Tonight Tonight
Posted by Captain of the Poop Deck in music
Take a listen, but try not to let this get to you like it did me.
19 songs represented here, at least 1/4 of them are from 2009.
This is everything I hate about American Pop, but I'm not quite sure why. I guess I can't believe that the English-speaking world values the immediate future as much as these songs seem to imply. It seems too easy to dismiss the similarity in these songs as simple plagiarism or laziness (although Ke$ha's performance in "Tik Tok" is already biting off of Uffie's in "Get This Party Started," so I can't give her writer much credit, either).
Now if we as a culture do fetishize the endless possibility of "the night ahead," then perhaps these songs are a perfect and beautiful reflection of the era that birthed them, in which case I'll have to come to terms with that. Is there really something about that beat, those chords, those instruments that make a composer think of all the times he's pined for a perfect end to a shitty day? Maybe it's the American belief that anything is possible, or a lifestyle of wasting away in tedious jobs, or some deep-seated tendency in our cultural genetics to place all of one's hope and expectation into a single moment, even at the risk of total devestation in the wake of its (usually inevitable) lack of realization. Maybe we listen to this music to get us back to that place that music often takes us, between heartache and joy, nostalgia and possibility. Like a drug or a meditation, depending on how you take it, this music can feed into whatever it is we get from feeling strongly, even at the expense of taste and good judgement (you know there's a club somewhere where people are all chanting the call and response from The Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feelin'", including the Hebrew).
Maybe I'm just judgmental, cynical, or soullessly pragmatic, because these songs are popular as shit. And don't take offense if you're totally into Daughtry or Train, because Jimmy Eat World has three entries in this compilation, and they're one of my favorite bands. Still, shoot me if I ever write a song obsessing about "tonight." I think I'll stick with obsessing about the past. That sounds healthy.
