Fun, An Accounting
I have a very irrational, minor, but lingering conviction that I will someday have to give an account to Claire of why fun.’s “We Are Young” was the Billboard #1 song at her birth (mine was “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which is altogether not too shabby for the time period).
Wikipedia quotes Rolling Stone in highlighting its “emo self-deprecation that leavens the bombast” as a positive, like, totally not ironically.
Have I blogged about this before? Have I blogged about my need for a search engine on my blog? Maybe this paragraph is my own emo self-deprecation.
I guess I thought about this because I once again have savored the whole (and a half again) of Peter Gabriel’s So, which I’m sure I have blogged about before. But this time I really keyed in on the vivacity of “Sledgehammer.” Wikipedia quotes Q magazine in characterizing it as an “un-danceable dance hit,” and it has to be one of the weirdest and definitely most-awarded 80’s era music videos. There’s an air of playfulness that is lost in current music like that fun. song. And it hasn’t been replaced by deep meaning or feeling, which is deeply a shame.
I know the dude has more jewelry and makeup than the backup girls, but look how much fun The Human League is having performing “Fascination.”
Here’s the fun. video, in which everyone looks miserable and the Windows Phone product placements are even more miserable.
Interestingly, maybe the most interestingly in all of this, is that if Claire had not come early, she would have had Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know”, which is probably the best pop song in recent memory and probably the near future, although still quite miserable in content and delivery. But it’s okay, because there’s something really there, especially coupled with its video.