This post is kind of borne out of a discussion I was having with my sister, as well as some of the thoughts I’ve had myself about the music I listen to. The conclusion we draw is basically, popular music is totally heteronormative. This is not news to anyone who has ever thought about it I am sure, but we both find it extremely annoying.
I’m going to discuss this with particular reference to Arctic Monkeys, because I have a lot of music by them in my library and the issue particularly comes to my mind when I’m listening to them. To be fair, it’s not like any other artist I listen to is much better on this front1, but it is so glaring with Arctic Monkeys because they have song after song about heterosexual relationships — seemingly every single permutation of personalities you could imagine, from men who adore their lovers and feel totally lost without them (“505″, “Cornerstone”), to men who rape women and think it’s OK and she might even enjoy it (“Balaclava”).
And it’s like, clearly these songs are not all reflections of your own personal attitudes2. Clearly therefore, if you can invent these characters whose heads you get inside to write these songs, you could broaden your horizons and write about a man who was interested in men. But you don’t.
It and I don’t really have much of a history the way, say, “Armour for Liars” and I do… in fact I only got this album, Humbug, for the first time about a week ago. And it took a few listens before I really heard this song properly enough for me to understand its greatness, because it comes right after “Cornerstone”, which makes me crack up over how pathetic the main character of that song is1, and there are other songs that are more obviously creepy earlier in the album (“Dangerous Animals”), overshadowing this one until maybe the third or fourth listen. The song’s name didn’t really help its case either, because “Dance Little Liar” sounded (to me) like the song was going to be about some slutty girl at a club, which is a theme that does recur in Arctic Monkeys’ music (“Still Take You Home”) and I don’t really like it and I was not enthusiastic for yet another song about that theme. However, it isn’t, and when I looked at the lyrics cursorily and realised the titular “little liar” was male2, I gave the song a better listen.
And it is amazing.
The most amazing part of it isn’t even the words, or at least it’s not the words once you’ve read the words and understand the song’s meaning, but the music. The guitar! And drums! I was listening to this song on the train yesterday afternoon and I started crying when that part happened. To be fair, 90% of the reason I started crying was probably more a combination of having been awake for 28 straight hours and leaving the house to remain awake for at least another seven, and being utterly emotionally drained, but the fact that this song can be one-tenth of a reason to cry is pretty damn good, okay.
Firstly, all the people finding this blog by Googling things like “doesn’t matter we’re all fucked anyway” and “I hate myself birds of tokyo”, I sympathise but you’re freaking me out even more than the people who found this blog by looking up my international studies lecturer… before I even wrote about him. Birds of Tokyo are there to ease our pain, okay.
Anyway…
Despite my pessimism late on Saturday night, Australia might not be as fucked as initially thought. The independents are demonstrating a little more antipathy to the Coalition than I was expecting, and while they are still conservatives and Katter is a nutcase, it means Labor still has a chance and that’s important. The fact that all three of these independents care so strongly about telecommunications in the bush is something that bodes well for Labor too, because Labor has its NBN policy that the Liberals have promised to scrap… which, I can well imagine, would infuriate rural MPs. The Liberals’ idea of throwing $6bn at corporations to “encourage” them to develop broadband would likely only benefit the cities, where the profits lie. Whereas a government-mandated network with a clear focus on rural areas — despite the $44bn cost — is going to be more effective and more equitable to rural populations.
So that’s good.
Too bad they’re basically still stupid-ass conservative hacks. View full article »
There was an election today! Did you notice? It sucked. In short, the Coalition won, although it didn’t actually technically win and we technically have a hung parliament. This means shit though, because either side needs 76 seats to win. Current projections are that Labor will get 72 and the Coalition 73, although with one of the electorates on a knife-edge that could turn into Labor 71, Coalition 74. Then there’s the single Greens candidate and four independents — three stupid-ass conservative hacks, and some former spy who used to be a Young Liberal then defected to the Greens then defected to himself presumably and became an independent.
Basically, the stupid-ass conservative hacks are going to wrangle a deal with the Coalition and there’s our government — Tony Abbott and the stupid-ass conservative hack brigade. Basically the only good thing out of that entire mess is that Wilson Tuckey lost his seat, but that’s little good to the world because he lost it to the Nationals. I’ll still take it though, because Tuckey is that fucked.
If you know me at all you’ll know I loathed our Labor government and was CONSTANTLY, CONSTANTLY pissed off at the latest shit they tried to pull, but when it comes down to the line, when it comes down to red numbers v. blue, it’s going to be red every time. View full article »
“Armour for Liars”, off Birds of Tokyo’s second album Universes, is (in short) one of their most amazing songs ever. It does face some tough competition for this title I’d have to say, from “Like Rain” from Day One, from “Wild-Eyed Boy” and “An Ode to Death” from Universes, from… well, from basically half or more of their latest album Birds of Tokyo. It’d be tough for me to claim that “Armour for Liars” is my favourite song of theirs. And honestly, given how “In the Veins of Death Valley” and I bonded over that torturous document analysis for history, describing why Mussolini thought the twentieth century would be the century of fascism, I’m not sure I’m ready to make that claim.
However, “Armour for Liars” occupies a special place in my heart. It belongs where it does there because of what it’s about, what it represents — it’s an entire song about how the world is fucked and no one cares. For someone like me, who thinks that the world is fucked and who’s driven crazy by the apparent indifference of so many other people, the song really intersects with a huge part of my worldview.
