After revival came a subtly different phase - the Revered 70s, a sense that the era was tremendously important, the key almost to understanding music, film, and politics ever since. If the main sentiment of the Reviled 70s had been shame, and the vibe of the Revived 70s had been fascination (disguised as irony or not), the idea of the Revered 70s is respect and consensus, the sense that the question of the 70s - culturally at least - has been settled: its achievements worth respectfully recounting but not anything to be argued over. (Politics is a different case).
The 70s won, just like the 60s won before it, and I guess maybe the 50s did once too. But this victory is the prelude to retirement - a gradual forgetting, a fossilisation of history to a few well-worn images and ideas as the richness of a period fades away and the lived texture becomes harder and harder to recover, and only a few archaeological souls care anyway.
We talk for a little while about this, the idea that a person in her position might choose to hold back as many details of her personal life as she could. That she spent the first five years of her career speaking her mind in public and being criticized for it. That many people who have sold far fewer records than she has might have figured out ways to be savvy and self-protecting around people who don’t necessarily have their best interests at heart.
“How would I be more savvy right now?” she asks. She’s genuinely perplexed. The failing light from the window outside is putting huge shadows around her huge eyes. Her hair is dyed red, and it’s brushing her shoulders. She’s wearing a camouflage green tank top and a long skirt and boots. And but for the fact that she looks like an adult now, and not a walking indictment of an industry that happily put a scantily dressed teenager on the cover of more magazines than she cares to remember, you could be talking to the same 19-year-old of all those years ago.
“Would I redirect the conversation? Or just talk about” — you can hear the disdainful quotation marks — “the ‘new track’ coming up? What do you do, except answer the questions honestly? What’s the point if you’re not going to? What’s the point of any of this?”
Ladies, imagine being a Vice writer. Just walking around everywhere with your entitlement and ennui and midlength penis all gently bouncing in step; wearing a male tank top or a waxed mustache or some shit. Imagine having an ironic, retro-sexist dudebro-voice and getting together with a couple of other white guys and some cocaine and making your not-at-all-different voices all sync up as tautly as your nihilistic senses of humor, then snuggling all up together (no homo!) in a big Bushwick loft of partially employed trust-fund kids while something noninformative is happening on the Internet. What a life. I guess there’s the whole “everyone in the world thinks I’m an asshole” thing to deal with, too, but let’s not split hairs here: Vice writers got it pretty fucking made.
Bethany Corentino’s simple pop music has of course been streamlined in the two years since her breakout Crazy For You, which should surprise and disappoint nobody aside from a few jangle purists. I’d argue the only significant fallout from ditching reverb is a highlighting of lyrical banalities, nowhere more so than on an opening track helpfully bundling every real estate agent’s lie about Southern California into one three-minute anthem. Yet elsewhere, even when her relationship messes aren’t particularly noteworthy, details flesh out cliches, like the flawed hope that sleeping on the floor might increase emotional attachment with her love interest or when she thinks her mom was right and then thinks her mom is a nag. So if “Dreaming My Life Away” seems the only musical/narrative departure from the debut, what with its fragmentary dream logic set alongside minor key vibraphone, Corentino’s pop instincts and warm vocals continually charm. “It’s no fun when I’m freaking out” remains the most profound moment here. But despite all the judgmental friends, the hastily spent advances, the gloomy resignation and the bleary-eyed confessions and the hopeful sweet confusion, life will definitely get better, and will also probably get harder.
Anthony Easton: Since country is about storytelling, let’s get the narrative correct before we note anything else. Aldean is sitting next to two wealthy passengers in first class. They are all flying from New York to Los Angeles, and somewhere in the air, over what may be Oklahoma, the two men do not understand how anyone can live there. Aldean responds with a litany of what is great about America. In that narrative, let us think about the contradictions. a) Aldean refuses to acknowledge the class components that allow him to sit in first class. b) Aldean thinks that he is closer to the ground than the air, though he is actually sitting in first class. Those are the two big ones, and the ones that I can say without editorializing. It seems to mean something that the farther away that he gets from the land — and I mean this physically, not metaphorically — the farther he gets away from the land, the farther he gets away from the narrative details that enlivened his early work. But this is not only an Aldean problem. One of the things that I have been worried about is the idea that the land has no connection whatsoever to ideas of class — that the observation of cliches so generic that they cannot be disagreed with is enough of a political statement that country music can no longer juxtapose the implications of small, detailed studies of people with small detailed studies of the psycho-geographic spaces they occupy. This juxtaposition is one of the gifts of the genre, and to lose it, for the refusal of self, and to think that refusal of safe will make you both rich and common, is an act of such naiveté that its deliberateness seems political. Aldean had this potential, this working class boy made good who never forgot where he came from, but his ideas become more general, and the work becomes more banal — and the diminishing returns of his singles outputs is clearly visible. It has become a way for him to play cowboy and get access to those first-class seats. (The 3 is because I still very much like his voice.) [3]
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Brad Shoup:Dolly Parton standing in front of the Gateway Arch: ”People think life in the flyover states is a lot of work. But it’s really one big vacation.” Dierks Bentley’s scalp peeking above a shit-ton of corn: “We’re tops in our field!” Matt Holliday pulling a child out of a well: “We really know how to get down.” Lee Ann Womack laying a coyote snare: “There are some real animals out here.” Nelly wrapping tarps over hay bales: “You know how we roll.” Willie Nelson driving a semi, popping greenies in a desperate effort to stay awake: “We love the nightlife!” Ron White fleeing a meth lab on a tip from his uncle: “We’re always cranking it up!” The Westboro Baptist church picketing the Kansas City Royals rebuilding a park playground: “You’ll always find a welcoming committee.” Jason Aldean putting a foreclosure sign on a sixth-generation farmhouse: “We’re always shutting it down. So check out the flyover states. We desperately need the revenue.” [3]
The formula included the vocal from a pop hit: like “Titanium” by David Guetta featuring Sia, or “Coming Home” by Diddy-Dirty Money featuring Skylar Grey, or Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain,” all heard multiple times on Saturday. That led to a four-on-the-floor beat, a distortion-edged bassline, keyboard chords syncopated one particular way, a quasi-classical keyboard interlude, a big drumroll crescendo back to four-on-the-floor and a synthesizer ditty on the way to the next pop hook. The D.J.’s slap the same smiley face on whatever track they start with.
Acts like Alesso, Cazzette (a duo wearing cassette-shaped masks) and Calvin Harris showcased themselves more as pop remixers than club D.J.’s. The D.J.’s do know one rock song: Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” toyed with by Junior Sanchez and later, shamelessly, exploited as a full-length singalong by the German D.J. ATB.
With brilliant smiles, polished funk and adenoidal close harmonies, the Bee Gees — Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb — were disco’s ambassadors to Middle America in the 1970s, embodying the peacocked look of the time in their open-chested leisure suits and gold medallions.
They sold well over 100 million albums and had six consecutive No. 1 singles from 1977 to 1979. They were also inextricably tied to the disco era’s defining movie, “Saturday Night Fever,” a showcase for their music that included the hit “Stayin’ Alive,” its propulsive beat in step with the strut of the film’s star, John Travolta.
But the group, whose first record came out in 1963, had a history that preceded its disco hits, starting with upbeat ditties inspired by the Everly Brothers and the Beatles, then with lachrymose ballads like “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.”
Barry, the oldest brother, was the dominant Bee Gee for most of the group’s existence. But the lead singer for many of the early hits was Robin, whose breaking voice, gaunt frame and gloomy eyes were well suited to convey adolescent fragility.
