Three stupid songs

For a change I'm actually going to talk about pop music. More specifically my experience with three pop songs during my final year of university. This is probably a good way to generate some Web traffic, to write about things people actually search for e.g.
NEW UNRELEASED JUSTIN BIEBER BONUS TRACK!
THE SMITHS REFORM!
HARLEM SHAKE! GANGNAM STYLE!
NUDES
NUDES
NUDES

etc

For once you can sit back and relax knowing I'm not going to lecture you or force you to listen to 4 minutes of silence.

So most of 2008/9 was fairly standard music wise for me. I was buying lots of obscure glitch and noise music and borrowing hundreds of academic computer music CDs from the university library. But that all ground to a halt by March as a series of daunting deadlines loomed ominously on the horizon. I actively listened to less music and that which I did listen to was stuff I knew and was comfortable with. At that point I began to understand part of what it means to establish a musical comfort zone and start nestling into it. However, three rather banal pop songs had a striking impact on my emotional memory of that period. I love music so much but it's true I rarely truly connect with it on a raw emotional level. Somehow these three songs tied themselves inexorably to my guilt, fear and ultimate joy.

The first of these pop tunes quickly became my "guilt" song. Mainly through bad timing. Like all good men when faced with a difficult problem, I procrastinated. Rather than work on my impending coursework I decided to re-watch old series of Peep Show on 4oD. The adverts that preceded these shows invariably repeated and one that came up every time, without fail, had this as its soundtrack.

Madcon - Beggin' *

It was the guitar riff that got to me. Soft and melancholic but persistent and endlessly repeating. It's strict clock-like rhythm seemed to be counting out every second I was wasting. Selfishly streaming a brilliant sitcom rather than working on my final year Computing project. Useful time I would not get back. There is a similar sense of loss in the lyrics too. As is made evident by the title, the sense of loss is so great that the singer has been brought to his knees, looking for a lifeline, which I felt I probably needed too. Just put your loving hand out, baby... I think the advert was only about 50 seconds long but it had enough time to squeeze in this lyric which really hit the nail on the head in terms of loss and the crushing march of time.

Ridin high, when I was king
Played it hard and fast, cause I had everything
Walked away, won me
But easy come and easy go
And it would end

I couldn't hear that song, that riff without being reminded of the sheer amount of stuff that still needed to be done. It affected me so much that one year later, after everything had blown over, some acappella buskers managed to dredge up these feelings of pressure and guilt by singing this 4 Season's tune without the accusatory guitar line.

Just like that one guitar riff gnawed its way through my psyche another pop song of that year had a strong musical motif that in my current state I found chilling.

Lady Gaga - Just Dance

Oh God! It all comes flooding back when I hear that synth line. Seriously, I've talked about the primacy of pure sound before and there's something about the tone of that synth that's more depressing than anything I've ever heard. OK, such a response to the timbre of music is purely subjective but the picture doesn't get much rosier when we start to hear the lyrics. To me this song seems to speak of the horrible soulessness of modern club culture; the hideousness of substance abuse and the predatory nature of dancefloor dynamics  I mean look at these lyrics

Where are my keys? I lost my phone
Keep it cool, what's the name of this club?  
How'd I turn my shirt inside out?

Seriously, something really bad is going to happen to this poor woman! You're a broken, wasted mess and you're probably going to die soon... what else is there left to do but Just Dance. I can see her now, stumbling around, her dress drenched in sweat and booze, tears streaming down her face. The dancefloor is empty except for her convulsive movements. She's fine as long as she just dances... Surely whenever this song comes on all the jolly ravers lie down on the floor, curl up into the foetal position and start sobbing with existentialist angst at the pure meaninglessness of their lives. I imagine... I've never actually been in a club when this song came on.

But again maybe this was just because of how I felt at the time. It's probably speaking to my own inadequacies when trying to hold my own, the few times I did go out that year, in the clubs in Leeds. I couldn't comprehend the law of the club and so it became a fairly frightening place for me. Where Gaga sees revelling I see horror.

Perhaps the most telling evidence is from Gaga herself in a quote I found on Wikipedia:

 Everyone is looking for a song that really speaks to the joy in our souls and in our hearts and having a good time. It's just one of those records. It feels really good, and when you listen to it, it makes you feel good inside.

Fuck, really?! So either there's something wrong with me of with Gaga. But come one, who writes a happy song in C# minor!

Back to my main educationally based worries. Luckily for me there was a light at the end of the tunnel. In fact the light illuminated my tunnel and revealed it to be nothing more than a cosy living room with the lights turned off. Yes, my brain had inflated a first world problem into an end of the world scenario. Deadlines were met, good grades were received and in the end everything worked out fine. But that's what it is to be human sometimes. So where did I turn to celebrate getting past this stuff? An 80's Canadian one-hit wonder classic...

Men Without Hats - Safety Dance

To me this silly song is probably the greatest statement of pure joy that I've ever heard. It's pretty much the antithesis of what I found worrying about the Lady Gaga track. There's none of that tribal, verging on the rohypnol-y, club excess. Instead its a defiant cry to dance anyway we want to. To live anyway we want to. An ode to the child-like joy of being completely free.

And you can act real rude and totally removed

And I can act like an imbecile

I don't know how I came to this song but immediately I attached to its up-tempo nature my own feelings of achievement and victory. It was even better that the song could grant me leave of that which was weighing me down.

We can leave your friends behind

'Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance

Well they're no friends of mine

There we have it. In 2008/9 three stupid songs stuck in my mind more than anything else I discovered that year. Primarily due to the raw, human emotions they stirred up in me. For one of the few times in my post-adolescent life I actually experienced that strange link between music and moment. Something along the lines of the old cliché that falling in love suddenly causes all those slushy pop ballads to be deep and moving (which I've come to learn is bullshit by the way). I can understand how these feelings link to such strong nostalgia which causes people to stay entrenched in their musical comfort zones. (All music since the 60's/70's/80's/90's being shit, man!) Or why people would actually listen to pop music at all. After hearing those three songs, I can understand what it is to be human. But still... it's not for me.

* In a brilliant twist of fate I've just discovered, watching this music video for the first time, that it opens with the band playing Halo 3. This, of course, was my other great source of procrastination!