Alessia Cara at Sound Control, March 24 2016<\/p>\n
After the gig, we went to a bar. I was worried about how I\u2019d write about what\u2019d just happened. My friend Zoe was worried about the state of the world, about the youth of today, about being out of touch and over the hill. She was worried about clich\u00e9s. We both were. After the gig, we went to a bar and thought about our lives. <\/p>\n
This gig made me wonder about adjectives. Can an experience, a person, be tl;dr*? (I think so, yes.) Is the difference between sincere and earnest really so big? (Spoiler: yes, yes it is.) What does it mean to be authentic when we all talk like TV characters\/the internet anyway? <\/p>\n
This gig made me think about what\u2019s normal – as in, is it normal to have quite this much rage at people at gigs pretending to know the lyrics, at their dumb goldfishing mouths? No, you say? Is it normal to edit your photos of the gig while still at the gig, while your phone is still held up for the people behind you to try to see around? Is that a thing people do now? Is it normal to be this much of a clich\u00e9\/curmudgeon\/douche at just (hah) 31? Honestly, who can say? <\/p>\n
It made me think about the poetry I wrote as a teenager, its over-reliance on words like staunch, altar and hummingbird, the drama and urgency of being young and feeling sure that you have something to say in a way it\u2019s never been said before. The certainty that comes with not yet having read enough, listened enough, lived enough.
\nAbout who\u2019s to say what\u2019s enough. <\/p>\n
This gig made me grateful for and to Alanis Morissette; it made me think about meaning, projected versus inherent. For fuck\u2019s sake, this gig made me think about Gertrude Stein\u2019s \u201cthere is no there there\u201d. <\/p>\n
It was not a normal gig. <\/p>\n
I hadn\u2019t expected it to be, but for different reasons. Cara came second in the BBC Sound of 2016 poll \u2013 a rare venture into Wikipediable territory here, not something I like to do because you know how to use Google \u2013 and, well, I like Haim and Frank Ocean and James Blake. So, it seemed promising. And I should say that Alessia Cara really does have a great voice \u2013 soulful, striking \u2013 and can do interesting<\/a>, humanising<\/a> things with other people\u2019s songs. She is a confident performer. You wouldn\u2019t think she was only 19. She is note-perfect live. The audience seemed to love the show. The material sounded much the same live as it does on the album. <\/p>\n But the material, it turns out, is the problem: after all, it doesn\u2019t matter how good a copy something is if it\u2019s a copy of a copy of a copy. (And you know something\u2019s gone very wrong when you\u2019re misquoting Chuck Palahniuk.)<\/p>\n The album contains all the standards. There\u2019s the \u201cthings were better when we were younger\u201d song, the \u201cmy ambition and talent is bigger than you know\u201d song. There\u2019s the love song: ‘Cause I’ve had my heart \/ broken before \/ and I promised I would never let me hurt anymore \/ but I tore down my walls and opened my doors \/ and made room for one \/ so, baby, I’m yours<\/em>. There\u2019s the heartbreak song: Go ‘head and wish me well \/ I’ll cry a wishing well \/ I’ll fly before I fail \/ I’ll set sail and drift away \/ so I won’t need you here \/ Love sinks and hope floats \/ in a river of tears<\/em>. There\u2019s the \u201cyou are beautiful in every single way (except not exactly like that because that\u2019s how Christina said it in her version)\u201d song: But there’s a hope that’s waiting for you in the dark \/ You should know you’re beautiful just the way you are \/ And you don’t have to change a thing \/ The world could change its heart<\/em>. There\u2019s the \u201clovers as partners in crime\u201d song: We’ll be outlaws \/ partners in crime \/ we’ll take on the world together<\/em>. Zoe\u2019s thoughts: \u201cBonnie & Clyde exists. This is boring and unnecessary.\u201d <\/p>\n She\u2019s right. It\u2019s all been done before, and done better. The only thing about the music that sets it apart is Cara\u2019s voice, which is certainly no small thing to recommend it, but it\u2019s not enough (for me anyway). The lyrics are so generic as to seem purposefully blank, convenient placeholders for listeners\u2019 own experiences and feelings (although I think feelings is overstating it). The lyrics are so generic, so centred on worn-out tropes, they almost function as empty signifiers, absorbing rather than emitting meaning: quite a savvy marketing strategy, come to think about it, appealing to everyone by being about nothing. Listening to them in a space that seemed ideal for featuring in the constructed reality of Made in Chelsea \u2013 Zoe again: \u201cwhich in any other context would be a compliment\u201d \u2013 was disquieting, like we were there as market segments, like we were in a William Gibson novel where the most popular art is literally just a blank space, like we were so incapable of thinking about anything other than ourselves that even the lyrics in a song someone else wrote had to be about us and our dramatically urgent lives.<\/p>\n I know what this sounds like: another one of those \u201cmillennials are terrible\u201d pieces. They\u2019re narcissists. They don\u2019t know what real art or working hard or trying is. They think they should be congratulated for everything they ever do. They never grow up. Lena Dunham!! SELFIES ARE HARBINGERS OF THE END TIMES. But I promise you, it\u2019s not. It\u2019s because I know we\u2019re better than all these thinkpieces make us out to be that I\u2019m disappointed. (There are young artists doing work that is personal, that is specific and true, that people can connect to rather than just connecting to themselves, ouroboros-style. Lorde, Kendrick Lamar, Julien Baker, fka twigs etc.) And it\u2019s because of the faux-outsider posture of a number of Cara\u2019s songs, especially the breakout hit Here, because of the slippery and baseless tribalism it invokes, that I\u2019m kinda mad. <\/p>\n Really, to be fair, I\u2019m not angry at Cara. (Zoe is less sure: \u201cThat speech about we\u2019re all wonderful and we\u2019re all going to be OK? There\u2019ll be people in the room going through divorce, people with cancer. Plus, it\u2019s Manchester: there\u2019s probably three murderers in the room! We\u2019re not all wonderful and OK!\u201d) Cara is a really talented singer and I admire her ambition and confidence. What bugs me is the way this is being presented or talked about. This is authentic, folks, it\u2019s deep. The music has all the self-righteousness and earnestness of The OC \u2013 remember Marissa taking all those pills in Tijuana? Man, she was the worst \u2013 but none of the hi-jinks. And without a sense of humour, without any specificity whatsoever, we might as well be listening to songs made up of clich\u00e9s and bumper-sticker\/friendship-bracelet\/ office-poster slogans that have been put through a rhyming dictionary. <\/p>\n What bugs me is the way people responded to all this nothingness, to all this genericism, at the gig \u2013 phones up or clutched over hearts(!), heads thrown back to sing \u2013 and elsewhere. Shades of \u201cwake up, sheeple\u201d perhaps, but I think our head-holes deserve better than the us-versus-them posturing of Wild Things \u2013 Don’t wanna hang around the in crowd \/ the cool kids aren’t cool to me \/ they’re not cooler than we are \u2013 which is offensive, really, when the us and the them both are written so blankly, so badly, that all that\u2019s celebrated in the end is the act of negation (not even definition through negation). That we deserve better even than judgemental introvert anthem Here, by far the stand-out track on the album and her closer on the night: And I know you mean only the best and \/ Your intentions aren’t to bother me \/ But honestly I’d rather be \/ Somewhere with my people we can kick it and just listen \/ To some music with a message (like we usually do). <\/p>\n Zoe\u2019s thoughts, and mine: \u201cYou and me both, mate.\u201d<\/p>\n *tl;dr: too long; didn\u2019t read<\/p>\n Links:<\/p>\n Interesting: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zU-2vudvTSA<\/a> Alessia Cara at Sound Control, March 24 2016 After the gig, we went to a bar. I was worried about how I\u2019d write about what\u2019d just happened. My friend Zoe was worried about the state of the world, about the youth of today, about being out of touch and over the hill. She was worried […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[15,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nHumanising: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0PNhACpv5XU<\/a>
\nBonnie & Clyde: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=dw-ldo8sTkc<\/a>
\n
\nMarli Roode<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"