Lost in the Supermarket

When asked to write a blog for Stereo Subversion, my first impulse was to say no because said hypothetical blog (now an actual blog obviously) would be the worst non-pornographic, non-high school poetry thing to be spewed onto the innocent Internet in quite some time. Seriously, what interests me? Amy Winehouse is still a wreck. Good for her, I liked “Rehab” a whole bunch and still play it when I want to shake my posterior in a way that never manages to approach actual rhythm. So Justin Timberlake is acting now. Well, he’s been doing it for a while. Have people forgotten Model Behavior? I, for one, could never, based mostly on Maggie Lawson’s presence in said film. A Disney Channel classic, for sure. The music industry is in the toilet and the CD is tanking. People have been saying that a long time and many have said it better than I ever could. I mean, if I’m going to rag on a band for being a fifth-rate Cheap Trick (and there’s so many of these bands floating around that chances are you yourself are in one right now), why should I be a twenty-eighth rate talking head (or whatever the blogger equivalent of that is) “in the know” guy talking about the musical apocalypse?

So clearly, there’s many brick walls to run into with this whole “I’m going to be a blogger” thing, but my disgustingly large ego never allows me to say “no” to stuff like this. Still, not knowing the ropes of the blog world, I searched the earth for inspiration, a nugget of truth deserving of being blogged on a music site. Nothing came to me until I decided that I needed a can of chicken soup for dinner that night. Entering my local supermarket and allowing a “walk in, get it, walk out” trip extend into twenty minutes of flipping through miscellaneous magazines (so many ways to do crunches, but so little time…), the soundtrack of my shopping experience began to seep into my brain. Can you help me remember how to smile?/Make it somehow all seem worthwhile?

You know, no wonder the United States is a ridiculously depressed nation, given our relative affluence, civil rights, and soft drink varieties and such. You can’t shop for food without hearing a sad, sad song about runaway going nowhere, veering off into a chaotic existence much like a locomotive heading towards certain destruction. How about that other sad one where that chick wonders how she’s going to breathe without you if you ever go? I’m sure you’ve all heard that song about that guy who’s trying to save a decrepit relationship with an apathetic, cold heart of a woman on the weak basis that they both liked the same chick flick. No need to throw out any song titles or group names here because chances are we’ve all had these knowledges practically etched into our DNA.

I will say this the best I can: the most heartfelt of indie rock usually has nothing on the saddest of songs deemed safe enough for supermarket airplay. Lately, I’ve been listening to a slew of the sadcore classics (do people even use sadcore as a genre name anymore?): “Why Won’t You Stay?” by the American Music Club, “Colors and the Kids” by Cat Power, and quite a few songs by Low. Granted, these songs betray a lyrical prowess and perhaps a more poetic state of depression than can ever be found in most popular mainstream acts, but the sense of profound longing and eye-opening poetic sentiment expressed by these superior compositions is exactly their undoing. When songs become so depressingly beautiful that they’re uplifting, they cease to be depressing. A really depressing song must measure real depression in its ugliness. When I hear Chan Marshall sing “It’s so hard to go into the city cause you just wanna say ‘Hey, I love you’ to everybody,” I might be tempted to bawl my eyes out because it so beautifully describes a deeply shattered mental state that I think we’ve all been thrown into at least twice in our lives, if not far too often. When I hear LeAnn Rimes sing about how her life is now completely over now that her man took off, I’m tempted to crawl into that same hole she’s about to bury herself alive in.

Why? Why is one of the best compositions by one of the best song-writers of the last fifteen years somehow inferior to a piece of supposed Top 40 “drivel” that was primarily aimed at hormonal teen-age girls, uptight housewives, and contractors who don’t like heavy metal? The difference is depth. The narrator of Cat Power’s song (I hesitate to say Chan herself because who really knows) obviously has put a deep amount of thought into why she’s so depressed and thus we know that she’ll ultimately be alright because she’ll at least find some kind of truth. LeAnn, however, isn’t thinking about anything except where the nearest carbon monoxide filled room is. Her howls are that of someone trapped in a moment of unfathomably despair. Despair isn’t pretty; to the outsider, it looks rather pathetic. Ditto the narrator for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”: clearly, the guy is clutching at straws, but he’ll be damned if he’s not going to keep those straws in an icy death grip and maybe eventually walk in front of a bus.

Depression traps you and these people are trapped; the former stuck in Muzak keyboards, soft rock “slow dance” drums, and karoke ready “pop diva” vocals, while the latter depressing sentiment is further etched into a G-D-A chord progression (or is it a C?) and the most radio friendly (and deeply pathetic) chorus known to man. The narrators of these songs will always feel the way they do, always be included in the set lists of their creators, and always be piped through the speakers when I’m trying to decide between chicken noodle and Batman-shaped Spaghetti-O’s. It’s almost hellish; the same moment on repeat forever with no hope of growth. These aren’t sad thoughts; they’re bad memories they never quite go away. I’d rather relive a thousand sleepless nights when I pondered whether there was a God or not (decision: inconclusive) than an hour of that “I want to rip my lungs out and eat them” numbness I felt at my most pathetic of states.

Seriously, they should just start playing mambo and only mambo at these places. I’d like to be able to buy a can of food without considering bludgeoning myself with it.

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