Shut Up, Dude: This Week’s Best Comments

There's nothing more insufferable than a music snob, especially of a certain age. To offset this potential bias, I often find myself sticking up for performers whose music leaves my contemporaries cold. I try really hard to have an open mind, because if you look hard enough, you might find something there that clicks for you.

But for some reason: as the kids say: I just can't with Maroon 5. It's nothing personal, but I never got it, and I suspect that I never will.

But what do I know? It's 2023 and I'm still wearing the same hoodie from 2018. Go figure.

Perhaps a more interesting song would have been "Moves like Haggard"--a little tribute to Merle.

So, get ready for a big post/mini essay, because this is really the only place I can talk about it with other music geeks AND the funny thing is - there's actually a nonzero chance it's a song Tom might have to talk about this song in a few years. (I would be so ridiculously tickled if he had to, hahahahaha.)It might at least end up as one of the honorable mentions.

A new Beatles single dropped! Which is a weird and fun thing to be writing in 2023! I really want to talk about ‘Now and Then’, the ‘new’ (and final) Beatles song. I knew it was a Free as a Bird/Real Love type scenario....an old demo of John’s they had managed to spruce up and the surviving Beatles could add to. I was wondering why it was coming out now, although the story is kind of interesting. I actually wasn’t aware of this old demo, although I kind of feel like I should have been!The story behind it is kinda interesting, and I hadn't realized Paul had been talking about finishing it for years.

On one hand, there is a part of me that wants to be a little cynical about it. Is it a cash grab? Is it really ‘collaboration’ when we don’t really know what John would have wanted? Would he have wanted his half finished work out there? While I have no objection of using AI to filter out noise in a more optimal way, I think it does also start to lead to other questions about how appropriate it is to use a dead person’s likeness or voice, especially when AI IS used to do things like generate them. In this case all the surviving spouses/children were very much on board, and I think we do at least have some sense that John DID want this to be a song for Paul/the Beatles to work on, but still. It’s the kind of thing that can sometimes feel like scraping the barrel.

All that said…listening to it was an experience. I’m always glad to hear something new from my favorite band, even if it is just a demo or song that never got finished. And as it turns out, I really like the song! I’ve listened to it several times since then, and the melody has been taking up real estate in my head. It has a much more melancholy and wistful, mournful air than I was expecting. Fittingly enough, it’s about nostalgia and the passing of time and a lost loved one. It’s full of haunting minor chord movements and I love that shit. It’s definitely in line with a John Lennon melody.

And I have to say, I choked up just a little when John Lennon’s voice came in crystal clear. It was just a bit surreal to hear something NEW from him, knowing he’s long gone. And then to hear Paul singing along with him, his voice clearly aged in contrast to John’s eternally young one (well, middle aged one, I guess, haha). Especially when the lyric is ‘Now and then…I miss you’. It just hit me a lot harder than I was expecting it to.

I can’t help but feel that in some way, this was really more for Paul (and Ringo) than for anybody else. Especially after watching the little short film about it that Peter Jackson created, which I found really touching. Given how much Paul has wanted to get this done, I can’t help but wonder if it’s all part of his grieving process. Being able, one more time, to co-compose a song with his writing partner across time and space and the grave, and create one more collaboration with the band that clearly had meant so much to him, and to honor the ones that were no longer with him. There’s a lyric that is unfinished in the demo and Paul finishes it with ‘I will love you’, and I can’t help but think that’s his own message to his bandmate. Is it a true collaboration, with that Beatles alchemy? Probably not - we won’t ever know what the song could have been with the true back and forth of all 4 living members, and that reality hangs over the listening experience of the song. In a way, it’s part of it. But they did each get to add their touch.

A lot long lonely lonely lonely lonely lonely time

What is the point of sharing this quote with no context? Butler has written and published more words on Israel-Palestine than everyone writing on this website combined, and you are going to reduce her views (or that of "progressives" or "the Left") to a sentence fragment that came out of an impromptu interview almost 20 years ago? And fail to include her unequivocal condemnation and denunciation of Hamas since? Do better.

Meanwhile . . .

Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails is released. I gave the album a shout out on the Number 1s at this virtual time so i'll just repeat that Head like a Hole is a 10.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ao-Sahfy7Hg

I think in general it’s wrongheaded to look to artists and entertainers for political opinions. Though political ideas and currents can often be gleaned from the emotions, thoughts, and relationships expressed in great art, I find art that is explicitly political is often shallow and unilluminating. I think it comes down to art that allows you to think vs art that tells you what to think. I don’t understand the need to have artists and entertainers express ones political beliefs back at them.

Elvis was a musician.