Some great songs are like potato chips. Betcha can't eat just one of Lay's savory snack staple, and once is never enough when the iPod shuffle lands on certain favorite tunes. Standout musical moments, though, don't necessarily make you want to hit repeat. Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" are two of rock & roll's most iconic numbers, but after eight and nearly six minutes, respectively, does anybody really want to hear either one more time?
The key to ensuring that a great song demands repeat listening is not only making it catchy and high quality but keeping it short and sweet enough that it always sounds like it's ending way too soon.
"Nathan Jones" The Supremes If I had to live out my days with only one song by The Supremes on my iPod, it would be a 1971 Top 20 hit (and Top 5 UK hit) that came two years after Diana Ross left.
"More Than a Feeling" Boston The unprolific band's 1976 debut single contains what might be the best fade-out outro of the '70s, if not in the history of rock & roll. The song within the song may very well be the song itself.
"The Cutter" Echo and the Bunnymen Thirty-one years and a million listens later, I still have no idea what it's about, but every time Echo's first and biggest Top 10 UK hit (No. 8) gets to 3:34, and Ian McCulloch sounds like he's blowing up up and away on the other side of a wind tunnel, I know I'll soon be listening to it all over again.
"Dead" Pixies Two minutes and twenty-one seconds of infectious cacophony from 1989's Doolittle, Pixies crowning artistic and commercial achievement and one of the best albums of the decade, if not in the history of rock & roll.
"Angel" Belly I once spent an hour dancing around my apartment to this song after coming home from a club in New York City, and I still wasn't ready for the night, or the song, to end.
"Uh Oh" Jonny Polonsky I first listened to Polonsky's 1996 debut album, Hi My Name Is Jonny, because he reminded me of an ex-boyfriend. I kept listening to it because of the 10th and final track.
"Islands in the Sun" Weezer The perfect song to listen to on repeat while running along the boardwalk in Tel Aviv, or in Cape Town.
"Better Version of Me" (the unreleased versions) Fiona Apple So worthy of a second spin that the bootleg version of Apple's 2005 Extraordinary Machine contained two versions of it.
"I Love It" Icona Pop featuring Charli XCX More than a year after I heard it for the first time on an episode of Girls, the Swedish duo's international smash still sounds so fresh, like it was just released yesterday.
"Applause" Lady Gaga So good (still) that it almost makes me sad that for the moment, Gaga's moment has apparently passed.
Last year one of them, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, chose for its Best Picture, a film directed by a man whom the members didn't see fit to honor with so much as a Best Director nomination. I suppose that Argo, a film that scored a Best Supporting Actor nod for Alan Arkin among its seven total nominations and three wins, made itself. Ben Affleck didn't have a thing to do with it.
Not to be outdone, this year the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which is set to hand out the 56th annual GRAMMY Awards on Sunday, January 26, wants to tell me that a 17-year-old newcomer whose breakthrough single netted her Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance nominations to go with her Best Pop Vocal Album nod (for her debut, Pure Heroine) doesn't rank as of its five Best New Artists?
Nothing against the five Best New Artist GRAMMY nominees -- James Blake, Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Kacey Musgraves and Ed Sheeran -- all of whom are talented, credible contenders, but Lorde really should demand a recount. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis aside, no one who made the cut had a 2013 single that was anywhere near as huge as Lorde's "Royals," which spent nine weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100.
But it's not just about chart rankings. Lorde, a Kiwi who has put New Zealand on the pop map for the first time since Crowded House's Neil Finn (I know, Kimbra -- but "Someone That I Used to Know" was really all about Gotye) and arguably New Zealand's biggest female musical export since Kiri Ti Kanawa, is a true pop rarity: a teenager making quality, sophisticated music that she'll still be able to be proud of in 10 years.
Straddling the mainstream and the cutting edge while wading in electronic, hip-hop and trip-hop waters, Pure Heroine is just as much of a pop anomaly: a critically acclaimed commercial success that's worthy of its four-star accolades. Sometimes I could swear I hear a touch of Fiona Apple in her voice, which only makes me love her more.
Even better than Pure Heroine: The Love ClubEP, which was released last March and is more alterna-pop ("Million Dollar Bills," not to be confused with Whitney Houston's "Million Dollar Bill," sounds like Bow Wow Wow without the Burundi drums), less Lana Del Rey than its full-length follow-up
Despite her chart success (this week, "Team" becomes her second Top 10 hit on Billboard's Hot 100) and critical plaudits, I'd dare say that Lorde hasn't gotten enough credit. She's a teen pop star who manages to sound at once youthfully naive and preternaturally seasoned. She can appeal to the masses without having to flash so much as a naked shoulder. Sex sells, but not for her. She doesn't have to twerk or swing nude on a wrecking ball to be noticed. Her music stands on its own, spare but fully clothed.
The GRAMMY voters obviously appreciated her enough to nominate her for four major awards. Did they forget to shortlist her for Best New Artist because she sounds like an accomplished veteran who's been making music for years? I'd like to say yes, but considering that at least one past Best New Artist winner -- 2001's Shelby Lynne -- was 32 years old, a decade into her recording career and on her sixth studio album when she took the prize, the Academy is not above giving this particular award to accomplished veterans who have been making music for years. It's just another one of those GRAMMY mysteries, like one-hit wonder Starland Vocal Band's 1977 Best New Artist win over Boston and The Brothers Johnson or Milli Vanilli's 1990 triumph in the same category, that nobody can explain.
On the plus side, if Lorde wins Record of the Year, she'll be the second New Zealander in two years to do so. (Kimbra also shared Best Pop Duo/Group Performance with Gotye for "Someone That I Used to Know" last year.) But even if she has little chance of besting the stiff competition in any of her four categories on Sunday, she can already thank GRAMMY's egregious Best New Artist oversight that she'll never have to worry about being another Starland Vocal Band.
1. Where did this pretty young thing who calls herself Lorde (real name: Ella Yelich-O'Connor) come from? I must have blinked and totally missed the 16-year-old Kiwi newcomer's 11-week ascent to No. 3, where she sits for another week this week. It's hard to believe that she's half a decade younger than the likes of Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus (incidentally, at No. 1 for the second week with "Wrecking Ball"). The guys in One Direction have a few years on Lorde, but she already sounds way too old for them, which is a lot more than I can say for 23-year-old Taylor Swift.
But how does Lorde sound? Like a low-fat smoothie blend of Fiona Apple, Lana Del Rey and 19-era Adele, with a swirl of dark, hip hop-inflected rhythm to give her musical dissertation on suburban ennui some color and flava. The slurred, lumbering percussion on top (right up there in the mix, alongside Lorde's vocals) makes "Royals" sound like it's slowly creeping up on you. Beware: Once it catches you, its grip is tight. Give in.
2. The Swedish/Scandinavian pop invasion continues. What sets "Wake Me Up!" (No. 4) by Avicii apart from recent DJ/producer-driven hits and even from his fellow countrymen Swedish House Mafia's "Don't You Worry Child" (a song that snagged Top 10 status last year, before Icona Pop's "I Love It" continued Sweden's recent pop domination, which, sadly, still hasn't made Lykke Li's "I Follow Rivers," so ubiquitous in Europe, a similarly super-size smash in the English-speaking world), are its, um, levels of daring. It succeeds where "Levels," Avicii's previous international hit (and sadly, the source material for Flo Rida's dreadful "Good Feeling") didn't because you don't spend the entire song wondering where you've heard bits and pieces of it before. That's thanks, in part, to Aloe Blacc's distinctive vocals, but mostly it's for the way the song itself incorporates elements of folk, country and a bit of Irish jig into its musical mix, never lapsing into electronica cliche or becoming just any one thing.
3. Technically, "Holy Grail" (No. 6) is a Jay-Z song, and Justin Timberlake is the guest vocalist, but it sounds the other way around, particularly on the YouTube lyric-video version, which has logged nearly 8.5 million more views than the official video version. The confusion over what song is Timberlake's latest single (a mystery compounded by the release or "TKO," which debuts at No. 54, and the several Jay-Z-free versions of "Holy Grail" floating around YouTube) might be why "Take Back the Night," the first single from Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience: 2 of 2 (out today), couldn't get higher than No. 29.
The songs were released a mere two days apart in July, and since radio rarely embraces two simultaneous singles by the same headliner, one was probably destined to fail. Personally, I prefer "Holy Grail" to the color-by-numbers mirrorball pop of "Night," but "Grail" would have been better had Jay-Z sat it out entirely. That might have meant losing the clever lyrical props to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," but its not like it's as pivotal to the song as Billy Squier's "The Stroke" is to Eminem's "Berzerk" (No. 11).
4. Following in the chart-hopping footsteps of Sia Furler and Florence Welch after trying on their dancing shoes, Lana Del Rey is the latest avante-pop singer-songwriter to ride the glittery coattails of a DJ/producer into the Top 10 for the first time. My question is this: Why wasn't the original version of "Summertime Sadness" good enough music for the masses? I suppose I should give credit to Cedric Gervais for accomplishing the previously unthinkable with his "Summertime Sadness" remix (No. 9), on which he shares equal billing: He's made a Lana Del Rey song sound like everything else.
5. The duo known as Capital Cities is going to have quite the pop challenge stopping "Safe and Sound" (No. 10) from being its one hit wonder. The debut Capital Cities album, In a Tidal Wave of Mystery, thus far has climbed no higher than No. 66 on Billboard's Top 200 album chart, which indicates that the people who are loving the song probably have no idea who is singing it, nor do they particularly care. I suppose the odds for continued chart success are more in their favor than they are for the Top 20's other duo, Norwegian comedy team Ylvis, who are No. 13 in three weeks with "The Fox," whose viral-on-YouTube status makes me wonder why, when the entire world catches on to something at the same time, is it never very good?
6. This week's Top 20 is a hit list of extremes: On one side, we have nine headliners who are charting with their breakthrough hits (three of whom -- Avicii, Gervais and Zedd, at No. 18 with his former Top 10 "Clarity" -- are DJ/producers), and on the other, we have now-veteran hitmakers like Justin, Jay-Z and Eminem, along with, Lady Gaga (No. 8 with "Applause"), Britney Spears (debuting at No. 12 with "Work B**ch") and Katy Perry (No. 2 with "Roar" and debuting at No. 17 with "Dark Horse"). It's the most genre-hopping, genre-blurring and all-inclusive Top 20 I've seen/heard in as long as I can remember, with the exception of the exception of a straight-up soul diva.
Here's how far we haven't come, part 2: In May of 1997, when Meredith Brooks released her future No. 2 hit "Bitch," it was spelled out without asterisks on the cover, while 16 years and four months later, Spears sidesteps profanity -- and potential controversy -- with two. In the Spears vs. Perry showdown, I was totally prepping to root against Perry, just as I'd done a few weeks ago when it was Perry vs. Gaga. Then I heard the songs, and I didn't want "Dark Horse" to end. Now I'm actually kind of looking forward to the release of Perry's Prism on October 18. After treading too-familiar ground with "Roar," she steps slightly outside of her comfort zone on "Dark Horse," sliding into a Rated R Rihanna-style dirrty groove. It's the best thing she's done since "Hot and Cold" and her blackest song ever (I wonder how John Mayer's "white supremacist" penis reacted the first time he heard it), and unlike "Work B**ch," it's not all production no substance. I miss the dark minimalist grooves of Blackout Britney. I want that b**ch back.
7. Someone, preferably a decent stylist, really needs to have long talk with Justin Bieber (who debuts at No. 19 as a featured artist on Maejor Ali's Lolly," which also features Juicy J, the rapper also featured on Katy Perry's "Dark Horse"). Now that he's all of 19 years old, if he wants to be perceived as a grown up with street cred, what good are arm tattoos, hip-hop accessories and a guest rap (yes, Bieber raps, and he doesn't sound half bad), if he's going to wear a tank top that's a few sizes too big and makes him look like he's 19 going on 12?
The strange logic in his clumsiest line. It stayed emblazoned on my mind.
I borrowed that one from Morrissey because his own words (from Viva Hate's "Break Up the Family") perfectly encapsulate the way he makes me feel. I've been thinking about him a lot ever since a few days ago when my best friend Lori sent me an email asking for my favorite Smiths lyrics.
I have heaps of them, but as usual when someone asks me a musical question with so many answers, I couldn't think of any. So I sent her a blog post I wrote last year, on a day much unlike today, when it was gray both outside an in. The subject: 5 Songs (and Lyrics) by the Smiths That Describe Exactly How I Feel Today.
The truth is, I could write that post every day, using 5 different songs, and probably have enough material to see me through the end of 2013. Morrissey, more than any songwriter I can think of (the great, insightful Fiona Apple included!), has a knack for nailing my everyday emotions with a simple turn of phrase. If I ever meet him, we'll probably either love or loathe each other because we think so much alike.
He's a modern-day Shakespeare, a contemporary Oscar Wilde (my favorite writer, whom I discovered in 1988 after Morrissey quoted him in an interview), but his lyrical genius didn't end in 1987 when The Smiths did. Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr (Lennon, or McCartney, to Morrissey's McCartney, or Lennon) may have been the one to go on and have a U.S. Top 40 hit outside of The Smiths (as a member of Electronic -- also featuring New Order's Bernard Sumner and occasionally Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant -- with "Getting Away with It," which hit No. 38 in 1990), but Morrissey has had one of the most remarkable solo careers after leaving a legendary band in the history of rock & roll, all without ever scoring a hit U.S. single.
Without his partnership with Marr to inspire (or hinder) him lyrically, Morrissey solo relies less on gallows humor, resulting in more emotionally honest work with muted theatrics. It's not as instantly quotable as "She said, 'I know you, and you cannot sing,' I said, 'That's nothing, you should hear me play piano" (from "The Queen Is Dead"), but often equally compelling. Sure there have been rough spots, but had The Smiths lasted more than three years (1984 to 1987) as a recording ensemble, the band likely would have lived through creative stumbles far worse than "Paint a Vulgar Picture," an indictment of music-industry avarice from Strangeways, Here We Come that sounds like the clunky, clumsy rantings of a bitter, jilted pop star.
After the solo-career high of 1994's Vauxhall and I, 1995's Southpaw Grammar and 1997's Maladjusted were expendable, slightly tainting the solo proceedings, and then there was a seven year break before he came roaring back with 2004's You Are the Quarry. There's enough brilliance, though, in Morrissey's solo work to fill months of daily tributes to five songs that perfectly encapsulate the way I feel.
Today, I'll offer a random 12 and leave it at that.
"I'm so glad to grow older/To move away from those darker years/I'm in love for the first time/And I don't feel bad" -- "Break Up the Family" (His first solo coming-out song -- though Morrissey never has -- from 1998's Viva Hate.)
"But you were so different/You had to say no/When those empty fools/Tried to change you, and claim you/For the lair of their ordinary world" -- "The Ordinary Boys" (Non-conformity is hard work. His second coming-out song, also from Viva Hate.)
"God, come down/If you're really there/Well, you're the one who claims to care" -- "Yes, I Am Blind" (Self-awareness with a side of blasphemy, from 1990's Bona Drag.)
"God give me patience/Just no more conversation" -- "Our Frank" (Wanting to enjoy the silence, from 1991's Kill Uncle.)
"We hate it when our friends become successful" -- "We Hate It When Our Friends Become Successful (A song title that basically says it all, from 1992's Your Arsenal.)
"My love, wherever you are/Whatever you are/Don't lose faith/I know it's gonna happen someday/To you" -- "I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday" (A rare moment of unguarded optimism, from Your Arsenal.)
There's gonna be some trouble/A whole house will need re-building /And everyone I love in the house /Will recline on an analyst's couch quite soon" -- "Now My Heart Is Full" (from 1994's Vauxhall and I)
"I will creep into your thoughts like a bad debt that you can't pay/Take the easy way and give in/Yeah, and let me in" -- "The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get" (Crossing the not-so-fine line between persistence and stalking. His biggest U.S. hit -- No. 46 on the Hot 100 -- from Vauxhall and I.)
"Used to be a sweet boy/And I'm not to blame/But something went wrong/Something went wrong" -- "Used to Be a Sweet Boy" (Nature over nurture, from Vauxhall and I.)
"All of the rumours/Keeping me grounded/I never said, I never said that they were/Completely unfounded" -- "Speedway" (The last cut is the deepest, from Vauxhall and I.)
"So, close your eyes and think of someone you physically admire/And let me kiss you, let me kiss you" -- "Let Me Kiss You" (His typical self-deprecating wit, back in full force, from 2004's You Are the Quarry.)
"The youngest was the most loved/The youngest was the shielded/We kept him from the world's glare/And he turned into a killer" -- "The Youngest Was the Most Loved" (More nature over nurture, from 2006's Ringleader of the Tormentors.)
1. Mr Little Jeans Thank God for insomnia. Well, not really, but sometimes it does have its benefits. Had I been able to drift off into a deep slumber on Monday night, I might have missed Mr Little Jeans entirely. No, that's not a new fashion line, or a distant relative/descendant of Mr. Green Jeans -- and there's no period after "Mr" -- but rather, the musical alias of Monica Birkenes, a budding Norwegian singer-songwriter with tons of underground buzz and millions of YouTube views who is still below-the-radar enough not to have her own Wikipedia page.
After seeing the video for her latest single, "Oh Sailor" (not a cover of Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine single "O' Sailor"), in the wee small hours on Australian TV, I spent the next 60 or so minutes downloading as much of her music as I could find. Though she's hardly classifiable, her sound, dark and brooding with a heavy backbeat, is reminiscent of Lana Del Rey without the designer-gloomy posturing, more ethereal and less sadcore.
2. Purple mangosteen Arcade Fire isn't the only thing I've been busy overlooking. I don't know how I've managed to spend 16 non-consecutive months in Southeast Asia, and I'm only now getting around to experiencing the mangosteen fruit (no relation to mangoes or any Steen in the telephone directory), which is indigenous to the area and looks sort of like a cross between a plum and a smooth, over-sized walnut wearing a stemmed four-leaf clover hat. I had my first one yesterday, and I'm now officially hooked. I can't wait to start devouring my new stash of 16, which I just bought from my local supermarket for 40 baht (or $1.30).
Eating a mangosteen is not a neat experience. You've got to tear into the purple outer shell with your fingers and past the reddish rind to get to the pale edible stuff inside, using your tongue and lips to remove the sweet treat from its two-layer giftwrapping. After finishing off the 10 or so that came with the complimentary fruit basket that greeted me in my Bangkok apartment suite, it took several hand-washings to remove the purple stains from underneath the fingernail of my left thumb.
But like the very best messes, the pleasure of getting there is worth the extra clean-up time. Once you've sucked down the juicy interior to the seed (or two), it's pretty near impossible to resist another - and another. Purple, never one of my favorite colors, in hue or in fruit (I can live without plums and prunes, and I'll take white grapes over purple ones any day), has never looked or tasted so good. Now pardon me while I get ready to tongue another one.
The other night I was trying to explain to an Aussie the premise of a U.S. dating show called Excused. Trying to. I'm not convinced that he understood a word I was saying. Maybe I was too distracted by the fact that we were on a date, too, but if at first you don't succeed...
I'll try again.
At the beginning of the first round, two men or two women -- the "judges," for lack of a better reality-show term -- must choose from several suitors of the opposite sex. In video interviews, the suitors try to impress the judges into picking them. (Think the first round of the Cat Deeley-hosted The Voice rip-off The Choice, only without faded D-listers in the "judges" chairs.)
At the end of round 1, the judges pick two suitors, and the others are excused/slammed by a rather unappealing host named Iliza Schlesinger. Round two: Each judge goes out on a date with each suitor, after which the judges excuse one of the suitors, who is then subjected to another Schlesinger dis. And then there are three: two girls and a guy, or two guys and a girl.
Round three: The tables turn, and the last-remaining suitor goes out on a date with each judge, after which he or she gets to excuse one. In the final round, one man and one woman are left standing, separately, and they meet in the courtyard if they are interested in pursuing things further.
Game over -- or just beginning.
Got that?
The boring Bachelor-lite dates in each episode give the show a low-budget non-sheen that makes it seem like little more than a showcase for Schlesinger's disses and quips. Sample: "Congratulations, you guys. Now you can move on from phone sex to real sex." The show's tagline -- "Rejection has never been funnier" -- unfortunately says it all.
Only it's not as funny as Schlesinger thinks she is. I'd rather watch Frasier, or even Sabrina the Teenage Witch, the two U.S. sitcoms whose reruns preceded Excused at 6pm in Channel Eleven's late afternoon "Couch Time" line-up, but Excused has been good for one thing, if not laughter. While watching today's episode, I made a valuable but horrifying discovery, one which I'd previously thought only applied to fictional characters like Frasier and Niles Crane: Dating is really quite humiliating.
I suppose I sort of already knew this, but sometimes it's hard to clearly see certain truths about your own life while you're living it. Granted, dating shows are meant to entertain via humiliation, but in a way, Excused brings the reality dating show closer to real life. That's partly because of Schlesinger's commentary, which is intended to make the rejects feel as demeaned as we do in real life when a love interest doesn't call, but mostly it's because Excused presents wooing and rejecting as a two-way street in two parts, the way it often is in real life.
In the first part, one person does the wooing and the other gets to play it aloof and cool. He or she holds all the power. Then just when he or she thaws (as they're pulling into part 2), or dares to develop feelings, bam! The former wooer takes control of the power trip. How often in real life have we played hard to get, only to be excused when we finally give it up? Fiona Apple wrote an entire song -- "Dull Tool" from the This Is 40 soundtrack -- about it.
"You, you stuck around,
You stuck around,
You stuck around,
Until you got me
Then, then you dropped me"
In Excused, after both parties have had a chance to play wooed and potentially rejected (incidentally, sort of like the initial round of The Voice, whose second-season Australian edition is now airing), in a conclusion that's similar to the climax of Dating in the Dark, they must each wait to see whether the other person really wants them. In real life, that's the part where you wait for your phone to ring after you've let the person who's been pursuing you know that you dig him or her, too.
It's a two way street in two parts that I've traveled on too often in my own romantic life and one that looks even uglier in living color on TV than when I'm on it. While watching Dating in the Dark, I always had to look through my fingers while contestants discussed the pros and cons of pursuing their love interests. Sure that stuff goes on in the minds of the people we date in real life, but thankfully, we never have to actually see that thought process?
I've always known that love is just a game (thank you, Larry Gatlin and the Gatlin Brothers Band), one that like any good match, requires strategy and stealth. But dating is a game show, with winners, losers and way too much shameful humiliation. Occasionally, there's even an audience, especially for couples who like to do their dating not in the dark but in public. Personally, I prefer to do it at home, in front of the TV, where I can try to explain crap like Excused in private.
Though I'm not particularly keen on watching or playing, I prefer the dating game show when it's on TV. It's like a car wreck, or Jeopardy. If it's on, I can't not look. If only I didn't have to play anymore. It's so much easier to sit through when none of the contestants are me.
"You, you stuck around,
You stuck around,
You stuck around,
Until you got me
And then, and then, you dropped me"
-- from "Dull Tool" by Fiona Apple
Not too long ago, over the course of listening to "Dull Tool," Fiona Apple's This Is 40 soundtrack contribution, about a half-dozen times, I zeroed in on the lyrics at 0:47 and wondered, has Apple been dating an Argentine guy?
The type of dating behavior she sings about in "Dull Tool" is so Argentine, rampant among both gay and straight guys in Buenos Aires. People from outside of BA, including one from Salta whom I dated briefly in Bangkok last year, swear it isn't an Argentine thing but rather a porteño malady that doesn't exist beyond the Capital Federal city limits. I can't say for sure if that's so, but during the four and a half years I lived in Buenos Aires, I constantly found myself encountering guys who would pursue me with wild abandon only to seemingly lose interest when I offered them the slightest bit of encouragement.
They'd proceed to drop out of my life, then, in an annoying but somewhat gratifying twist, re-emerge unexpectedly at some point in the future. I can't tell you how many "Hola! Tanto Tiempo!" text and MSN messages I received in four and a half years from guys who had pursued me relentlessly, blown me off when I agreed to go out with them, and then disappeared for months. As I used to say to my friend Rob, "Argentine guys always come back!"
I thought I'd escaped that sort of head-scratching behavior when I left Buenos Aires behind two years ago, and for a while, I did. But something strange must have entered the water in Melbourne. Maybe it's the hot-and-cold summer weather that's making guys mimic it. If I had closed my eyes during and after some of my recent boy encounters (see Marty, who chased me for weeks only to spend a quarter of our date on the phone), I might have sworn I was back in BA.
My friend Marcus assures me that it's not so much Melburnian guys turning Argentine as it is a Gen Y thing. (That's what I get for continuing to date guys half my age!) They like to collect men for the ego boost and keep them stacked on a shelf for future use whenever their self-esteem needs a little lift. How lazy and unimaginative of them! Back in my Gen X day, we'd just find new ones to toy with.
I'm not sure if the Gen Y explanation would apply to the actions of Nicholas, the guy I met one Thursday night at the Peel, but I'm more than willing to entertain any other theories. I met him through his girlfriend, who was visiting Melbourne from London. Nicholas and I took a minute to bond, but once we did, we were pretty inseparable for at least an hour.
When I was gone, I was not forgotten. At 4am, he sent me the same text message twice: "It's Nicholas. You are very, very sexy."..."It's Nicholas. You are very, very sexy."
At 4.29, another: "Are you still at the Peel?"
At 4.30, yet another: "I really want to see you again."
I wouldn't read the 4.30 text until five hours later, along with a provocative one he'd sent in the interim. At 8.14, Nicholas had offered a headless shot of himself lying naked on his stomach in bed. I should have been turned off. Normally, I would have been. I've never been good with nudity (for reasons detailed here), and I generally prefer photos that highlight body parts above the waist.
But I was intrigued, and he had been an excellent kisser, so I responded, kicking off a sequence of back-and-forth text messages. He asked if I was on Facebook and added me as a friend. We decided to go out for dinner and drinks the following night. When he texted me later in the evening, just to see how I was doing, I thought, Well, maybe there's more to him than nice lips and a great ass. I didn't even mind that he was only 24.
I had spoken to myself too soon. When I texted him the following afternoon at 1 to make a firm plan for the evening, I expected to hear back from him within the half hour. By 5.30, he still hadn't responded. I decided I wouldn't play games and texted him again.
"So are we on or off tonight? I never heard back from you." I already knew the answer by this point, but I was determined to let the story play out.
About 15 minutes later, he resonded: "Some friends dropped by unexpectedly. I think I might have to take a rain check."
Ouch.
"How nice of you to tell me this so early. Don't worry about the rain check. I'll pass." Send. Delete -- from my phone, from Facebook, from my life.
If things with this Nicholas guy were going to begin so badly, I didn't even want to think about where they might have led. His blase response several hours later to my final text -- "Okay." -- minus any attempt at an apology, and another Facebook friend request two days later (?), told me I'd dodged a deadly bullet indeed.
The only "Dull Tool" I want in my life is the Fiona Apple song.
It hit me on Sunday evening, right at the moment that my friend introduced me to Lindsey Buckingham. Not "What an odd name for a fish!" (Nemo and The Incredible Mr. Limpet aside, I've never really understood the practice of naming fish.) Sure, that thought did cross my mind, but it was totally upstaged by another one: Is there a more underrated rock & roll multi-hyphenate than the singer-songwriter/producer/guitarist of Fleetwood Mac for whom my friend's fish is named?
When people think of Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks is generally the first bandmate who comes to mind, but Buckingham was just as much of an FM (as in Fleetwood Mac and FM radio) MVP in the '70s and '80s. More than any other member, his creative stamp dominated the group's '77 best-seller Rumours, as well as FM's three follow-ups (the 1979 masterpiece Tusk, 1982's Mirage and 1987's Tango in the Night). When he began a decade-long hiatus from the band in the late '80s, FM had to hire two new members to replace him, and his absence was all over the band's Buckingham-free 1990 album Behind the Mask.
Contemporary monsters of pop-rock never list him first when they rattle off the names of their greatest influences, but for decades now, the relatively unsung hero has been inspiring scores of younger acts (largely through his extensive contributions to Tusk, the weirdest follow-up to the biggest album ever ever, for which he received a bold-print "Special thanks from the band to Lindsey Buckingham" credit): R.E.M., the Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, the Jayhawks, Matthew Sweet and fun., among so many others. More recently, This Is 40 director Judd Apatow used three of his songs on the soundtrack of the recently released film, which was scored by Jon Brion, Fiona Apple's sometime producer who, along with Apple herself, probably owes a major artistic debt to Buckingham.
On the best of Buckingham, he masters the art of melody laced with madness (or of finding the tension inside the sweetness, as Terence Trent D'Arby would say). Often favorably compared to the Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson for his melodic gifts, he can both unsettle and soothe, sometimes within the same verse. This may not be the stuff that solo pop hits are made of (on his own, Buckingham has had only two Top 40 singles, including the 1981 Top 10 "Trouble"), but it's rock for the ages.
I've already written the praises of "Tusk," the Buckingham-penned first single from the Fleetwood Mac album of the same name (read all about it here), and "Holiday Road," his solo single from the 1983 film National Lampoon's Vacation (check it out once and twice), but here are 10 more reasons why Buckingham deserves to be a fish's namesake and so much more.
"Never Going Back Again" (Fleetwood Mac, from Rumours, 1977)
"Second Hand News" (from Rumours)
"Walk a Thin Line" (Fleetwood Mac, from Tusk, 1979)
"That's All for Everyone" (from Tusk)
"Trouble" (from Law and Order, 1981)
"Empire State" (Fleetwood Mac, from Mirage, 1982)
"Can't Go Back" (from Mirage)
"Slow Dancing" (from Go Insane, 1984)
"Big Love" (Fleetwood Mac, from Tango in the Night, 1987)
"Walls (Circus)" (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers featuring Lindsey Buckingham, from Songs and Music from "She's the One," 1996)
One Oscar snub last week that didn't surprise me at all was the Academy's lack of love for This Is 40. Although the Judd Apatow production (which was marketed as a sort of sequel to 2007's Knocked Up) has been a modest box-office success since its December 21 release, about half of the critical masses was unimpressed. I can understand why.
The movie starts off strongly with some sharp and witty observations about Viagra, erections (also a recurring theme in The Sessions, which I finally saw last night -- more on that in a future post), and sex as one enters the fifth decade, but it never quite gets on track to any specific destination. Overall, the dramedic proceedings are a bit of a mess, with no clear focus and no real plot. If I were to assign it an age, I'd give it a 25 because its aimlessness is so twentysomething.
That's not to say that it's nearly as exasperating as your average clueless 25 year old. It's intermittently funny and dead accurate in its perception of marriage and parenthood, its observation about aging rock idols who look like old women, and its categorization of the retro-'80s music taste of people of a certain age into two camps (some of us fondly remember the Pixies, others A-Ha's "Take on Me" -- no judging). It's also a nice, welcome respite from the usual sturm un drang of Oscar season movie-watching.
As with the bulk of the best of TV and movies in 2012, music is a highlight. There's so much great pop on the soundtrack (courtesy of, among others, the aforementioned Pixies and A-Ha, Nicki Minaj, Paul Simon and Walter Egan, singing his 1978 classic "Magnet and Steel"), and three greats -- Graham Parker, Ryan Adams and Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong -- pop up in the flesh. Such winning music for a film about a failed music executive!
As much as I enjoyed leads Leslie Mann (so relatable and rootable, like Elisabeth Shue's sweetly neurotic kid sister) and Paul Rudd (great hair!), and the non-singing supporting turns by lengendary character actors Albert Brooks and John Lithgow (playing deadbeat dads, parental failures for very different reasons) as well as Charlyne Yi and Melissa McCarthy (stick around for the closing credits for an extended remix of her performance), there's only one truly Oscar-caliber moment in the film. It's musical -- of course -- and it arrives just as Rudd's character takes off on a daredevil bike ride near the end.
If the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences can get more daring in some of its Grammy choices, why can't the Academy of Motional Picture Arts and Sciences return to its brief moment of edginess in the '00s when two rap songs, including one by Eminem, won Best Original Song Oscars? Last year, only two songs were deemed worthy of nominating (some competition), and although it's once again a five-song race in 2013, the category could use more edge and one killer song.
That's where Fiona Apple's "Dull Tool" should have come in. (I'm especially mad about the double entendre-ness of that title!) Maybe the aimlessness of This Is 40 caused the members of the Academy who vote for the musical categories to doze off before it got around to Fiona. Or perhaps "Dull Tool" was deemed unqualified because, although a significant portion of it was heard in the film, it wasn't used in its entirety -- but useless Oscar rules, especially ones that work against most made-for-movies tunes, were made to be overturned. And it's not as if actors never win Oscars for minuscule screen time.
In a perfect awards season in which Oscars actually went to people who deserved them, Apple would have an excellent shot at stopping Adele from adding "Oscar winner" to her bulging list of accolades for "Skyfall." But then This Is 40, not The Impossible.
This year's Grammy nominees were announced last Wednesday, and I've only just recovered from my yawning fit long enough to discuss them. Seriously, in keeping with my waning interest in all things Grammy-related in recent years, I forget all about the nominations on December 5 and didn't even bother to read about them until two days after they were revealed.
It's been years since I've watched a Grammy telecast in its entirety, partly because it's harder to do when you're living abroad, but mostly because a few highlights aside -- like Pink's acrobatic performance of "Glitter in the Air" at the 2010 ceremony, the best of recent years, they're no longer worth the effort. That said, I'm slightly tempted to watch on February 10 because Don Williams, one of my all-time favorite country singers, and Alison Krauss are nominated for Best Country Duo/Group Performance for "I Just Come Here for the Music." But who am I kidding? They don't have a snowball's chance in Nashville in June of beating Taylor Swift and The Civil Wars' "Safe & Sound." And no way is this minor category getting televised anyway.
Which will leave us with a night of fun. (nominated in six categories) that still won't be much fun. Here's why...
1. Album of the Year: Guys Only! What the testosterone overload is this? Not one single white (or black) female? The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences couldn't promote Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel..., one of the most rapturously reviewed albums of 2012 and a Top 10 hit that sold as much in its first week as Christina Aguilera's Lotus did, from the Best Alternative Music Album ghetto into the biggest Grammy category? At the very least, she would have had us wondering what nonsense she might have come up with for an acceptance speech in the unlikely event of a win.
4. LMFAO That the Academy could even list 2011's biggest inescapable joke, last year's PSY (also invited onstage in 2012 by Madonna, who wouldn't let a good publicity op pass her by), in the same category -- Best Pop Duo/Group Performance -- with Florence + the Machine, fun., Maroon 5 and Gotye featuring Kimbra -- makes me want to laugh my fucking ass off. If I were "Ho Hey" by The Lumineers, I'd demand a recount!
As the curtain starts to fall on another year, here's a question about years in general: Why don't more of them spawn great songs?
I'm not talking about years and the songs that belong to them. Despite pop's continued diminishing value and the still-inexplicable rise of "Call Me Maybe," 2012, like most years, did produce an abundance, if not quite an embarrassment, of riches, from pretty much everything on Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel to any given song on any given episode of Nashville to all the 2013 Song of the Year Grammy nominees not sung by Carly Rae Jepsen and fun. to The Lumineers' "Ho Hey," my personal pick for the year's best single -- this weekend.
Right now, though, I'm stuck on years and songs that use them in their titles, like, say, Eurythmics' "Sexcrime (Nineteen Eighty-Four)," named for and released in the last truly spectacular year in pop. Considering that we're now well past 2,000 years (and that's just after Christ!), why aren't there more decent songs about them?
Think about it. We've got songs for every day of the week: Morrissey's "Every Day Is Like Sunday," the Mama's and the Papa's' "Monday Monday," The Moody Blues' "Tuesday Afternoon," Tori Amos's "Wednesday," David Bowie's "Thursday's Child," The Cure's "Friday I'm in Love" and Bay City Rollers' "Saturday Night." And let's not forget Cherelle and Alexander O'Neal's "Saturday Love," the classic-pop standard "A Sunday Kind of Love," "A Month of Sundays" (actually, three of them!) by Don Henley and Vern Gosdin and the Church, Bangles' "Manic Monday," video costars Katy Perry's and Rebecca Black's odes to Friday -- "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" and "Friday," respectively -- and so many other tunes named after days of the week, including Stone Temple Pilots' "Days of the Week."
Months, too, have gotten their due in song: Barbara Dickson's "January February," Prince's "Sometimes It Snows in April," Bee Gees' "First of May," June Carter Cash, Drake's "July," Eric Clapton's August, Earth, Wind & Fire's "September," Pet Shop Boys' "My October Symphony," October Project, Wyclef Jean's "Gone till November," Morrissey's "November Spawned a Monster," David Gray "December," Collective Soul's "December," Taylor Swift's "Back to December" and the Decemberists.
"December" David Gray
But what about years? Being the supposed doomsday year, 2012 already has inspired a number of unnecessary tunes, but as a general rule, years are more likely to get name dropped in album and movie titles (like 1492:Conquest of Paradise, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2012 and One Million Years B.C., to name just a few of the latter). I suppose being that there are so many of them, one shouldn't expect each one to get a song.
Also, although they last longer, we don't form attachments to years the way we do to months and days. We celebrate the end of them with the biggest blowout of the, um, year, and go around talking about resolutions and fresh starts as if the next year is the only one that matters. Everyone has a favorite and a least favorite day of the week and a favorite/least favorite month. But as the years go by, how many of us stop and consider which ones were best and worst?
Actually, I have, though I can't say that enough of them have enough distinguishing features for me to give the four-plus decades I've lived through the best/worst treatment. My year of birth, 1969, stands out for the obvious reason. As for the other memorable ones, 1987 was the year in which I graduated from high school; 1991 was the year in which I graduated from college and moved to New York City; 1995 was old-school NYC's last hurrah and the year in which I really overdid the party-like-a-rock-star bit; 2006 was the year in which I left the United States; and 1978 and 1984 were just awesome years for music. The rest of them sort of blend together.
But not 2012. Frankly, I won't be sad to see it go. If the other years of my life were all distinctive enough to rank from great to worst, the last 12 months probably would be hovering somewhere just above rock bottom. At least I got to spend them in Melbourne and Bangkok, two of my favorite cities in the world.
And if said world doesn't end on Wednesday (oddly enough, the last day of the week for which I came up with a song title), I'll spend the rest of 2012 looking forward to putting it behind me on New Year's Eve and ringing in 2013 with a blank page (and resolutions, a fresh start and all those other January 1 cliches). But if whoever is in charge of music wherever I happen to be around midnight plays "2012 (It Ain't the End)" by Jay Sean featuring Nicki Minaj, I'm so calling it an early night.
