 |
| I'm kind of so NOT over her. |
Unlike the masses that sent "Royals" to No. 1 all around the world (including the U.S., where Lorde became the first solo Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper from New Zealand), I thought "Royals" was too white, too clean, to neat. It was like the bored princess trying to convince us that she's not really royalty. "Team," her second U.S. single, is dirtier, as tousled and unruly as Lorde's hair. It comes on like a juvenile delinquent dreaming of the straight and narrow but slurring and swerving in the most compelling fashion.
As for the rest of Lorde's full-length debut, Pure Heroine, it was the last great pop album of 2013. Sorry, Beyoncé. You can continue selling as many copies of your Friday-the-13th mid-December surprise as you like. I'm Team Lorde all the way.
My favorite "Team" line: "I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air. So there." (Take that, Miley Cyrus!) Lorde, me, too. And since we're on the subject, here's what else I'm kind of over today....
1) Selectively attentive waiters who ask me half a dozen times during the meal, always when my mouth is full, if I'm okay, then mysteriously disappear, never bothering to so much as glance in my direction, when I'm ready for the check.
2) The screen rotation function on smart phones. Does anyone actually use this?
3) Drivers, not pedestrians, having the right of way in Cape Town. So much for being rewarded for leaving a smaller carbon footprint.
4) Wooden chairs. Does anyone actually find them comfortable?
6) Hashtags. Nope, I still don't get it. Is the only point of communicating nowadays being "liked" and "favorited" and "retweeted" by as many total strangers as possible? Is life all about trending? Don't answer that.
7) All that spam email I get peddling Viagra and Cialis.
8) "Baby bump." The phrase, not the body part.
9) Loose change. Why does it seem like most foreign currencies are far more coin-based than U.S. money? I want to be richer but with emptier pockets.
10) "What you up to?" and "What you doing?" instead of "What are you up to?" and "What are you doing?" Am I living in a world of Joey Tribbianis almost a decade after Friends? Unless you're dropping the linking verb for creative reasons ("Where My Girls At" by 702), then just don't.
11) Not being able to have my cake and eat it, too. Whoever heard of decorative cake?
12) Getting into an engrossing dream only to have it interrupted by the urge to go to the bathroom. At least when nature calls during Revenge, I can pause the show and pick up where it left off once nature's call has been answered.
13) Being told how "amazing" and "ground-breaking" 12 Years a Slave was for showing us the full-extent evil of slavery, as if Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin J. Candle in Django Unchained didn't pit slaves against each other to the death, turning the plantation into a 19th-century Coliseum, as if TV miniseries like Roots and North and South never happened, as if we needed such an explicit, detailed and unrelenting rendering of one man's sadomasochism to get a point that had been made so many times before.
14) Bushy faces. I've yet to meet a man who looks better with a beard than he does without one.
15) Kelly Osbourne being called a "fashion icon." Even if having famous parents, being formerly on an MTV reality show, and losing a ton of weight qualifies you to be an expert on style, is anyone actually dying to get Kelly Osbourne's look?
16) Overthinking everything. Ignorance is not just bliss, it's a lot less exhausting, too.
17) Counting... counting coins, counting the 100-rand notes I use to pay my rent in cash, counting the flights of stairs when I walk up to my apartment on the 16th floor, counting the floors as I'm waiting for the elevator, counting the days until I move into my new apartment (five), counting, in general. So until my next list...
"I Start Counting" Dusty Springfield
No comments:
Post a Comment