A friend of mine recently got a virus while trying to illegally download a song by Duffy. I immediately explained to her the two things that she had done wrong. First, she tried to download a song by Duffy. Strike one. But, perhaps more importantly, she tried to download just one song. For me, that is a cardinal sin.
One of the negative side effects of that majestic, life-changing gift from heaven called the iPod is that it is just as easy to listen to a single song as to an entire album. In fact, this weakness is prevalent in the entire digital music format. Why would you buy an album on iTunes when you can just pay for the couple songs that you like? Why download an entire album when you just want that one song you heard on the radio? Why listen to an album when you can use a smart playlist or the shuffle feature on most music playing software to skip to your favorite songs?
To me, listening to only one song out of an album is like only reading Chapter 8, “A Gift for the Darkness,” from “Lord of the Flies.” Don’t get me wrong, Chapter 8 is a phenomenal chapter. Jack forms his own tribe, the hunters kill a pig, Roger sharpens a stick at both ends and Simon has a trippy conversation with the head of a dead pig. And I’m sure that the most recent single from Gym Class Heroes is a great song, but pretending one song represents the entire work is absurd.
Allow me to illustrate. I’m sure that, by now, everyone has heard “Handlebars” by the Flobots. This ubiquitous alt rap-rock song only reached No. 3 on the U.S. modern rock charts, but No. 1 on my chart of most annoying, overplayed radio songs. Its bizarre lyrics listing the singer’s capabilities are only out-weirded by the violin and trumpet background. Heard by itself, it is an obnoxious, unnecessary reminder that nu-metal sucks, even when the metal is replaced by violins and trumpets.
However, heard in the context of the album, “Handlebars” takes on new meaning. Fight with Tools, the Flobots’s major label debut album, is an intensely political call to fight corporate and government corruption. Every song other than “Handlebars” has an explicit political message in its lyrics. At face value, “Handlebars” seems to be a dumbed-down single made for radio play, similar to Green Day’s “Time of Your Life.” But when you listen to “Handlebars” in the context of such an impassioned political message, certain phrases start to stick out. When you hear leadsinger Jonny 5 say “I’m proud to be an American,” “I can lead a nation with a microphone,” “My reach is global,” “I can guide a missile by satellite” and “I can end a planet in a holocaust” you start to understand that this song is not about his mastery of adolescent stunts, but the potential, both positive and negative, of our nation today. This song is a hopeful but nervous balance to the earlier songs condemning the current power structures.
Do yourself a favor. Listen to an entire album. If 11 of the 13 songs suck, maybe you should start listening to different music, because there are musicians out there making great albums. And whatever you do, don’t try to pirate any Duffy songs, because the Internet gods will punish you.
Prefer music taken out of context? E-mail Dale fragments of your arguments to dpmudt@wisc.edu.
