The Chairman Dances – Hadn’t Tried
The great pop songs contain some kind of universal message. This is why crowds learn to sing them even decades after they were originally released. This is why producers use them in romantic films and horror movies. It’s why people post them on their social media profiles to express their joy or sadness, which regular words cannot express.
Still, these sorts of songs are rare. It’s not just because of the quality of the writing, although, certainly, this is a factor. Mostly, it’s because rock songwriters are inclined to write fantasies instead. For example, the vast majority of songs, if they’re about anything at all, talk about winning great sums of money, being immensely appealing to romantic partners and being a great success in every area of life. Hip-hop and pop music do mostly the same.
The Chairman Dances’ tender, romantic and slightly theatrical single “Hadn’t Tried” is a song about falling in love and making the necessary adjustments. If most love songs are about fireworks, this is about all of the preparation and planning required. It may seem like a small thing, but this, indeed, is a universal and lovely problem to have. It’s the singing that really brings things home. The vocals bring to mind the theatrics of Morrissey but none of the arrogance. There’s truth here.
Josh Rifkin – Got It Wrong
It’s easy to find creeps working at the top of the music industry, but few weirdos. How would they ever get through the door? Massive talent? I’m not sure that’s going to cut it. Or, if it did, these people wouldn’t be able to hold on to their idiosyncrasies for long. That would just make the people signing the checks feel nervous. And that’d make them nervous about how audiences would react to the music.
Nah, most pop musicians undergo a makeover before being heavily promoted that is similar in scope and ambition to re-education camps back in the Soviet Republics of the 1960s. All of the sharp corners get knocked off before anything can be mass-produced. By the time all of them start to sound and look the same, the job is done.
There are plenty of idiosyncrasies about Josh Rifkin’s music, and he wears them proudly in “Got It Wrong.” It’s the laid-back, lazy delivery when prophesizing doom that makes Rifkin, a veteran of music songwriting, sound a bit like a cross between a Dr. John and a college professor who’s been sent on a conference to New York. The lyrics tell the tale of inevitable doom and collapse, but the characters in Rifkin’s song need to deal with abject boredom first. It’d be hard to make Rifkin fit into the mould of a pop. There’d be too many sharp angles that would need to be knocked off. And that’s precisely why the pop world isn’t of much use to anyone at this point.
