Month / November 2016

by sweensryche

The Song of the Election (revised): “Give the People What They Want”

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Around 1 a.m. on election night, NBC News cut to the Javits Center, the glass-ceilinged site of the Clinton campaign’s planned celebration. And there amongst the throng of stunned supporters was Stevie Wonder, leaning against a railing, looking tired and perplexed. After so many hours wiping tears and swallowing bile, it was the appropriate capstone to my evening.

Four days earlier, I had written about how Wonder’s classic 1976 song “Pastime Paradise” was the only thing keeping my election stress at bay. An all-too-relevant warning about the dangers of nostalgia, delivered in the artist’s clarion call of a voice, it was the perfect delineation of America’s crisis. Would we be driven by fear, or by hope?

Well, more of us were driven by hope, but fear still won. More than 60 million Americans voted for a man whose entire platform fit on a hat. Donald Trump promised to bring back the steel industry, with no plan. He promised to fix the inner cities, with no plan. He claimed to love women more than anyone, even though we all heard his detailed plan for sexually assaulting them.

So forgive me if my new Song of the Election takes an especially bitter view of what we all value as humans. “Give the People What They Want” was written by Ray Davies as a commentary on “if it bleeds it leads” journalism. Over a huge arena rock riff, Davies posits that while our media gatekeepers are pretty scummy, it’s the audience that deserves most of the blame. Violence means ratings.

The more they get, the more they need 
And every time they get harder and harder to please

 

 

America loves a trainwreck. And after eight years of a president who valued calm, rational diplomacy in the face of rampant hate, we’re hungrier than ever. We haven’t gotten to rubberneck in forever.  So along comes Trump, promising to blow it all up, to drain the swamp, to grab our better angels by their pussies. His stanky middle finger of a campaign appealed to a nation that was tired of being governed. We wanted to be entertained, much like the Romans that Davies devotes his second verse to:

The Roman promoters really did things right
They needed a show that would clearly excite
The attendance was sparse so they put on a fight 
Threw the Christians to the lions, sold out every night

“Give the People What They Want” does not sound like a typical Kinks song – its rudimentary blues hook is produced to a sheen, combining the catchiness of The Ramones with the emptiness of Kiss. There’s a screaming bar band guitar solo right where you’d expect Van Halen to put one. In an inspired satirical move, Davies infused his cynicism into the music itself, giving mainstream audiences what it wanted in 1981.

There’s a level of pretentiousness to this approach. Not all arena rock is bad. Not all people who find violent stories entertaining are bad. But I can’t help but identify. The acidity of this song tastes a lot like the bile I was swallowing in those early hours on November 9. More than 60 million Americans would rather have Norman Rockwell come back from the dead and give every coal miner a hand job while yelling “All Lives Matter” than vote for a woman. Our country is still virulently sexist, and racist, and embarrassingly susceptible to con artists.

 

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I’m truly afraid that Trump will actually try to build the 1950s white nationalist theme park that he promised us. But my biggest fear is that most of us will cheer him on. That chaos truly is what the people want. As Davies points out in his final verse, this obsession is nothing new:

When Oswald shot Kennedy, he was insane 
But still we watch the re-runs again and again 
We all sit glued while the killer takes aim

There is an upside to this bleak picture. “Give the People What They Want,” and the 1981 album of the same name, is a hell of a lot of fun – irony be damned. Ray Davies translated his disdain for humanity into what was arguably the last truly excellent Kinks album. Four years of President Trump is guaranteed to inspire many such works of art. And we’re going to need them. The bond between songwriter and listener is about to get even stronger.

by sweensryche

The Song of the Election: “Pastime Paradise”

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In a recent poll by the American Psychological Association, more than half of Americans say the 2016 election “is a very or somewhat significant” source of stress in their lives. You can include me in that group. The prospect of a President Trump has terrified me to the point where I turn into Baby Jane Hudson when I read Politico – every time I think about something nice, they remind me of bad things.

The APA’s tips on how to deal with election stress? Consume less media. Avoid talking about it. Do volunteer work. Try to have a more “balanced perspective.” I know I’m not doing any of those things from now until Tuesday, so I’ve decided to find a song that makes me feel better, that I can play on a loop until the fate of the world is sealed.

This was hard. Election stress isn’t the kind of thing I want to minimize or push away. So I went on a search for clarity through song, looking for an easily digestible, non-partisan explanation of how in god’s name we got here. When I couldn’t find a song called “America Hates Women,” I turned to the album that tends to have the answers to most things – Stevie Wonder’s monumental 1976 double LP, Songs in the Key of Life.

“Pastime Paradise” has a spiritual quality that goes beyond mere political protest. Built almost entirely of synthesized strings and light percussion, it floats into your eardrums like a Ghost of Election Day Future, warning us of the dangers of nostalgia. The lyrics are full of foreboding, yet Wonder cuts through the mood with a voice so pure, you can see to the bottom.

They’ve been spending most their lives
Living in a pastime paradise
They’ve been wasting most their time
Glorifying days long gone behind

 

 

Wonder’s diagnosis of our country’s malady is 40 years old, but it rings true as ever: When we’re unhappy with the present, when the turmoil of our lives compounds with the turmoil on the news, it’s very tempting to retreat to our own private island of memory. A place where we can personally curate what to remember and what to ignore. A paradise where we are all-powerful. It’s when we see this paradise as truth that everything goes to hell.

On the bridge, Wonder lists the side effects of electing leaders who think it’s possible to not only live in the past, but to recreate a twisted and distorted past that only exists in the minds of one demographic. It’s a cheat sheet for the true meaning of “Make America Great Again”:

Dissipation
Race Relations
Consolation
Segregation
Dispensation
Isolation
Exploitation
Mutilation
Mutations
Miscreation
Confirmation to the evils of the world

This razor-sharp sociology lesson alone would make “Pastime Paradise” a candidate for the Song of the Election. But Stevie Wonder is not a pessimist. After showing us the path to darkness, he turns his face to the sun, dreaming about the good things that can happen when we look toward the future instead. Acclamation. Salvation. Stimulation. Peace. As the song nears its climax, and Christian and Hare Krishna choirs add even more gravitas to the melody, Wonder makes a plea. And it’s here, in this moment, where my stress turns to confidence.

Let’s start living our lives
Living for the future paradise

On November 8, we can reject the lie that America was better when it was controlled by white men.  And when the day is done, our country will speak two words out loud for the first time. Two words that prove we’re closer to a future paradise for all: Madam President.