Carrie Underwood: hate-monger? Artistically speaking, yes.
Justin Spees is a superb writer and budding social critic whose name you will one day attempt to drop at silly cocktail parties of the not-too-distant future. When that day finally arrives, you will likely be met with a number of puzzled, illiterate stares and the subject will be changed to something boring, like musical theater. If you’re lucky, though, there will be someone tremendously cool at the party and you will become friends.
What can you do to get in on the ground floor? Well, the guy writes for this vaguely NYU-related site called "NYU Local." It has lots of sections and they have a blog. You can check that out by locating your browser right here.
Anyhow, I recently read Spees’ article "The Miseducation of Katy Perry," a piece that I would call highly insightful if that wasn't now such a dead way to describe things accurately. Alternatively, it could be called Orwellian in its attempt to convey meaning and Christgau-ian (Christ-like?) for its paper-dry sense of humor. Either way, these statements are intended as sincere praise.
Now, this article of his got me thinking (tangentially) a bit about the subject of what Nick Cave calls the “hate song," a song of supposedly innocuous pop manufacture that’s actually–when one considers it thoroughly–highly offensive to humankind in its message. "I Kissed A Girl" and "Ur So Gay" may or may not be representatives of this reprehensible category. I honestly haven't given them as much of a chance as Spees seems to have done. As I understand his article, he's been able tease out a meaning to which most would be wholly oblivious.
But what, specifically, is a hate song? What's an example of one? Let's use a song that, by now, is relatively old and passé. I would pick something more current, but I simply don't spend much time keeping up with this sort of stuff. The song I would like to talk about right now is "Before He Cheats," a crossover country hit by American Idol Carrie Underwood. I've been hearing this song a great deal over the last year (I heard it today) and it's really starting to make me sick.
"Before He Cheats" is a hate song for one primary reason. It's completely materialist. For this reason, it conveys the impression that love and its surrounding passions are bound up in a sense of commodity. Here's its culprit chorus:
"And he don't know...
That I dug my key into the side of his
Pretty little souped up four wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seat
I took a Louisville slugger to both headlights
Slashed a hole in all four tires
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats"
Okay, we get the point, Carrie, you're pissed and you're going to make this dude pay. In cold, hard cash. The idea that someone would, in a fit of rage, do something similar to what she’s describing above is, of course, not unbelievable. In fact, and especially after someone goes and makes a hit song about this kind of behavior, this might even happen all the time. One huge problem with this song is that it's only about defacing personal property–it has nothing to do with natural human emotion. Another huge problem with this it is that it purveys a personal reaction to betrayal that is flagrantly irresponsible in a moral sense.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm pissed that she's busting up some guy's car. I'm saying that there's not a shred of dignity that can come of this act and that a more realistic song, a genuine love song, would zero in on the way human beings actually turn betrayal into any number of complex internal monstrosities. Let's put it this way: no one who has suffered a genuinely painful betrayal ever wrote an emotionally revealing or effectual song about what they did to the betrayer's car or TV or autographed baseball jersey. In it's own way, "Before He Cheats" makes a mockery of humanity. It belies the depth of human grief and the numbing quality of actual trauma. This is clearly acceptable in the modern marketplace. Is anyone as upset about this as I am? I’m not even a socialist, I swear!
“The Miseducation of Katy Perry” is available for your reading pleasure at the following link: http://nyulocal.com/entertainment/2008/11/10/the-miseducation-of-katy-perry/#more-4361
Read it, kids.
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