Article Response: Music used to make you miserable, now it makes you STRONG!

"But don't forget the songs
That made you cry
And the songs that saved your life
Yes, you're older now
And you're a clever swine
But they were the only ones who ever stood by you"

Besides which, implying that hip-hop and techno etc. can only talk about positive activity with a capital A (or that somehow the modern Rave Massive or whatever is miraculously bereft of anything like self-doubt, insecurity, depression, sadness, etc.) is the sign of somebody without a clue. At all. If that's meant to be his glibness, it's also pretty cruel.

On the other hand I am a lot happier now I listen to much less indie music. I have no idea whether or not the two things are linked but it does occur to me that much of the music I was enjoying was in a way leading me to fetishise romantic crisis and existential pain, and had in some ways become a barrier as much as a coping mechanism.

(Pedantic Admin: "Article Response" I usually keep for FT stuff so that people can find FT response threads more easily. Having other articles in doesn't detract from that really but it might not be the first place people look if it's not linked to an FT piece)

Hm...I guess the question then becomes, what were you listening to it for? I don't mean that dismissively, but sounds like you were listening to it more for lyrics than music (my own personal bugaboo, but that's pretty obvious!).

ohshitsorry. my bad. [slaps own wrist] i'll go now...

Actually a very wise decision! ;-)

for me the two are sometimes separable, sometimes not: with the case of most of this stuff they weren't. I was listening to them for songs, in other words.

No, more than fair. I guess to more grapple with the discussion as the piece would have it, I find the argument that somehow things are *now* all uniquely happy and shiny is unusual -- it's hardly the case that the charts in the eighties were an endless slough of despond, for instance.

difficult it is to wallow in a Smithsian melancholic haze when you've got Nelly'n'Kelly gettin' it on all over daytime radio...

Nelly wakes up in a cold sweat over the fact he didn't "Let me get my hands/On your mammary glands"