Dead Disco

This is one of those songs that have an immediate hook and grow on you, that’s the beauty of pop. The lyrics potentially tap into some disenchantment with the music business and the rate at which we abandon the old (no matter how good) for new. Just listening to it now I can see a second music video with old black and white western style imagery of Bourbon and Beale street musicians keeling over in disgust while the streets flood over with rich fat American tourists wanting to hear a white guy sing some black music.

There is definitely some inner conflict going on in this song. Where is Emily directing the last line “I know you’re trying to change me”? It can’t be the music business… at least not as long as Celine Dion is busy getting rich horking out the same old shit about love moving mountains it can’t. Emily can sit pretty knowing that the music industry does not want to change her, in fact they would be quite happy with her reissuing the same stuff in a new package every year for an eternity. If a moneymaker aint broken, don’t fix it! So she is talking about her own pressuring need for change right? If this is the case then why does she seem so peeved at the dead disco, funk, and rock scenes we have left behind in our never-ending quest for the ultimate? This is a little dilemma, hers and ours alike.

The need for fashionable new clichés propel some into a state of no fixed identity where we are constantly grabbing at the next best thing or “flavor of the month” (remember The Cure’s “Jumping someone else’s train”?) when the classic styles of yesteryear can still sell records but not at a rate that satisfies the fattest of cats preying from on top. Maybe some of you remember how fast we jumped off the Guns and Roses train and onto the New Kids on the Block / Vanilla Ice / Marky Mark train and then back on the rockin’ wagon with Nirvana again? You guys are some sick twisted puppies …

Some are quite content with their style and feel no need to change, but I don’t think this song is about established artists who can afford to churn out the same old formulaic crap and rake in the royalties. It’s about the undiscovered ones trying to bust onto the scene with a catchy new hook for the big fish. So while the music industry feels quite inclined to push the “you must change to survive today” propaganda, Madonna can purchase her rare talents top dollar from music engineers like The Neptunes and we all hail Madonna for her survivor of the ages skills. But she’s a musician right? Not anymore than Dubbya Bush is a good President. She excelled because she hasn’t changed, she’s a business woman always has been, always will, that unfortunately some people have learned to appreciate.

Historically pop music has not been the place for die hard musicians who are in it for THE MU$IC, so let’s hope Emily still has some fresh tricks up her sleeve, cuz as of now her music kicks some serious ass and I’m anxious for what’s next.