The Chainsmokers: "Closer"

Hey, I was doing just fine before I met you
I drink too much and that's an issue but I'm okay
Hey, you tell your friends it was nice to meet them
But I hope I never see them again

I know it breaks your heart
Moved to the city in a broke down car
And four years, no calls
Now you're looking pretty in a hotel bar
And I can't stop
No, I can't stop

So baby pull me closer in the backseat of your Rover
That I know you can't afford
Bite that tattoo on your shoulder
Pull the sheets right off the corner
Of the mattress that you stole
From your roommate back in Boulder
We ain't ever getting older

We ain't ever getting older
We ain't ever getting older

You look as good as the day I met you
I forget just why I left you, I was insane
Stay and play that Blink-182 song
That we beat to death in Tuscon, okay

I know it breaks your heart
Moved to the city in a broke down car
And four years, no call
Now I'm looking pretty in a hotel bar
And I can't stop
No, I can't stop

So baby pull me closer in the backseat of your Rover
That I know you can't afford
Bite that tattoo on your shoulder
Pull the sheets right off the corner
Of the mattress that you stole
From your roommate back in Boulder
We ain't ever getting older

We ain't ever getting older
We ain't ever getting older

So baby pull me closer in the backseat of your Rover
That I know you can't afford
Bite that tattoo on your shoulder
Pull the sheets right off the corner
Of the mattress that you stole
From your roommate back in Boulder
We ain't ever getting older
We ain't ever getting older (we ain't ever getting older)
We ain't ever getting older (we ain't ever getting older)
We ain't ever getting older (we ain't ever getting older)
We ain't ever getting older

We ain't ever getting older
No we ain't ever getting older

First, let's be clear that I'll defend Taylor Swift's work to the death. Also, I think people who dismiss her writing in a reflexive, vague way tend to be people who are also sort of lazy and dull. (There! I've said it. Look what you made me do!)

Now: a shocker. The MTV Video Music Awards--the most important night in any year--have an odd habit of reminding me of work that I like more than TS's work. So, for example, a few years ago, I would not have given the big prize to "Bad Blood." I loved that video, but I thought TS's verbal contributions were unusually stale. (I will, however, always go to bat for: "Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes.") Can we really award a poem whose main insight is: "It's so sad to think about the good times"--? Regardless of how dazzling TS's visuals were? And especially when "Bad Blood" was up against "Uptown Funk," which seemed to be a big bolt of lightning, and which magically strung together "ice-cold," "Michelle Pfeiffer," and "white gold"?

I don't think TS should have won for "Best Collaboration" this year. I think, as in the year of "Uptown Funk," an injustice has occurred. "I Don't Want to Live Forever" is catchy and competent. The video is forgettable. The "Best Collaboration" prize belonged, this year, to the Chainsmokers, for "Closer."

***Oh, by the way. Before I get to the Chainsmokers, if you want to see a really loving, biting response to Taylor Swift, you must turn to Billy Eichner, and his song "Glitter and Ribs." This wonderful piece captures all that is formulaic in TS's work. It seems to come from a place of genuine fondness, which makes the satire all the more potent. It veers far off from TS-Land into some shocking, disturbing terrain. And it includes these immortal lines:

I don't want to buy ice cream just to watch it melt!
And you can't try and tell me I wasn't feeling the feelings I felt!
And I don't want to get married just to get a divorce!
And I don't want to play golf without a course.

Anyway, back to the Chainsmokers. 

That first quatrain! Talk about "show, don't tell"--! Talk about the Divided Self! "I was doing just fine; I drink too much, and that's an issue." Is this a defensive young man who doesn't really know himself? How precisely, how effortlessly a bit of complexity is alluded to! "Tell your friends it was nice to meet them, but I hope I never see them again." Whoa! What is going on for this guy? You're hooked within the first several seconds. (Contrast these lines with TS's "I'm wondering if I dodged a bullet or just lost the love of my life." Taggart is showing; TS is merely telling. There's a world of difference.)

The song moves on. With enviable economy--"four years, no call"--Taggart establishes that he and his new consort have a history. They were together briefly, perhaps in college. Despite the traces of a vestigial "broken heart," they're back sniffing each other at this party--and "I can't stop. No, I can't stop." (Those two lines! Sexiest of the year, by far!)

And then we have the chorus--the big conversation piece of the past twelve months. (Sometimes, the cream does rise to the top.) There's a great deal of wit in these seemingly breezy lines. "Pull me closer in the backseat of your Rover that I know you can't afford." (A smart portrait of youth. The female is a rich bad girl who borrows from Daddy and doesn't pay him back. It's funny to imagine these thoughts running through the young man's head as he disrobes. That tiny detail--the unearned Rover--seems to suggest a novel unto itself; it's a path Taggart could run down. He chooses not to. These are fertile lines.) "Bite that tattoo on your shoulder"--sexy young people! (I confess I first heard the song as: "This Rover you can't afford, *like* that tattoo on your shoulder"--and I imagined the heroine stealing cash from Daddy to go to a tattoo parlor. Actually, I think my misreading has its own substantial charms.) "Pull the sheets right off the corner of the mattress that you stole." We have jumped from the Rover to the bed; this is masterful stage management. The bad girl actually stole her mattress from a roommate; again, I imagine an unwritten novel, a story strictly about that roommate, that mattress. These sentences manage to be funny, erotically-charged, and haunting all at once. What more can you require from good writing? "We ain't never getting older"--a reference to the stop-time quality of an orgasm (a "little death"), but also a parody of oblivious youth, I think. Youth believes it is immortal. The definition of being young is not giving a moment's thought to the possibility of aging.

And now: the song's not-very-secret weapon. Halsey. Here is my love-letter to Halsey. She was born in a poor section of Jersey; her mother worked security in a hospital. Halsey was "Ashley Frangipane"--bipolar, biracial, bisexual. She tried to kill herself when she was seventeen. She was raised both on Tupac and on Alanis Morisette. At some point, she discovered a love for the violin. Rhode Island School of Design called, but Halsey realized quickly she couldn't afford it, and dropped out. For this, her parents made her homeless. (Do you feel like you're reading a Dickens novel? Hold your breath.) Living on the streets, and in various friends' basements, Halsey began drinking Red Bull. She drank it to excess--because she knew wakefulness was preferable to sleep. If she slept, she might get drugged and raped--and she might wake up without a clear sense of what had transpired. Grandma cared for her, intermittently. She, Halsey, wrote poetry--and she thought she'd sing a bit, just to draw attention to her poems. One Taylor Swift satire caught fire--and suddenly she was an international recording star. And that's Halsey. Recruit her for your song, and you have suddenly added quite a bit more emotional power to your work than you had planned for. Maybe I'm a creepy old man writing a love letter to another disposable starlet. But watch Halsey closely in the video; watch, especially, when she has her little Edie Sedgwick/Jean Seberg cut and her diamond choker. She could go places.

"I forgot just why I left you; I was insane." Neither partner remembers why this relationship dissolved, and who did the dissolving! Ah, youth! "That Blink-182 song that we beat to death in Tuscon"--now, the writers are just showing off.

The song ends with the former lovers back together, recalling their physical ecstasies of bygone bright college years. Will Taggart re-team with haunted new Jean Seberg-ish Halsey? The answer is almost certainly yes. The song seems to capture something sweet and sad about the passage of time, and about the confusing experience of being in one's twenties. Also, it puts into words the tidal-wave sensation that is erotic attraction. And the video is one hundred thousand times more arousing than TS's "I Don't Wanna Live Forever." One must call a spade a spade. I'm going back in time and removing the VMA from the hands of Jack Antonoff. It is now in the hands of Halsey and Taggart, where it has always belonged.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zGcUoRlhmw