In which a dictator is made to swing

Dr. X posts this from Harvard Square on his Blackberry Storm, which just isn't good enough:

Kids today are whiners, and let me just say, they suck at it.

Now my generation, the tail-end Charlies of the Baby Boom, we came of age in the early 1980s in a world that magically combined ruthless and cynical attacks on government for humans, mysterious new epidemics, and the imminent threat of nuclear annihilation.  It made us tough.  We ate poison for breakfast and enjoyed ourselves during the daily beatings at the office.  New York was angry.  San Francisco was angry.  Some of the songs, like Holiday in Cambodia or Johnny's Gonna Die, were as tough as anything made before or after.

But it's not our toughness they will remember, nor our coldblooded cynicism...although that was also world-class, if I say so myself.

No.  The defining characteristic of my generation - the thing posterity will remember us for - was our whining.  We knew from whining.  We were astonishingly good at it.  No other group of young people in the history of civilization whined as loudly, proudly, and memorably as we did.

The pre-history of the Whiny Song may be dated to 10cc's magnificent excursion in melancholia, I'm Not in Love.  Although it was musically unoriginal, its vocal engaged in an emotional promiscuity that would have made Lord Byron blush.  It was a brilliant piece of marketing, too - soaking up adolescent self-pity, distilling it, and selling it back to the customer at a premium price - all the while being regarded as sophisticated and worldly in the bargain (the competition, after all, was Afternoon Delight).  Small wonder it spawned a host of semi-conscious imitators.

It is always somewhat arbitrary when defining a genre, but I say the Whiny Song was fully formed when Soft Cell layered 80s electronics over a similarly cynical and even-more-stylized vocal track and got an improbable hit, one that dwarfed the outstanding original in both popularity and musicological significance.

And then the floodgates opened.  Every narcissist with an orange shirt was hard at work trying to one-up the field with a new masterpiece of preening solipsism.  Whiny Songs were everywhere, and untrammeled self-pity experienced a bull market of majestic proportions:

• Some were soft
• Some rocked
• Some were a little creepy
• Some were interesting in spite of themselves
• Some managed to survive almost staggering incompetence
• Some were so pretty you could just shit
• Some were brilliant precursors of great things to come

No, we will not be discussing Natalie Merchant.  Sit down please.

As we trundled into the dark center of that cruel decade it became apparent that popular music was entering a death spiral.  The Whiny Song genre had crowded out everything else and begun devouring its own internal organs.  Despite being a stunning money spinner the Whiny Song is so limited in its range and intentions it could not help but be overwhelmed by other forces...although a genre could hope for a more glorious ending than to be succeeded by Poison.

But there was a final act, a denouement so extraordinary in its transcendent power that it simultaneously subverted, validated, and transcended the Whiny Song forever.  For one, brief, shining moment, the greatest song in the world was a Whiny Epic, a performance so whiny that the whininess echoes down through the ages and makes us whiny all over again.

For those attentive enough to hear, there were twin harbingers in the minor UK hits Mad World and Pale Shelter.  Anyone who heard these songs was on notice that a melancholic powerhouse lurked in the shadows.  It was as if Obi-Wan and Darth Vader paused during their battle, both sensing that a master of the gray side of the Force had entered the room.

Then, in the summer of 1985 it burst like a really overcast day onto the global charts, driving popular culture across the event horizon of plausibility and into the dense and vapid beige hole of cultural emotional futility.  It dwarfed all previous whining in its scope and ambition.  I refer of course to Everybody Wants to Rule the World.  In 1985 it sounded like this:




It defies reason.  The lyrics are nonsensical, the music overbearing, the vocals staggeringly self-important - and yet the damn thing works.  It went to #1 on the charts, and administrative assistants were humming it in their car, at lunch, and during their post-nooner hair-spray.

The clever folks at AV Club recently convinced Ted Leo and the Pharmacists to cover the song, and they do so very creditably, keeping faith with the original in both the arrangement and vocals (oh, and see if you can spot a subtle corporate influence here):




Other contemporary artists like Christian Burns and JamisonParker likewise stay close to the original, accepting the same risks as Tears for Fears.  But without the original performers' incredible personal audacity, they are unable to fully reap the rewards.  The song is harder than it looks.

It follows that perhaps a different approach would yield better results.  Ken Boothe does a sensitive and beautiful reggae version.  Kwamey & Frank Boissy get a nice groove going on it.  Guitarist Andy McKee demonstrates the beauty and power of the underlying musical structure, a finding elaborated upon by the Bad Plus Trio (surprising diatonic echoes of So What).

It seems clear that there is a good song here trying to get out.  One big hint:  maybe it would be better if it were less whiny.  Kris Allen, a gifted vocalist, finds a clever way in - he misdirects the audience then launches into a serious and determined performance that comes close to the heart of the song.  I only fault its brevity and the careless ending - Kris, if you're going to kill a man be sure to finish the job:



Allen and most other artists covering the song have trouble with the march-step rhythm of the song, so important to the fascistic subtext the pampered suburban supergroup intended to convey.

Can you dance with a dictator?  Soulive tries and succeeds to an extent, although I don't feel compelled to hear it again.  It is, after all, the same dilemma faced by any dissident - confront the beast openly and be destroyed, or try to subvert it without being noticed and so risk irrelevance?



Clare and the Reasons have a wonderful, original run at it:




But the performance I regard as definitive...I cannot believe I am writing this...  Here, Patti Smith steps up to the microphone and just sings the song, without affect or irony. Her performance brings together the jazz sensibility that seems to work best with the music and a fearless, graceful vocal performance.

Her only confrontation with the song's dictatorial tendencies is a seemingly determined effort to never come in on the right beat:



It caught something in the original, but Smith catches something richer and better.  Perhaps it's the muff at 0:48 that lets her cut loose a little, but she gets hold of it - it swings and breathes - and music once intended for adolescents becomes a legitimate anthem for grown-ups.  (As for that fascist beat, watch her at 2:54 and ask yourself if maybe she isn't putting you on a little.)

And it turns out that maybe my generation can do a little more than whine after all.