OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

Ed. Note: The Kid Mero is a Bronx-based writer and comedian specializing in #KNOWLEDGEDARTS and #COKEDREAMS.

Those Kid Mero reviews... are they supposed to be - funny?

What's so spectacular about the piece is that it's in 5/4, a time signature which almost no pop music even begins to touch (besides Sunny Day Real Estate).
What's so spectacular about the piece is that it's in 5/4, a time signature which almost no pop music even begins to touch (besides Sunny Day Real Estate).
What's so spectacular about the piece is that it's in 5/4, a time signature which almost no pop music even begins to touch (besides Sunny Day Real Estate).
What's so spectacular about the piece is that it's in 5/4, a time signature which almost no pop music even begins to touch (besides Sunny Day Real Estate).
What's so spectacular about the piece is that it's in 5/4, a time signature which almost no pop music even begins to touch (besides Sunny Day Real Estate).
What's so spectacular about the piece is that it's in 5/4, a time signature which almost no pop music even begins to touch (besides Sunny Day Real Estate).
What's so spectacular about the piece is that it's in 5/4, a time signature which almost no pop music even begins to touch (besides Sunny Day Real Estate).

Tell Your Favourite Jokes Here!

dave brubeck the magic man. spreading magic in incomprehensible musical language. that nobody will ever understand. not even aliens!

Dave Brubeck, vanguard ringmaster of total serialism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C672_Fkzms&feature=youtube_gdata_player

this isn't about the camille paglia piece specifically but about this amazingly stupid junior high school paper-level response to it in LAist:

http://laist.com/2012/12/06/camille_paglia_rips_hollywood_a_new.php

Camille Paglia isn't known for being polite or couching her feminist arguments in niceties. In an opinion piece for The Hollywood Reporter, she keenly rips Taylor Swift and Katy Perry brand spanking new assholes, calling the singers "insipid" and "bleached-out" and saying that they and their ilk are ruining things for young women.

The piece itself is a little scattered, beginning by talking about how Perry and Swift are so bland as to vault feminism back about 60 years, then moving on to talk about how young middle-class white girls have sex these days without being considered rebellious, and wrapping up by saying that there aren't enough roles in Hollywood for older women in their 40s and 50s.

But in between all that, Paglia makes the correct point that watered down performers like Swift and Perry don't provide particularly interesting role models for girls, insofar as they seem to be more reflections of what society wants them to be than expressions of their own true selves.

The only catch? There are always artists like Perry and Swift out there, and they will probably never go away.

See, not everyone is a Camille Paglia. Some people take their music cookie-cutter because they are cookie-cutter themselves. And here's the thing -- that's OK. Just like not everyone will grow up to be a lawyer or a doctor, not everyone has the eclectic taste of a punk rocker, or a hip-hop head, or a connoisseur of electronic music.

In other words, some people like bland because they are bland. Writing a takedown piece of stars like Perry and Swift, who are harmless for all intents and purposes, just seems kind of unnecessary.

original CP piece here:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/taylor-swift-katy-perry-hollywood-398095

the kid mero is a top 5 twitter follow

Oof, that "The only catch?" followed hard by an "And here's the thing" in the unnecessary takedown of the unnecessary Camilia Paglia takedown. I hate that "it's just us talking over coffee" type writing.

that's just one of the most incredibly stupid and condescending bullshit pieces i've seen, shouldn't be surprised she writes for VVM too.

Chris Redfield 1 day ago in reply to Drrickey

Idiot. At 25 years of age, it is ENTIRELY LOGICAL to reason that our society is MORE DEGENERATE THAN EVER! I see it every day, ant its PAINFUL to witness other idiots like you insist "Wrong"

When I was young THE NATIONS YOUTH DANCED TO THE MACARANA (innocent), Today children know the lyrics, the dance/song to GANGSTER RAP (soldier boy, little wayne)- If you think this is an exaggeration, if you think this has no affect on our society- YOU NEED TO OPEN YOUR DAMN EYES.

When I was young THE NATIONS YOUTH DANCED TO THE MACARANA (innocent)

this is the most amazing comment ever

also I had never looked up a translation to The Macarena's lyrics before:

[Chorus:]
Give happiness to your body Macarena
'cause your body is for giving happiness and nice things to
Give happiness to your body Macarena
Heeey,... Macarena! Aaay!
(repeat once)

Macarena has a boyfriened who's called
who's called the last name Vitorino,
and while he was taking his oath as a conscript
she was giving it to two friends ...Aaay!
(repeat once)

(Chorus)

Macarena , Macarena , Macarena
you're popular the summers in Marbella
Macarena , Macarena , Macarena
you like the guerilla excesses ...Aaay!
(repeat once)

(Chorus)

Macarena dreams of the English Tailor*
and buys the latest models
She would like living in New York
and seduce a new boyfriend... Aaay!
(repeat once)

(Chorus)
http://lyricstranslate.com
http://lyricstranslate.com

xpost Seconding that, holy jeez.

YOU NEED TO ROLL YOUR DAMN EYES

everyone should end everything with YOU NEED TO OPEN YOUR DAMN EYES.

Macarena has a boyfriened who's called
who's called the last name Vitorino,
and while he was taking his oath as a conscript
she was giving it to two friends ...Aaay!

this does not sound innocent at all!!!

*blanches, fans self desperately*

You're an idiot. Any intelligent, college-educated woman knows Camille Paglia or should. Oh, I guess you are vapid too because someone told you to jsut stand there and be a girl. Wouldn't want you to create any controversy, let women have jobs, etc. Those two singing twits wouldn't be on stages now if not for strong women and feminists paving the way and instead they give away all their power as corporate shills. Women like YOU don't even know the difference, you foolish, TV babies! By the way, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift do not make MUSIC. They are performers and controlled dolls. End of story.

mixed signals there

haha that is terrible in exactly the opposite direction

that one is totes snl drunk girl at a party

Seems like Swift's ever-massing target audience identify with Swift as somebody bursting out of the cocoon, fighting the good and necessary fight as each and every girl-to-woman does, regardless of Feminism-per-se's landmark victories. Paglia and her critic should see this as the obvious pitch, whether they like the songs or not. Dunno wtf deal is w Perry.

she has a dazzling smile

Oof, that "The only catch?" followed hard by an "And here's the thing" in the unnecessary takedown of the unnecessary Camilia Paglia takedown. I hate that "it's just us talking over coffee" type writing.

― brio, Friday, December 7, 2012 2:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm otm otm otmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

stealing this dn before anyone else i hope

the kid mero hate in here is totally rong

^^^^

you know what, i'm gonna do that one two, we all should
in protest of the way people used to be

also, show me a piece by mero that has some merit?

Was Mero behind the fake Ghostface blog from a few years ago?

no, Big Ghostfase ripped off Mero's schtick

also, show me a piece by mero that has some merit?

― THE NATIONS YOUTH DANCED TO THE MACARANA (innocent) (forksclovetofu), Saturday, December 8, 2012 1:07 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

@THEKIDMERO

i don't remember saying that

tbh im p tired of his schtick too. i did like his response to this tho

http://victory-light.blogspot.com/2012/07/top-ten-reasons-this-guy-needs-to-gtfoh.html

the internet is so fucking full of so many of these identical contrived UNFILTERED ALL CAPS WILD MAN "personalities" and he's not even one of the more redeemable ones. even old school ilx troll Elli$ was funnier.

none of you guys like sports, which is another hurdle before you can love the kid mero

i dunno something like chris ryan's old "chauncey billups" blog could be wildly entertaining to me even when i had to google a lot of the sports stuff to understand it

oh i just mean his twitter account is the best when he's tweeting about sports

billups blog was kinda the OG tho, that shit was great

the all caps shit is dead, imo

basically never funny

seriously

uh i like sports

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/criq.12001/full

I die each time I hear this sound: Getting dumped and the pop song

I don't know whether to copy-paste this whole thing or just highlights but fyi it starts with Nick Hornby

-

Other songs are angrier, raging against the dumper, but still indicative of a dumpee with a profoundly unhealed heart. ‘Damn your love, damn your lies’, sings Stevie Nicks on Fleetwood Mac's ‘The Chain’ (1977). ‘Song for the Dumped’ (1997) by Ben Folds Five, similarly bitter, is dominated by its chorus:

Well fuck you too
Give me my money back
Give me my money back
You bitch
I want my money back
(And don't forget to give me back my black T-shirt)
Wrathful, obsessing over infuriating details, the song is directed at the dumper but dedicated (it's ‘Song for the Dumped’, after all) to the mass of the similarly dumped. I understand, the dumped call back; what a bitch! Other angry songs rail against the ex's new lover. ‘There are two people here’, Todd Trainer of post-hardcore band Shellac screams in their 2000 song ‘Prayer to God’, ‘and I want you to kill them’. The song aims its rage mostly at the new guy: ‘Fucking kill him, fucking kill him/ Kill him already, kill him’ is the refrain, cathartic and angry and totally heartbroken. These are songs for wallowing in and for shouting along to.

The angry song turned inside out becomes the I'm moving on song: singing as hopeful self-help. These songs often accompany a montage of post-dumping recuperation in a certain kind of rom-com. After being dumped yet again, Bridget Jones, for example, declares that ‘This time […] I choose vodka, and Chaka Khan’.[41] These are songs to rally to, summon your friends to, to help you forget you were ever in love in the first place. The apotheosis of the I'm moving on song is, of course, Gloria Gaynor's ‘I Will Survive’ (1978). Gaynor's lover ‘tried to hurt me with goodbye’. ‘It took all the strength I had not to fall apart’, she sings. ‘Kept tryin’ hard to mend the pieces of my broken heart’. But after ‘oh so many nights just feeling sorry for myself’ she started to think about ‘how you did me wrong’: she ‘grew strong’, and blossomed into the heroine of a disco classic.

Our appetite for these songs shows no signs of waning; in fact, we seem to need these songs more and more. A recent study analysing trends in pop music over the last fifty years has concluded that songs are getting sadder: slower, longer, more often in a minor key.[49] The lyrics have become ‘more self-focused and negative’, and the music ‘sadder-sounding and more emotionally ambiguous’, wrote the article's authors, a psychologist and a sociologist.[50] We have more misery in music than ever before. The sad song, the ‘dump’ that Nicholas Udall used in the sixteenth century to describe a heavy heart, has come back to life in the brokenhearted pop song.

It was pop music that both reflected and created the experience of the 1950s adolescent, and continues to score our romantic lives. The teenager arrived at the same time as the idea of being dumped, and the adolescent dating practices of the mid century have endured: the term ‘going steady’ may not be used these days but the model of having more than one serious relationship is the Western norm. We assume the experience, the relationship, will be repeated: and if there are to be multiple such relationships they necessarily have to end, perhaps in graceless break-up by dumping.

In its intensity, but also its disposability, the pop song reflects this string of heartbreaks that we all expect to have. And yet, for all its swooning brokenheartedness, pop retains the ideal of the one true love. In its happier moments pop music promises that the cycle of falling in love and falling out of it again will eventually end, that there'll be a happy ever after. At the end of High Fidelity, Rob is back with his girlfriend Laura. He's decided to commit to the woman he loves, and it seems as though his days of being dumped are over. He begins to compile a mixtape for her: a profoundly adolescent gesture, but at least the tape is ‘full of stuff she's heard of, and full of stuff she'd play’.[51] In the film version, we get to listen in to one of the tracks on the tape: Stevie Wonder's ‘I Believe’ (1972), a song that bemoans lost love (‘Life began, then was done’) at the same time as it hopes that this new relationship will be one to last. ‘I believe’, sings Stevie, ‘when I fall in love this time it will be for ever.’ That ‘this time’ may contain within it the hint of a ‘next time’, but pop music remains endlessly, repetitively hopeful that ‘this time’ it's going to work out. If not, though, we'll press play once more and do it, all of it, all over again.

xpost
i couldn't even read the annotated version.

I keep on meaning to start a blog for the free mag 'Brighton Unsigned'. If you think you've seen bad writing, I'm afraid you ain't seen nothin' yet.