.
I’ve come to look forward to DJ Earworm’s annual United State of Pop mashups, because they always introduce me to a couple of enjoyable songs or artists I’d otherwise miss, being as I was never very musical and have long since aged out of the target demographic. This year’s keyhole-into-the-lizard-brain discoveries, for me, were Scream & Shout (but when did you-know-who morph into Young Phyllis Diller?) and Can’t Hold Us…
Trouble, trouble, trouble! — welcome to the new age!… despite its opening, “Living the Fantasy (2013)” seems more upbeat than the last couple. Maybe we’ve accepted that all media have become permanently unstuck in time, so we’re each going to be our own Kilgore Trout. This is our moment!…
Did I miss the vast purity-patrol outrage over Radioactive‘s racist “blue-eyed virgins vanquish learing Hispanic cockfighters” mini-movie? Or did the “tattered care bear vs. evil muppet” thingie distract their millenial brains?
One of these days Katy Perry and Robin Thicke are gonna collaborate in public, and those of us who survive will remember it as the Kitsch Singularity, or Snigger-ularity…
Somewhere in the upcoming three- to five-year window, the newest Manic Pixie Dream Americana Artiste will pick out “We clawed, we chained, our hearts, in vain, never asking why… ” on her mandolin, and every tax-attorney hipster in the audience will have trouble not touching himself in public…
Does Pharrell Williams’ mother know what her son is doing for money? Cause I think he was raised better than that!
Now you all can explain to me, in the comments, exactly how I am doing it wrong — or what I have missed, here or elsewhere.
Punchy
My cousin’s g-friend named her Boxer “Tyson”. I find this stupid. It will be expected to bite earlobes, catch and raise pigeons, and cost about $300 million to live a good lifestyle. Not to mention, I can only imagine how messed up his face is…
Little Boots
we were talking about purity the other day.
much overrated.
srv
Was there no pop anthem to Snowden and Freedom this year?
Little Boots
and can we just say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SQAdwdTSTM
Anne Laurie
@srv: Jealous, much?
Yatsuno
@Anne Laurie: The Green Eyed Lady is indeed a cruel mistress.
Little Boots
needs more omnes.
Joey Maloney
It’s not modern pop, but here’s some awesome North African/Carribean/Latin inflected stuff recorded in Israel in the ’60s and ’70s: Mixtape: Sounds from the ‘other’ Israel 1967-1978
mdblanche
How the media would have covered Jesus’ birth
srv
@Anne Laurie: I’m just activating the bat signal for CS and mclaren.
Maybe Beyonce will cover this next year and Snowman can do a cameo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s_UjdsMoPk
Little Boots
or this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3iPP-tHdA
Corner Stone
BLAAARRRGHH!!
.
.
you rang?
Little Boots
@Corner Stone:
even better.
Little Boots
I like corner stone, but I love omnes.
Corner Stone
Sink don’t mind ridiculing him evening it sounds cruel, fool!
Corner Stone
@srv: Well, now I’m laying on the cold hard ground. TYVM.
Little Boots
@Corner Stone:
um, word salad. now post awesome, please.
srv
@Corner Stone: Well, so a Whiter Shade of Pale for Civil Libertarians, or?
It would seem to me the Snowman crowd doesn’t have a protest song to rally around.
I was out there with my “Hey, Hey, NSA! How many kids have you spied on today?” but that hasn’t caught on yet. Who is the Woody Guthrie of our time?
We need a modern version of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwcKwGS7OSQ
Little Boots
and you don’t need to wonder, you’re doing fine:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gpNqB4dnT4
Jewish Steel
Pope Francis complemented my Christmas tie but rolled his eyes when he did it. Fucker.
Corner Stone
@srv: Maybe we should invest in a mirror for this website?
Corner Stone
@Jewish Steel: Did he bring a nice handkerchief, or maybe a pair of cuff links to go with your tie?
srv
@Little Boots: Is that Flicker or Fisher in the tights?
srv
@Jewish Steel: And where is Sarah, I thought she did Christmas in Rome – which means hanging with the Cardinals of course.
What do we pay her for if not scoops on the basement Vatican raves?
Jewish Steel
@Corner Stone: Nope. Just Barabbas. The usual.
wasabi gasp
Eat fast, speak fast…desire peace fast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leM5gEV0tOM
Corner Stone
@Jewish Steel: Did he, at least, have a nice set of cuff links to complement your Christmas tie?
Otherwise, how gauche.
Jesus Christ. I just had the feeling of being Davis X. Machina making smug and back slapping commentary on a thread at LGM.
***shudders***
I repent my sins, O Lord! Please, pray forgive your wayward child!
srv
@Corner Stone: The democrats of yesterday are the fascists of today, it’s like a Mirror Mirror episode where you don’t know where your parity bit is.
max
Now you all can explain to me, in the comments, exactly how I am doing it wrong
I don’t think you are doing it wrong, I just don’t pay attention to ‘pop music’ (in the sense of Top 40/Bubblegum/Whatever) now. Of course, I never paid attention to pop music. There was a brief moment when AOR was popish (or pop was AOR?) in the 80’s that I remember, but what was listed as popular was always way different than what I was listening to. Or maybe I should say that I sometimes listened to bands that sold lots of record for time, although why that happened was a mystery. And then I listened to things that were never going to be popular.
OK, try this: if it’s in People, it’s a form of xenoathropology as far as I’m concerned. Far less sensible & comprehensible than what’s going on the Central African Republic (for example). On the other hand, if the goths or the punks are listening to it, I’ll probably like it, unlike… everyone I know. (I sorta dug the Bulgarian music I was listening to a couple months ago – it had fewer preservatives and artificial ingredients than the noises emitted by the VMAs.)
max
[‘So. Your answer.’]
Corner Stone
@srv: What I wouldn’t give for a modern day Darrell, today.
max
@srv: The democrats of yesterday are the fascists of today
So I take it then that the Democratic party is now taking the stance that the Bill of Rights is obsolete, that the United States should engage in preemptive war, torture is to be embraced, the war on terror will last forever, the United States is the ultimate power in a unipolar world and should thus seek perpetual war for perpetual peace, and also our jails are not full enough?
Those were the Bush administration positions, last I checked.
When did the Party embrace that constellation of positions, and why? And where is the platform statement saying that?
max
[‘Just wonderin’, because I’ve been hearing that echo all damn day, and I could have sworn the Democrats were down on that sort of thing.’]
Corner Stone
@max:
Hmmm….hmmmm…
Is this mecha snark?
srv
@Corner Stone: We are all Darrell now, dude.
@max:
Retro-active immunity. I’ll leave it to CS to cover the rest.
That’s what John “Courtesy Bombs” Cole called it.
You imagine there’s a party plank on rolling that back? Wonder why John Cole doesn’t fly?
Democrats aren’t going to empty any jails because their enlightened, it’s going to be because we can’t afford it anymore. What democrat is “weak on crime” now?
Mike in NC
Katy Perry and Robin Thicke would gladly agree to perform at the inauguration of President Rand Paul. Money talks and bullshit walks.
srv
@Mike in NC: Where is all this Katy hate coming from? She told her parents to GFT’s
Corner Stone
@srv: The extra beauty of that is our special friend Martin arguing *again* for state death from above.
Between making the compelling case that olds deserve “more but longer” with C-CPI, and deadly shit falling on people who aren’t Martin…not sure how he has time to inform himself on all of the other things he knows so much about.
Anoniminous
Screw pop music.
I’d rather listen to this or this or this.
PaulW
We live in an age where there are no death-metal mashups every year. :(
It’s either DJ Earworm or Pop Danthology making us listen to different versions of Miley Cyrus… and both of them mashing up too early because they missed Beyonce’s Stealth Album.
Hunter
My basic approach has always been “Well, it’s all music.”
As a reviewer (these days mostly for Sleeping Hedgehog.com — toot! toot! Check it out — I’m the Editor with a Capital E) and Epinions.com (as “rmthunter), I’ve covered everything from reconstructions of dinner music from the Periclean Age of Athens to stuff written about a year ago, all continents (except Antarctica — doesn’t seem to be any indigenous music from Antarctica), and a range of styles that make me dizzy sometimes. Fortunately, I like music, just as a Thing.
As for pop specifically — been listening to Moby a lot lately. He does interesting things. Nickelback, the band everyone loves to hate. (You may not like what they do, but they do it very well.) Linkin Park, whose latest album, Recharged, is a set of remixes of the previous album, Living Things — they really should have left well enough alone.
I don’t listen to the radio, which annoys me, or stream music very much, unless I happen across something that looks interesting. For the most part, I figure the music will find me.
Hunter
@Hunter: PS —
By the way, I’m a certified, card-carrying Old Fart.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@srv:
Really?
srv
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo):
Progressivism today is kicking the shit out of people and families for 25 years and then screaming victory by saying maybe you went a little too far.
Oh, so heroic:
When you stand with Ron and Rand and call yourself a hero, you might want to think twice about that.
Mino
NSA has been reduced to claiming it never spied for corporate advantage. Every other brick has been kicked out.
Paul in KY
Since it is the Festivus season:
I dislike the fact that when you see a youtube link, you never know what the link is about until after you click on it & arrive there. I wish they had a title in the link.
There, I feel better now…
srv
@Paul in KY: You should write an app for that