I have a tendency to take things too seriously. I think that's a prerequisite for being such a prick about something as fickle as music. I devolve existential prerogatives out of mundane pop lyrics and deconstruct melodies to be valued by their parts.
And boy oh boy does it get me into trouble. What is it about Destiny's Child's ""Say My Name"" that so perfectly summarizes the human condition of loneliness? In other words, what pretentious taboo can I ascribe to the song to forgive my dancing wildly to it at the Plaza Friday night?
The way I see it, there are two key differences between radio-friendly pop music people admit to liking and the kind of pop music you can't put on the stereo without getting smacked.
The first is easy: presentation. Destiny's Child weren't exactly nuns, but all their coordinated outfits those first few years were tailored to a mother's eye (literally—Beyoncé's mom drew them up). But even as their clothes got more revealing, they loosely fit the themes of their songs (camouflage for ""Survivor,"" etc.). The music remained the priority.
It runs deeper, too. So long as we're pretending to care about what the message in music is saying, we can easily delineate between a self-empowered riot on quest for the world to bend around you (remember the album Annie-mal?) and a weak-kneed admission that you desperately need acceptance (see: Miley Cyrus' ""Party In the U.S.A.""). Under some demented conception of higher-order morals, we conclude that Miley Cyrus is inadvertently stunting the individual development of our youth's individual spirits by showing insecurity in a foreign environment, while Annie is barking motivational truths steeped in self-empowered autonomy by showing power in vulnerable situations.
But I'm already losing traction. How is the lonely anxiety portrayed in ""Party in the U.S.A."" any less legitimate than the version I just championed in ""Say My Name""? Why is it that Beyoncé is able to cut her Boy Scouts uniform in half to appear at an awards show, but Miley Cyrus can't so much as throw on a tank-top without drawing ire? Remember, Destiny's Child were underage when they first made it big, too. The difference is: so were we.
It's easy for us to harp on the social consequences of the aesthetics of contemporary bubblegum pop because we're no longer its target audience. It doesn't necessarily appeal to us, nor should it.
Bubblegum pop is designed to appeal to an audience that accepts music as ephemeral and nothing more. It readily molds to whatever is of-the-moment, without regard for any future demands—which is another way of saying it's too concerned with immediate impact to focus on satisfying the kind of scrutiny a 700-word column demands.
If that sounds like nostalgia, you're absolutely right. We give passes to songs that had immediate appeal while we only had immediate concerns, yet we expect the genre to adapt to our mounting worries. Thus, it's probably just the product of latent jealousy that we project differences where there likely aren't any.
So there isn't anything innovative about the instrumental or narrative structure of ""Party in the USA,"" but when Lisa Loeb's similarly linear ""Stay"" comes on the jukebox, you can probably guess who's going to be singing along the loudest. And I'll be damned if the Cardigans' ""Lovefool"" isn't the sweetest pop song you've ever heard. We say we demand complexity and originality, but really what we're demanding is something basic that somehow hits us on a basic level.
We lose sight of what draws us to music in the first place, and instead of seeking things that draw us in, we focus on making excuses for what drives us away. Namely, hussy girls with obnoxious
personalities.
So there it is. I'm done making excuses. The lyrics are preposterous and I cringe every time I hear Miley Cyrus' squawk on the television—but ""Party In the U.S.A."" has one god-damn catchy hook.
