Wilco - The Whole Love

lol fair enough

but like...I was repping for "pump up the volume" on that thread...not exactly a triumph of lyrical effort

sounds like Tweedy found a way to get high again but is not able to really articulate it through his lyrics.

"My Humps" made me cringe. Before "I Gotta Feeling," the only BEP-related stuff I liked were a couple of Fergie's solo singles; since then, I thought "Check It Out" was great, and I can't think of anything else. But to get it back to Wilco, I've seen both their films, and I came away from the second one really liking Jeff Tweedy as a person. The clip above seems beneath him to me, although I'll grant that there was some (yes, convoluted--I don't quite get it) in-joke context.

I don't require that shit be brainy, free 'n' easy is great. the lyrics to "I Gotta Feeling" aren't not-smart-but-who-cares; they're aggressively stupid. they make me want to apologize to people for having to hear them.

I feel stressed out
I wanna let it go
Lets go way out spaced out
and losing all control

Jesus Christ at least make the verbs agree before you cash that check you total fucking nihilists, is my opinion

CCR has dumb lyrics? Now them's fightin' words...

I Gotta Feeing : pop songs :: flag pin : patriotism imo

I swear I don't see what's so aggressively stupid about the lyrics you quote. "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," literally one of my dozen favourite songs ever the past few years, contains the following:

I want to hold you in the Bible-black predawn
You're quite a quiet domino, bury me now
Take off your Band-Aid because I don't believe in touchdowns
What was I thinking when I said hello?

I can certainly see where someone might find those lyrics aggressively stupid; for me, they're fine (even though I haven't a clue what they mean, or if they mean anything). Lyrics are lyrics; they either work in the context of the song or they don't, but they rarely make or break a song for me.

ha dude you won't catch me repping for Tweedy's lyrics anywhere ever, don't get me wrong here I'm not arguing for Wilco I'm just saying I Gotta Feeling is terrible

IGAF lyrics are so bad they're good

you just have to admire their chutzpah

it's like pointing out that the top of mt. everest is freezing. yeah so what? people still wanna climb it!

wilco, otoh, there's no saving wilco. dud forever

underrated when you blew a gasket about me saying that eminem isn't a good hook writer wasn't that on some '50 million elvis fans can't be wrong' shit? is BEP exempt from your faith in the wisdom of the masses?

Lyrics are lyrics; they either work in the context of the song or they don't, but they rarely make or break a song for me.

I can 100% groove with this until they do something like right-there-in-front-of-you verb tense shit or (my personal least favorite thing ever) forcing a stress onto an unstressed syllable to make a rhyme (exceptions about; "Suddenly" does not really work well as a rhyme if the next line is "it has happened to me" but I will cut anybody who speaks ill of "Suddenly," an all-time jam). Or until they're like

Lets paint the town
We’ll shut it down
Let’s burn the roof
and then we’ll do it again

really? "and then we'll do it again"? you didn't have the extra minute to maybe bust out something even a tiny bit fresher than "and then we'll do it again"? oooooohh hate it

xp "I Gotta Feeling" is a good hook that doesn't make it a good song yo

one thing more benign about Wilco than "I Gotta Feeling" tho is I basically will never have to hear Wilco unless I choose to. "I Gotta Feeling" though...that shit, I will hear. Often. Until I die. And it will suck every time.

the best part about graduating college was never having to listen to wilco again

"Let's burn the roof/and then we'll do it again"--I'd never thought about how completely nonsensical that is. I like the song even more now!

lol clemenza that made me smile really big

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.

Let’s burn the roof
and then we’ll do it again.

They've been casting about for the next politics thread title; I think "Let's Burn the Roof (And Then We'll Do It Again)" just might work.

Ha, I am so glad Clemenza posted those lyrics -- I was just about to come on here and post something similar, but not in defense of Black Eyed Peas, but in confusion over all the posters that dog the last two Wilco albums upthread. I just listened to 'Wilco (The Album)' again for the first time in like a year, and yeah I think the new one is probably better than it. Still undecided where the new one stacks up against SBS

But like, the last 4 albums Tweedy gets better at lyrics. That's why I laugh at the early Wilco partisans who derided the previous two albums. Give me the oblique, married man, late John Lennon stylings of the last few records over embarassing, precious crap like "the ashtray says you were up all night" or "I am trying to break your heart". could never get into this band until Tweedy grew up (and it also certainly helped when he hired guys that play their instruments at the top of their game like Sansone, Kotche, and Cline)

guys everybody read dayo's post out loud and really give it your most sincere reading and you will have a deeply transcendent moment

"I Gotta Feeling" is a good hook that doesn't make it a good song yo

wouldn't be the first time i liked a song for having a good hook and little else (althoguh i disagree with you about the production being generic, i think it's pretty distinctive personally)

btw i did listen to the new wilco on spotify, since i usually feel a pang of 'nels cline is on this, i should probably check this out' when they put out a new album and then never do hear it. first track and last track are cool, don't know about much in between.

guys everybody read dayo's post out loud and really give it your most sincere reading and you will have a deeply transcendent moment

i used to do this with donna summer lyrics.

yeah also dayo, whoever the hell you are, you've been SB'd. I suggest every other reader do so as well to the mouthbreather. I mean Jesus Christ please stop wasting everyone's time bro

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If we burn the roof, can we do it again?

A monk saw a turtle in the garden of Daizui's monastery and asked the teacher, "All beings cover their bones with flesh and skin. Why does this being cover its flesh and skin with bones?" Master Daizui took off one of his sandals and covered the turtle with it. "Let's burn the roof," Master Daizui said. "And we'll do it again," replied the monk.

stormy dayo brings quality lols to every thread he participates in so do not hate, thank you

When Eshun, the Zen nun, was past sixty and about to leave this world, she asked some monks to pile up wood in the yard.

Seating herself firmly in the center of the funeral pyre, she had itset fire around the edges.

"O nun!" shouted one monk, "is it hot in there?"

"Such a matter would concern only a stupid person like yourself", answered Eshun.

The roof burned, and then they did it again.

Daiju visited the master Baso in China. Baso asked: "What do you seek?"

"Enlightenment," replied Daiju.

"You have your own treasure house. Why do you search outside?" Baso asked.

Daiju inquired: "Where is my treasure house?"

Baso answered: "What you are asking is your treasure house."

Daiju was enlightened! Ever after he urged his friends: "Let's burn the roof and then we'll do it again."

oh I'll hate, and with vigor. dude seems like a pg-rated ade langston with a slight custos bent to boot. fucking clown

I was gonna try to bring in some Bhagavad-Gita but dayo is the master

that is actually the best compliment anybody has ever paid me

Coincidentally listening to Uncle Tupelo's Anodyne tonight - isn't it STILL weird that Jeff Tweedy ended up the guy that more people heard his music from those two in their first band? I never saw that one coming and I dug what both were doing and saw Uncle Tupelo three times. That said, the last record I got from either was Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. (Although I hung out and did a bunch of a recording with a guy that was a total Wilco fanboy and I got a CDR burn of the one with the egg on the cover.)

but wait -- dorks LOVE Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but they think the last two Wilco albums were "boring" ??

are you clowns for real? You miss the innocence of the heavy metal drummer so much that you can't work with and appreciate Tweedy growing old? and singing like a guy that has two kids and sits in underwear in the morning? That's what he is. I mean, I dig the old stuff too, but dude....

the other hilarious thing is how that -- I'd guess you'd call it now -"mid period" Wilco is considered "experimental"?

What, the sound of a clock chiming is "experimental"?? I've never ever ever gotten the idea that this fucking great rock band was in ANY sense "experimental". Maybe Wilco is 'experimental' if you normally listen to Tracy Chapman or something.

Anyway, love Wilco, and new alb is fantastic

The "and we'll do it again" is what people on the dance floor feel at that point in the song when the song repeats itself.

Why "I Gotta Feeling" works so well:
1. The intro gives people enough time to recognize the song and get on the dance floor. And yet the drumbeat doesn't kick in for a while, so if it takes 30 seconds to set down your drink and grab someone and run to the dance floor, you get there without having missed anything.

2. The aspiration of the song is not to have "the time of my life" but the instinct that tonight is going to be a "good night" -- something within reach. [n.b. Why this is the quintessential dorm-room primping song.]

3. The lyrics are almost Springsteen-like in the aim to reach transcendence through just going out and spending a little money at a club.

4. Unlike Celebration, the song has lead vocals for both a man and a woman.

5. The song works like a suspension bridge--it's basically the same song repeated twice, which--as you may have already seen first-hand at a wedding reception or 40th birthday party, as I have--leaves the dancers actually exhausted in a post-coital way.

6. The days of the week make it a hit with the under-six set.

7. What bugs me about the Tweedy cover is that he takes a shit on the song but he doesn't perform it as composed -- as if all the repetition is lazy songwriting rather than carefully executed dance music to give the dancer enough time to get to the dance floor and then have peaks and valleys for the next four minutes.

8. The song works because it takes the impossible expectations of holy occasions--weddings, bar mitzvahs--and makes the dancers feel that they actually are achieving the transcendence that the event is supposed to give them. It gives the dancer at the special occasion the feeling that in fact transcendence is attainable, that tonight is going to be a good night after all, and that, finally, that is enough. It doesn't have to be a transcendental wedding--it becomes one through simply being good. A good night.

9. You know that scene in Miami Vice where Jamie Foxx is fucking his lover/co-worker and he pretends to orgasm but then he makes it clear he was pretending and goes at it double-time? That's what happens in this song, after the breather in the middle: and thus it aspires to surprise and then fully satisfy and exhaust those who choose to dance to it.

10. it communicates exactly what it means, and yet it makes no rational sense; and while it is “wrong” in the everyday world, the three worlds of this title simply cannot be reduced even to nouns, verbs, and prepositions. Gramatically, the Black Eyed Peas have created an impossible compound. It is only what it is. A prime number. In other words, a spell. L'Chaim.

This thread is giving me great joy all of a sudden. I can't wait to see clemenza deploy this argument -- "I mean, I'm hardly the only person to think so--it was #1 for 14 consecutive weeks" in defense of some shitty, shitty movies.

Also, Stormy OTM about the last two records.

I merely brought up the #1 business because of aerosmith's "you really honestly think that?", like I was trying to pull something over him by defending some song that nobody else in the world loved. Pretty sure I never resort to a populist argument to defend the work itself, i.e. millions like it = therefore it's good. My point was that millions like it = why do you seem so surprised that I might like it too?

Poor Wilco. That's what you get for making fun of "I Gotta Feeling," Jeff Tweedy--your thread gets hijacked.

(By the way, I love Eazy's lengthy defense of the song, especially "The days of the week make it a hit with the under-six set"--just like the Jackson 5's "ABC." I hope I'm not being reeled in by an ingenious parody...)

I will say, as a parent of two kids (like Jeff Tweedy!) I've found that small children are overwhelmingly drawn to music that is simplistic and repetitive, and that the better they can understand the lyrics, the more they like it. Hence, little kids (in my experience) don't like rap, terribly, or metal or stuff that's hard to follow. But they do like modern country and piffle like BEP, which is the pop equivalent to a t-ball stand. No one strikes out.

Chuck Eddy would do a better job of taking up this argument than I can, but I'd take issue with the idea that "I Gotta Feeling" is simplistic. I understand your basic point, though. (No kids of my own, but I spend six hours a day with 25 of them.)

when I worked with kids I was a lot more sympathetic to songs like this because I could see them enjoying them, and what's more infectious than that. I do recall with pleasure though a discussion of Pink's "Get This Party Started" that involved exploration of the imperative mood & whether the consequent on not getting the party started was the threat of physical violence toward the listener/addressee

clemenza I got love for IGAF but comparing it to ABC is SB-territory

(Not a parody--I've just spent some time under the hood with IGAF, figuring out how that engine hums!)

(And apologies for the big hijack. I streamed The Whole Love on NPR earlier this week. I liked not knowing when one track ended and the next began.)

Haha, fair enough, clemenza - I misread you and thought you were resorting to "if millions of ppl like it it must be good." Didn't seem like your kind of argument.

Honestly, though, it's a terrible terrible song. Putting it in a category with "Wedding Bell Blues" is definitely smdh territory.

Good--I'm sometimes not sure when I'm on ILM. I'm an aging homebody with three left feet, so I really like your stuff about dancing.

I love "I Gotta Feeling" more than "ABC," more even than "I Want You Back." True story. (But not more than "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" or "Wedding Bell Blues.")