You know what really irritates me? Certain Bob Marley songs. I feel blasphemous just making this small confession.
Maybe it's not even the songs. It's the habit white Park Slope residents have of playing these songs over and over and over again. I'm thinking of the painfully tedious "Don't Worry about a Thing." (Well, the song is actually called "Three Little Birds.")
Has there ever been a more vapid and thrillingly wrongheaded set of lines than this chorus:
Don't worry about a thing.
Cause every little thing gonna be all right!
Singin': Don't worry about a thing.
Cause every little thing gonna be all right!
It's like nails on a chalkboard. The folksy speaker--despite racking up record deals and the trappings of international celebrity--cannot be bothered with something as fussy as a linking verb or a hard "g" on the end of "singing." And the apparent profundity of the first two lines is so overwhelming, the lines need to be repeated (and again! and again! and again!).
Why is it that white, affluent Park Slope residents--at Bareburger, for example, or Ladybird Bakery--seem unable to get enough of this song? I can't help but think when I hear it--and I swear I hear it nine or ten trillion times per day--that YES, OF COURSE YOU DO NOT NEED TO WORRY ABOUT A THING! You are white and living in Park Slope! It feels--to me, at least--deeply uncomfortable when Mr. Marley is trotted out to help, e.g., Park Slope resident Chloe Sevigny recall that, really, she need not worry about a thing. (I had a similar reaction to the formerly ubiquitous and consistently galling hit "Happy" a few years ago. How I wanted to rip my own ears off when--at my largely white workplace, for example--Mr. Williams was again trotted out to remind us that we need only render ourselves deaf, dumb, and blind, and fully mentally oblivious to the world around us, to feel happeeeeeeeee!)
"Clap along," Pharrell would say. "Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof!" And the five-year-old white daughter of a major star of HBO's "Girls"--who was among my students--would, I'm certain, clap as loudly as she could.
I have other issues with the uses of Bob Marley in gentrified Brooklyn. It feels weird and gross when you walk into, say, Cafe Pedlar, and there's Hollywood celebrity Michael Shannon in one corner, and Mr. Marley is crooning about "sharing the shelter of my single bed." Is this something Mr. Shannon is meant to relate to? One single bed? It seems to me Mr. Shannon's betrothed could choose from quite a few beds--possibly on multiple continents! And when Mr. Marley sings about "Jah providing the bread"? I suspect Mr. Shannon's diet is a bit more eye-popping than that. Actually, I suspect Michael Shannon doesn't ever touch bread. Do people want to see a bread-eating normal-weight figure when they shell out to see "The Shape of Water"? I think that they do not.
"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery" has always seemed, to me, to be too many syllables in a tight, tight space. And why is the narrator of "Waiting in Vain" so scatter-brained? In minute one, he blithely assures the lady that "the waiting feeling is fine." And then--literally within seconds--he's complaining about the tears in his eyes. They actually burn! He says it, and then he says it again! They burn while he's waiting. While he's waiting for his "turn." (Is this meant to be a portrait of the psyche in severe distress? The fracturing of the self? Perhaps. I have my doubts.)
All this is to say that Bob Marley is a sloppy writer--and people fear pointing that out, because they do not want to seem less-than-politically-correct. Additionally, the sloppiness is not the main problem. It's OK to be sloppy (I guess). What is so, so grating is the obtuseness of my wealthy neighbors, who play these boring songs again and again, in a self-congratulatory way, and who never really think about the thing that they're half-listening to. I just needed to say all of that. Enjoy the birdies today. Enjoy their sweet songs, if you can.
Maybe it's not even the songs. It's the habit white Park Slope residents have of playing these songs over and over and over again. I'm thinking of the painfully tedious "Don't Worry about a Thing." (Well, the song is actually called "Three Little Birds.")
Has there ever been a more vapid and thrillingly wrongheaded set of lines than this chorus:
Don't worry about a thing.
Cause every little thing gonna be all right!
Singin': Don't worry about a thing.
Cause every little thing gonna be all right!
It's like nails on a chalkboard. The folksy speaker--despite racking up record deals and the trappings of international celebrity--cannot be bothered with something as fussy as a linking verb or a hard "g" on the end of "singing." And the apparent profundity of the first two lines is so overwhelming, the lines need to be repeated (and again! and again! and again!).
Why is it that white, affluent Park Slope residents--at Bareburger, for example, or Ladybird Bakery--seem unable to get enough of this song? I can't help but think when I hear it--and I swear I hear it nine or ten trillion times per day--that YES, OF COURSE YOU DO NOT NEED TO WORRY ABOUT A THING! You are white and living in Park Slope! It feels--to me, at least--deeply uncomfortable when Mr. Marley is trotted out to help, e.g., Park Slope resident Chloe Sevigny recall that, really, she need not worry about a thing. (I had a similar reaction to the formerly ubiquitous and consistently galling hit "Happy" a few years ago. How I wanted to rip my own ears off when--at my largely white workplace, for example--Mr. Williams was again trotted out to remind us that we need only render ourselves deaf, dumb, and blind, and fully mentally oblivious to the world around us, to feel happeeeeeeeee!)
"Clap along," Pharrell would say. "Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof!" And the five-year-old white daughter of a major star of HBO's "Girls"--who was among my students--would, I'm certain, clap as loudly as she could.
I have other issues with the uses of Bob Marley in gentrified Brooklyn. It feels weird and gross when you walk into, say, Cafe Pedlar, and there's Hollywood celebrity Michael Shannon in one corner, and Mr. Marley is crooning about "sharing the shelter of my single bed." Is this something Mr. Shannon is meant to relate to? One single bed? It seems to me Mr. Shannon's betrothed could choose from quite a few beds--possibly on multiple continents! And when Mr. Marley sings about "Jah providing the bread"? I suspect Mr. Shannon's diet is a bit more eye-popping than that. Actually, I suspect Michael Shannon doesn't ever touch bread. Do people want to see a bread-eating normal-weight figure when they shell out to see "The Shape of Water"? I think that they do not.
"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery" has always seemed, to me, to be too many syllables in a tight, tight space. And why is the narrator of "Waiting in Vain" so scatter-brained? In minute one, he blithely assures the lady that "the waiting feeling is fine." And then--literally within seconds--he's complaining about the tears in his eyes. They actually burn! He says it, and then he says it again! They burn while he's waiting. While he's waiting for his "turn." (Is this meant to be a portrait of the psyche in severe distress? The fracturing of the self? Perhaps. I have my doubts.)
All this is to say that Bob Marley is a sloppy writer--and people fear pointing that out, because they do not want to seem less-than-politically-correct. Additionally, the sloppiness is not the main problem. It's OK to be sloppy (I guess). What is so, so grating is the obtuseness of my wealthy neighbors, who play these boring songs again and again, in a self-congratulatory way, and who never really think about the thing that they're half-listening to. I just needed to say all of that. Enjoy the birdies today. Enjoy their sweet songs, if you can.
I agree!
ReplyDeleteThanks!
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