Tynan's Anger

SONGS OF THE DECADE #2

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

LCD Soundystem - Losing My Edge (2003)


In 2002, in the wake of 9/11, pundits were declaring irony dead. Assuming they were talking about Generation X, they were right on. The problem was that Generation Y didn't know anything else but irony, and by this decade's end the smartest people with the best education in their early, mid, and late 20s would be too burnt out to do anything but snark themselves to death.

At this crucial turning point in American culture came James Murphy, a Generation X music snob who somehow managed to survive the Culture Wars without losing his devotion to music. At 32, he released "Losing My Edge," a track that was so good that it even shut up his fellow survivors. In declaring the "Losing My Edge" the third best track of the decade's fist half, Rob Mitchum of Pitchfork Media, a site that at the time primarily consisted of Gen X writers, declared, "In fact, it's a bit ironic that Pitchfork has slotted 'Losing My Edge' /'Beat Connection' so high on this list, as our humble little site could easily have been considered part of the uber-serious tapestry towards which Murphy took his sardonic aim." Five years later, I would hope this decade's biggest musical tastemakers would want to take that statement back.

Pitchfork's audience, a group of primarily Gen Y music fans raised on the internet, which Pitchfork dominated in terms of music opining, was too scared to maintain the courage of their convictions. They took Pitchfork's word for it (or ranking for it). If you heard this song after "Yeah," "All My Friends," or "Daft Punk is Playing in My House," (easy to do in the Internet age, less easy to publicly admit), the song can be misinterpreted as a hipster rallying cry. If you didn't misinterpret it as a rallying cry, and took it seriously, it made you uncomfortable, and you listened to it less and less, except when afflicted with private generational malaise. This is admittedly an oversimplification, but it points the best and worst parts of this decade in pop music: more than ever, music culture was more based on innovation, sincerity and independence at the expense of accessibility and inclusiveness.

As that culture became more popular, it became easier to fake it. The definitive sardonic song of the past 20 years generation may have come a decade earlier, when Henry Rollins blew the cover of the coolest guy at the party with "Liar." In fact, "Losing My Edge" was intended as a warning call, telling a generation of cynics, who somehow thought High Fidelity was something to aspire to, that music doesn't have the answers, no matter how hard you try. You can try to burn out and not fade away all you want, but odds are you are not Kurt Cobain. You can throw out whatever record and instrument you want, but someone else will always pick it back up again and make you look like an idiot. Every critical publication, from Pitchfork to the Village Voice to Rolling Stone, latched on to this theme; almost none seemed to realize how lost it was on the new-found internet seekers.

The message of "Losing My Edge" has only gotten stronger in the past seven years, and Murphy proved himself to be smarter in 2002 than he thought, not to mention smarter than most of his adulators (even within the context of Intelligent Dance Music). And as the audience who discovered LCD Soundsystem in college discovers just what a big, scary world it actually is, the song will get more and more poignant, and more and more depressing.

In their end of decade assessment, Pitchfork had to ratchet up the cynicism in assessing "Losing My Edge" in order to deflect accusations of being hypocritical. At #2, the praise for "All My Friends" praises Murphy for his ability to overcome that same kind of cynicism (in Pfork's trademark backhanded manner of praise, Mitchum reintroducing this song's context as "Boy, good thing that's all changed, huh?".)

Yet the issues Murphy attacked in 2002 don't go away when you turn 30, whether or not you find it in you to reference Pink Floyd; in the wake of the counterculture, and therefore all of rock 'n' roll, they only got worse in world when coolness became an unending escalation against an invisible postmodern Boogeyman.

Murphy's been especially popular with the aging hipsters of rock criticism, rightfully, so, but for the wrong reasons. There's a huge gap between the standards of Baby Boomer rock critics who are skeptical of all irony and Generation X critics who see no other way, but that gap prevented Gen X'ers from fully appreciating their own sway. Young 'uns look for good music wherever it is to be found, and the internet levels the playing field, making music that sounds like Pet Sounds a click away from actual Pet Sounds. As big as the gap between the Baby Boomers and Generation X was, it's got nothing on the gap between Gens X and Y.

"Losing My Edge" may have started as an angsty decry of turning old to and being overtaken by kids who are idiots but actually kinda nice. It has since turned into something all previous pop music satires could never be, but what the Muses always intended: an enduring work of art that focuses on a running theme, one that doesn't go away with time. Murphy is less of a musician than Pete Townshend, and less of a songwriter than Bob Dylan. But "Losing My Edge" is "Won't Get Fooled Again" and "Like A Rolling Stone" all rolled into one. The song turns the very idea of a generation-defining song into a generation-defining problem.

The fact that there's just one swiped sample of music actually adds to the song's impact, bringing the punk innovation of attitude-above-all-else to pop in an unprecedented manner. No matter what comes of music from now on, this song will still be relevant when I'm on my deathbed, whether that be 10, 20, or 80 years from now.

Labels: 2000s, lcd soundsystem, lists, Losing My Edge, pop music, songs of the decade

SONGS OF THE DECADE #65

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

LCD Soundsystem - Get Innocuous! (2007)




In case the ad for Grand Theft Auto IV didn't already convince you, it is exceedingly difficult, despite your best intentions, to walk down the streets of New York City with "Get Innocuous!" blasting in your iTunes and not feel like the baddest motherfucker ever to strut in the city where strutting was born.

That obvious hyperbole is accounted for in the song's title, but more important is the quantum leap in maturity James Murphy showed on LCD Soundsystem's second LP. "Get Innocuous!" is one of the boldest opening tracks of any album this decade, and probably did more to cement Murphy's critical untouchability than any other track, more the "Yeah" Song, more than "Daft Punk," more than "All My Friends."

After being dance rock's chief sarcasm trader if the decade's first half, Murphy began 2007's Sound of Silver by bringing the Daft Punk kids back to the rock club. A tough, bulldozing song with distorted baritone vocals, "Get Innocuous" has more red meat rock with synths than almost any post-Pavement lo-fi guitar rocker, but overcomes any cynicism through pure raw power. "Get Innocuous!" may be as real as any synthetic rock song has ever gotten.

Labels: 2000s, get innocuous, lcd soundsystem, lists, pop music, songs of the decade

SONGS OF THE DECADE #77

Labels: 2000s, daft punk is playing in my house, lcd soundsystem, lists, pop music, songs of the decade