack Decay Sustain Release is full-throated dance music, and it highlights perfectly the transcendence that high genre work can achieve.

"Sleep Deprivation" is as economical and lacking in self-indulgence as a three minute pop song. It starts out slow - it's almost entirely percussion until the mid-point of the song - and then the hints of melody that had been hovering behind the beat are revealed in their powerful emotional clarity. For me, that melody - played on what sounds like chiming sheet metal - is a thrilling mixture of anxiety and hopefulness, sadness and sexual arousal. As it crescendos, all of these emotions unify into an ecstatic rush. I know people love their rock, but I can't imagine why you would deny yourself the purity and intensity of this emotion simply because of the track's instrumental nature and dance signifiers. That just seems silly.

My only problem with the song is that it's too short - it could easily be twice as long. And it definitely whets my appetite for the new album. Simian Mobile Disco: mission accomplished.

Simian Mobile Disco - "Sleep Deprivation"

Go to their website here. Attack Sustain Decay Release will hit the world on June 18th.

On Relistening to Hole's "Olympia" ("Rockstar")

About a year ago, I was at a party with a bunch of friends. Someone was DJing from his ipod, and the song selection went through a fairly standard hipster playlist: The Knife, M83, Spoon. And then Hole's "Olympia" came on. And suddenly, all conversation died as everyone began to sing along.

I hadn't discussed this song with many of my friends, so I was mildly surprised that we all knew the lyrics. "Olympia" wasn't a major single off Live Through This, and I remember that a lot of people were mildly annoyed at Hole at the height of their popularity, particularly after Kurt Cobain's death. When "Olympia" came on my brother's car radio about the time it came out, my sister passionately declared, "This isn't a song."

And it's true; it isn't. It's more of a fragmented, melodic scream. But it seemed to cut to the heart of teenagers at the time, in a way that even Nirvana found difficult to match. My friend's sister used to drive him nuts by playing the song over and over again. Every time it ended, she would skip her CD player to the beginning and start again. And the party showed that it wasn't just me or my friend's sister. It was most of my friends.

After all, we didn't just sing along, we screamed along. It was one of those moments when you realize a song captured a very specific and important emotion for your generation. The rage against high school and it's stultifying effect on suburban teens is almost perfectly encapsulated by the song.

Our singing (screaming) was also incredibly joyous. We had survived that period of pain, and screaming along to the song was a reflection on all we had won and achieved for ourselves. That helplessness that had powered our identification with Courtney singing "I went to school/In Olympia/and everyone's the same" no longer existed.



I've been thinking about the song lately because I've been relistening to Hole, and marveling at how well the songs have aged. Hole was often dismissed as a band riding on Senor Cobain's ratty coattails, but after fifteen years, the best of Hole is often more accessible and readily enjoyable than the majority of Nirvana. Yes, yes, Nirvana is usually more formally inventive, and the best of Nirvana is fairly unimpeachable, but Hole is usually better as pop. And I unashamedly love pop.

The other interesting thing about Hole is that it sounds like nothing else currently out there. There are bands out there that sound like early Bjork, or have been obviously listening to Mellow Gold, or are trying for the feel of Pavement. But no one really sounds like Hole, or more specifically, no one sounds like Courtney Love. We can narrow it down even further: no one sounds angry.

Sure, there's a lot of aggressive music out there. I'm constantly amazed by how the hipster community has embraced Justice. I generally find Justice more admirable than enjoyable (with the exception of "Phantom" and the song below), and much of it is just hard for me to listen to. And Justice is not alone. There's plenty of stuff that is just noise, or that turns noise into pop. But where's the anger? We have every other emotion imaginable: from wry humour to despair to joyousness. But why is no one angry? Sufjan Stevens is a Christian: where's his divine anger? Even someone like M.I.A., who should be angry with the colonial injustices she's rapping about, just sounds loudly bemused and self-absorbed (not that this doesn't prevent her from sounding amazing).

And teen music, which should generally be the angriest music around, seems more bratty than angry. I love Lily Allen and the new Avril album, but they are pretty much spoiled, somewhat self-aware princesses. The more boy-ish bands - like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance - seem to have taken the signifiers of angry musicians, but sing whinily and dramatically about their problems. I don't know if I'd want all the anger of the 90s to return, but it's perhaps self-limiting that very few current musicians are capable of marrying this very important emotion to pop music. Where's the anger, guys?

On A Different Note

Speaking of Justice, I love their new song "D.A.N.C.E." (although I think the "B.E.A.T." remix is even better). A Justice song you don't have to chase with a couple of Advils! How novel! And their Daft Punk influence is quite pronounced on this song, which is good, since Daft Punk no longer seems to know how to do Daft Punk any more. The song is one more indication that the baton of creative vitality in pop has definitely slipped out of the hand of the guitar players, and is now coursing around the other end of the track in the sweaty palms of some hot French/Australian clubber.

The video is smashing, too:



And if you want the "B.E.A.T." remix, go here.

On Beyonce's "Get Me Bodied"

Watching the video, you can almost hear Beyonce saying: "Fuck you Jennifer Hudson, the gays loved me first, and they'll love me best." Set in some imagined 60s musical, it hits dozens of visual references points: it has the star-is-born glamour of Funny Girl and the style of Gentleman Prefer Blondes, and even a hint of the playful inclusiveness of Hairspray. It's all artifice and good humour, and it even manages to sustain the enjoyability of the slightly too-long dancefloor instructions. But the video's gay vibe is perhaps most apparent in Beyonce herself. Beyonce is at the peak of her beauty, but her occasionally overly serious animal sensuality has been replaced by a slick and sculpted perfection. The final shot of B - and I'm not being mean here - almost looks like a drag queen. I don't think this is accidental. Smart female solo pop artists (cf Kylie) know that the gays a) have tastes very similar to thirteen year old girls, their main consuming demographic; however, gays are b) also willing and able to spend hundreds of dollars on front row seats for their next concert spectacular. This is a group that will also buy pointless deluxe editions of your CD as long as you remind them memorably enough. Said video helps remind these men of their first, and enduring love: Ms B herself.

And I have to say, the video is also kinda saddening, in that it makes you actually want to see a musical where it could have been one of the main set pieces - and I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like musicals. It would have been a musical about a black artist who succeeds in the 60s, rising up from the gutter, overcoming the prejudices of her time, and all because of her inexhaustible raw talent, beauty and charming mien. Dreamgirls was supposed to be a Supreme-tastic version of this narrative arc, except that it completely failed to produce a pop song worthy of comparison to the Supremes. Beyonce herself is perhaps not exactly at that level, but this song shows how close she is, and how far away her competition is. A relentlessly danceable song - it beats the shit out of any of the previous singles off B'Day in this respect - it somehow also manages to incorporate one of Beyonce's spine-tingling power passages at the bridge. This song is proof that everyone should know who B is. Now imagine that the rest of the musical could have been like this song: fun, glamourous, sexy. You would have left the theatre after the credits, the songs still ringing in your ears, the film's lighthearted emotions stirring deeper channels in you than you thought they would.

But of course, such a film doesn't exist. Depressing, isn't it?

On Patrick Wolf's "The Magic Position"

Watching Patrick Wolf makes me think: wouldn't it be wonderful to be a young gay man again? I mean, I'm not that old, but Patrick Wolf gives off a powerful stench of youth and snotty sexuality that I can only muster in fits and gasps. When he sang with Charlotte Church on her show, it felt like he was (literally) too big for the stage, and his awkwardness made him appear more naked, and therefore, a bigger sexual presence than Charlotte with all her make-up and cleavage. One's sexual aura is the thing that gets most damaged as you age, and it is upsetting to be reminded sometimes of how blindingly bright it once could be.

Of course, these sorts of wishful ideas - of being young and gay again - only last momentarily because, to paraphrase "Sound of Silver", being young and gay is not such a wonderful thing. For instance, like Patrick Wolf, you may give off all the indicators of being gay and still deny it in interviews. And I've already discussed this worrying trend of gay men who support homosexuality but refuse to apply it personally it to themselves, so I'll move on to more important issues, like the actual song.

The song! Some songs hit you at the right time in your life. This song, in contrast, is probably the exact opposite of what I feel right now, and yet, I can't deny its cheerful ability to remake my mood. Patrick Wolf's affinity for Kate Bush is pretty apparent, but what I like is that he is (at least on this song) willfully reinterpreting Bush as a singular source of joy, rather than as a source of angsty pretension, as he was liable to do on his previous album. Bush is joyous and funny and romantic in "the major key", but it gets lost because Bush herself was always dressing the moods in avant-garde clothing.

"The Magic Position" is pretty much just a scale with a lot of 4/4 percussion, and Patrick Wolf has ably shown in live performances that his voice cannot compare to Bush's. But Wolf immerses himself in the song's teenage enthusiasm, and sells it. Wolf isn't writing a "fun" song - a song that he feels slightly embarrassed about, like most adults feel about fun songs - he's deadly serious about having fun (notice how he barely smiles in the video!). If that means adding children's voices, bells, xylophones and stomps until the whole song is the percussive plonking of more and more instruments, than so be it. It's simple, sloppy and naive, and that's why I can believe it as a love song.

On Taking Motown's Advice

I saw Stranger Than Fiction last week. (Quick judgment: not as mannered as I worried it would be, and actually quite sweet and enjoyable, and in some respects, quite daring.) It was probably the exact right time for me to see the movie, because I could really connect with Harold Crick's quest to figure out whether his life is a comedy or a tragedy. It made me think of why I was thinking of N. so much.

It has obviously been difficult for me to make the break from N. I had basically fallen in love with him on first sight. When he rejected me, all the events in our relationship I had initially categorized as part of the we-will-eventually-be-together narrative no longer made sense. There is no real exit for the narrative of being rejected by the person you feel you were meant to be with, except for years of pining or a quick exit, neither of which appealed to me. My friends suggested other narratives: "It wasn't meant to be"; "He's not in the right head space"; "You weren't really in love with him." But all of these didn't fit.

I had been at the gym a few days prior, and I had heard a Supremes song, "You Can't Hurry Love." The emotion of the song didn't fit what I was feeling exactly, but it did seem to indicate the right direction in which to escape. Diana Ross always sounds collected when she sings, but her high-pitched voice has that wonderful keening edge that conveys all of the necessary pain. It feels like I feel: slightly hysterical, but also that I would never make a big show of it. And the lyrics are so wonderful! They are about how the only way to get through this dumb shit is by listening to the trite advice you get from your parents and friends. And I would add: the advice you get from pop songs.

Well, about a week ago, I got the necessary key to re-evaluate my relationship with N. I was reading Fluxblog and Matthew mentioned The Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On". Here's a video (with Diana Ross playing ping-pong!):



I won't go into details about why I think this song's lyrics are so apropos for my situation (I'll let you use your imagination), but let me say that every single one is pitch perfect. Or, at least, I can re-interpret my relationship with N., and use these lyrics as a guide. All of those events that I had previously interpreted as being part of the we-will-be-together-narrative can now be given a new meaning: he wasn't letting me go. However true or false they may be (I don't think I'll ever know what he truly felt for me), they give me the foundation for a new narrative, a post-N. narrative.

Of course it's not just the lyrics, or else we wouldn't give a fuck about pop music and Soundscan would track poetry sales. What makes it offer an argument that can beat anything my friends can throw at me is that the music is so perfect and full that the emotions behind it are given an inevitability my friends' hastily composed and personalized arguments can't offer. I mean, this is a song we've all heard thousands of times before - it's pretty much sonic wallpaper for 60's period films - and isn't it crazy that we've heard it thousands of times before? That that panicky guitar picking is considered so boring as to be generally unnoticed? That the complex interplay of horns, back-up vocals, piano, drums and tambourine sound so sonically held together it's hard to hear how often they change and alternate with one another? Like all perfect pop confections, it seems to have been born fully formed, and so when it speaks to us, it speaks with an authority that I have always found lacking in more overtly melancholic and "meaningful" songs.

Anyway, to solidify the narrative of this song in my mind, I sang the song in karaoke on Saturday. I am a mediocre singer - really, I'm overestimating my skill here - and I was blind with fear - I had to keep rocking back and forth to prevent my legs from shaking - but it felt good to have done it. By participating in the song, I could feel the song's message was now part of my narrative. And like Harold Crick (spoiler alert!), my narrative ends in comedy, not tragedy: I looked pretty damn funny croaking out a Supremes hit to a crowd of drunken strangers (the karaoke host even asked if I had "lost a bet"). I can't think of a better way for the story to end.

On Bloc Party's "The Prayer"

I know that it's sort of sad to like Bloc Party - when I saw them in concert in 2005, there was a definite MOR, modern rock vibe to the whole event - but the recent album has been hanging around long enough to encourage me to give them a second chance. And although the new songs are very hit and miss, I've begun to like "The Prayer":



Kele Okereke pretty much admits the song is about coke, but I think it also conveys an aspect of that homo-longing he seems to both want to rejoice in and not really talk about. Kele's interview reminds me of some of the admirable but confused younger gay men I know - vehement supporters of homosexuality; yet, at the same time, terribly conflicted about how it applies to them. This is particularly true of those young gay men who are religious and religiously committed to their families. Religion, despite its awful pronouncements against homosexuality, can seem like a much more unified and holistic approach to the modern world than the one offered by secular society. Kele mentions how racist and homophobic England, particularly non-London England, can be - my friend Susannah can vouch for England's racism, and I can vouch for its homophobia - and this feeling of exclusion is often made worse by official protestations that England is an Enlightened, post-religious society.

That's where the tension, for me, arises in this song. Because this song seems to be about how coming out is kinda like the high you get from coke: it makes you feel like the centre of attention - as if you are finally being confirmed as the protagonist of your own life. But it's also not as fulfilling as you expect it to be. You still have to live after coming out (or coming down), and compared to the certainties of religion, your new life is very uncertain and frightening and sometimes depressingly self-absorbed. The high is brilliant, but also a tad brittle.

This fact doesn't wear out the charm of that period of exhilarating, blinding self-confidence. When Kele sings "Tonight make me unstoppable ... I will dazzle, I will outshine them all" - in a vocal that refreshingly, does not attempt to be dazzling - the sentiment is very resonant with a lot of people, not just gay men. But it is obviously very resonant with gay men, who, after all, seem overly obsessed with pride. (So much so that I keep seeing movie posters for Pride and thinking it has some gay connection.) It is also a pungent irony for a song called "The Prayer," and one that is explicitly addressed to "Lord," since any show of vanity or pride in a Christian is a serious sin.

The tension is most apparent when Kele sings, "Is it so wrong to want rewarding?/To want more than is given to you?" As you come out - particularly when you are a gay man raised in a Christian environment - the question that reverberates, that impels you forward is this one. Or more explicitly: why is it so bad to want what I want? Or, better yet, why would God want me to suffer? The song captures that moment, that frightening anticipatory moment between asking God for help and then anxiously grasping what you want for yourself, because you know the answer will be "No." The song expresses this sentiment well because Kele is uncertain even as he rejoices, and unlike some of Bloc Party's other dourly over-thought-out songs, there is a bit of a mismatch between how loose and draggy Kele's verses are and the ultra-tight drumming. It's difficult to say you know better than God, and its a decision you should not unself-consciously revel in.

On Relistening to Rihanna's "SOS"

I know, it's old. But it's usually our return to something already discarded that reveals more than our first impressions of the old.

So, the first question with Rihanna is always, Is she more than a midriff and a pair of suspiciously large boobs? Her live performances have yet to settle the question, as she usually lip-syncs or sings with a really loud backing track. But I don't think this detracts from the song, which is powerfully fun, if fun can ever be thought of as so mechanical and ruthless. Rumour has it that Beyonce passed on the song, and that this means that "SOS" represents some important statement in the potentially imagined rivalry between Beyonce and Rihanna for Jay-Z's affections. Attention, ladies and gentlemen: in one corner we have Beyonce, the impassioned, soulful and uncontrollable beauty; in the other, Rihanna, the obedient fembot.

And that's all you (or maybe just I) can think about while watching the video. The video is pretty exciting, in that Rihanna's midriff is regularly exposed and she seems to be emitting light from her sternum and she's got some really great lighting highlighting her Indo-Irish-Guyanese heritage. But she is so willingly packaged, and packaged by such experts, that it's difficult to see anything of anything in her. And yet the package remains compelling, or at least loud and in your face. I can't imagine anything so unpassionate and serious-minded about sex being released before 2001, and I think it has something to do with our post-9/11 mindset. We used to feel guilt about enjoying the party that is Western Civilization, but 9/11 taught us (or, perhaps, compelled us) to enjoy the party, seriously. And we did and we have, but this song makes me think, that maybe, in 2007, the party is now running on fumes. The party is winding down and everyone's doing one last line of coke so they don't have to face the horrible comedown arriving with the sunrise.

Not to say that Western Civilization is going to collapse and that Rihanna's video presages it - how weird would that be? But I just wonder how much longer people will endure Rihanna dancing on a bed of lights while Iraqis die by the dozens every day. (Then again, perhaps they'll endure it forever.) I'm not getting mad at Rihanna here, or suggesting that pop be outlawed. I love pop and I love this song, however bizarre it may be. We shouldn't let guilt overwhelm our desire to have fun since merely getting upset is a very self-satisfied and very unhelpful way of dealing with the fact that Iraqis are being blown up.

But I think that my problem with this song and this video is that it seems utterly uninterested in talking about pleasure as if pleasure mattered. It seems to mime pleasure, which is not to say it isn't still pleasurable, but that it lacks the conviction of its protestations. It's a teeth-gritting pleasure, a meth-y pleasure, a pleasure that is simply and inescapably the fear of unpleasure. This song is, after all, basically a re-release of "Tainted Love", and the turgid homosexual (and AIDS-related) undercurrents of the song have all been excised, with nothing to replace them except for a healthy top-up of PG heterosexuality. In this video, a skinny Marc Almond in a short skirt ranting about a pre-adolescent girl is replaced by Rihanna furiously thrusting her pneumatic breasts as if a single moment of unsexualization will render her completely meaningless. Turning up the volume only works if we want to increase our pleasure, not if we've forgotten why we're partying in the first place.

So why are we partying? Why are we having fun? I don't think most people have an idea how to answer this question. I seem to know more and more people my age who are furiously working ridiculous hours in order to spend their occasional off-hours snorting coke and partying till five am. There is nothing terribly wrong about doing this - I am, after all, not against pleasure in the slightest - but why has it become a necessity rather than something we spontaneously and occasionally seek out? It is almost as if, because people are dying in Iraq, it becomes one's moral duty to live as hedonistically as possible: live life to the fullest in order to balance out the ones cut short. Or maybe, like Iraq, everyone's forgotten why we are running after this pleasure in the first place.

And perhaps this is why I think there is something sad about "SOS", despite its best efforts. Both the video and song achieve exactly what they set out to achieve, and yet its still not enough. We want to enjoy it, it has all the right enjoyable elements, we enjoy it while its happening, but like Diet Coke, it leaves a vacant aftertaste. What is that inescapable, missing element? In other words, who does Rihanna have to sleep with to get a song with such a real joyousness and bountiful sexuality like "Check On It"?

In Defence of Hipsterdom

I went to a hipster party on Friday night. It was a "purple" party - everyone was supposed to wear purple - so there were girls wearing purple tights and boys with purple handkerchiefs. It was held in someone's condo-loft, so the place had exposed brick and the bathroom was just a toilet and a shower, and there was a window frame with drapes suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the room to create a barrier between the living room and bedroom. And to get to the patio, you had to climb up increasingly smaller stairs that passed by a cozy work area with throw cushions and a Persian rug till you reached an Alice-in-Wonderland-sized door, and then you were out onto the roof and its spectacular view of the snow-covered train tracks.

My friend told me that they didn't pay for the condo themselves - their parents bought it for them - which, for me, was neither here nor there. But, I think, for some people, this would be the beginning of their rant. About how these privileged people were playing at being artists, dancing to hip-hop, drinking prosecco and whiskey in front of their framed Marcel Dzama prints. And isn't this odd? Although hipsters exist, no one who is a hipster seems interested in defending them. My friends and I were discussing hipsterdom over email a while back, and although several of my friends are clearly hipsters (like clearly), and some clearly aren't, no one wanted to admit that they were, and the general tone of the emails was vindictively harsh.

I think that the reason for this is because most of my friends fear the judgment of hipsters. One of my friends will phone me up before we go to a "cool" event, asking me what to wear. This question confuses me: obvs you just wear whatever you want. But the fear of judgment is palpable among some of my friends, and I've noticed that it's because they simultaneously (for some reason) a) care what hipsters think and b) think hipsters' judgment of them is unfair and unjustified. It's very high school, and I've often said that hipsters successfully have their revenge on high school's hierarchy by importing it into their 20s. But instead of demanding that bland good looks be the the factor that elevates you in the hierarchy, they emphasize style, and then they enforce this code on everyone else. But, of course, this code has no effect unless you care what hipsters' think, and it's one reason that hipsters don't visit the suburbs, because they know that the suburbs will judge them more powerfully than they can judge the suburbs.

And some of the hipster pretence is amusing. Like how three of the boys at the party were wearing white belts, and this fact made them look like they were related or part of a team. Hipsters generally believe they are seeing the world differently than other people, but of course the defining factor of hipsterdom is their easy-to-spot sameness. Boy with nerd glasses, tight jeans and scarf? Check! Girl with ... er, tight jeans, scarf and nerd glasses? Check! Admittedly, there is some variation, but the variation is always within narrow bounds.

The thing is, I think this fact - hipster's sameness while simultaneously "other" - gets played down. Hipsterdom is not about exclusion (although it is does define itself in opposition to the rest of the world), but about a need for a common language among arty types, particularly young arty types.

In the email exchange, my friends were suggesting that they preferred nerds to hipsters. Ignoring for the moment the close relationship between hipsters and nerds - most hipsters were nerds in high school - I suggested the difference between the two can be summed up in the way they talk about their obsessions. Nerds talk about their obsessions without any clue or consideration to whether you are interested in it. Hipsters are generally more social people, they talk about their interests ironically and generally make fun of them in order to make them more entertaining.

In fact, hipsters main interests are often the same things they were deeply ridiculed for in their youth, and by highlighting these interests and inviting criticisms they can shoot back, "I'm not so un-sophisticated to know that these interests are slightly cheesy, but then again, so are yours, and at least I know that mine are slightly cheesy, whereas you think yours are completely justified." This, therefore, not only makes their interests more entertaining, but helps them overcome the feeling of exclusion they felt in high school, because it suggests that everyone is excluded, only they are the ones who are aware of their exclusion. In other words, hipsters emphasize pretence in their fashion because it sets themselves apart from people who just assume that we buy the clothes we do because they look "nice."

And I think this is why hipsterdom is often the pupal stage for artists or people who are interested in art. Hipster clothing and conversations are very standardized, but that's why they are useful: it enables young artists to find each other, and to talk about art in a way that emphasizes community rather than the deeply personal effect it has on most people. This is why hipsters are often obsessed with lists and categories rather than feelings. It's hard to describe why anyone would like Marcel Dzama and burlesque and knitting and neon purple tights and The Decemberists and Russian prison tattooes and R. Kelly, but if two participants in a conversation do like these lists of things, then they can recognize they have similar feelings about the world, however poorly they've expressed that viewpoint directly. Hipsterdom is a shorthand for a varied and shifting view of North American culture.

Many of my friends say, "But why can't we just talk about what we really care about, directly and unironically?" But many of my friends are also very literate people. They can try to express the turmoil of emotions they feel about life in words, because that is their natural language. Most hipsters are visual artists or musicians. The fear and terror they feel about life they feel they can't express directly, so they have to just hint at it through their sense of style. And I can honestly say that most of my literate friends spend more time arguing about their favourite artists rather than talking about how they feel the same. Sometimes a greater literacy just produces a greater divide.

I think this goes back to the post I did about homosexuality and childlessness. Hipsterdom, for all of it's faults (it is largely a form of criticism for privileged white kids), is still a critique of the way the majority of North Americans live. Hipsters may be depressingly apolitical and mindlessly consumerist, but every social sub-group has awful shortcomings (hip-hop: needlessly violent; gay culture: obsessed with pleasure and physical perfection, etc). I think getting angry at hipsters probably indicates more of a fear that maybe, on some issues, they are actually right, rather than a genuine critique of what they are doing wrong.

With that comment, one final note. While I was at the party I noticed the numerous books the hipsters owned. I read a lot and I worked at bookstores for seven years, so I have a fair number of books; however, I have to admit they had more than me. And the books were good books - they had Walter Benjamin and Lorca and Dante. Now, it was clear that money had clearly outpaced reading ability: many of the books were untouched by human hands. And most avid readers buy whacks of crappy used books because they are looking for out of print titles and because they want to save money, and there were few, if any, used books. But the presence of books in someone's apartment is such a refreshing change for me that I could ignore the absurd clothes and the ironic hip-hop. Hipsters care about art, and whatever else their faults might be, that is a pretty strong plus.