the 1975

I also have a kneejerk response to a bunch of men telling me what the appropriate way to feel about other men glibly quoting that sexual assault tape is — and I haven’t even touched the “suffocate the black men” line

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 4:56 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i havent told you how to feel about anything?? im defending other possible interpretations, and arguing that your interpretation is coming from a place of misunderstanding what it's attempting in the first place... you can draw the exact same conclusion (ie that it fails at doing what I think it's aiming for) but it seems like you're denying the *very possibility* of other interpretations

like, how do you respond to an argument that it's not attempting irony? you just seem to reassert that, actually, it is attempting irony

The vaporwave bridge, these dudes are the /b/lue nile

or you acknowledge that maybe it is, in fact, attempting irony, i.e. not do the very thing you are accusing me of

like the fact that it supposedly isn’t, in this thread, is being taken as such a given that anyone who disagrees is obviously a troll/not in good faith

thanks kevin ... until the end of time katherine is going to keep arguing that everyone thinks she's a troll

i dont think you're a troll, but you definitely remind me of eeyore

there wouldn’t be a need to argue it were it not said, repeatedly and unsolicitedly

anyway I hope none of you ever post in that "why don't women post on ILX" thread because this is a perfect example of why

hmm

seems like you guys are hardening your positions based on miscommunication

sorry, cheap joke

tim f otm

my position is entirely based on being dragged, by name and Googleably, into a thread that I did not ask or want to be dragged into, over a blurb I wrote for a different website. and then, because I happened to think the song is a bad song, I get called a troll, insane, and listening/posting in bad faith because I think this is a bad song, unlistenable and cluttered as a piece of music, and toxic irony poisoning as a lyric, and that I would rather drown myself in a pool of acid than listen to men glibly quote the Billy Bush tape, "satire" or not. and then a bunch of dudes yell at me some more over that.

i think yer dope katherine fwiw, fuck this drivel

i didnt call you insane, ftr... i said a particular argument that you were quoting was insane, then backpedaled bc it seemed to make you upset & said that if you prefer, to assume i said it made me feel insane

(I also can't help but note that six other writers also disliked this song for largely the same reasons, yet I'm expected to believe that this interpretation is bad faith and unreasonable, because ???)

the reason i kept saying 'bad faith' is bc any time someone said anything that could be remotely interpreted as a personal dig you attach yourself to like its your personal brand so as to appear maximally persecuted

and if i sound mean right now, im legit sorry, bc im really not!! wanting to pick on you, and i actually do appreciate contributions of yours to many conversations, i just struggle w this concept of "toxic irony poisoning"

that post you just made is a perfect example of bad faith

this band isn't particularly ironic imo. can i be threadbanned from my own thread now

haven't liked any songs so far from what is presumably their upcoming album

i dont think you're an insane troll; that's never been the gist of anyone's real argument

i think the interpretive framework you've brought to this song difficult to digest bc it doesn't reflect my experience of the record, irrespective of the record's quality as a piece of art

"reading this song as flat edgy "irony" misunderstands its effect imo .... the song is a harrowing feeling of being overwhelmed by disgusting popular culture mixed w politics & the current condition, & it captures that feeling in song, i don't think its supposed to be 'ironic', he is not being a mouthpiece for his own point of view (sincere or ironic), he is creating an artistic effect that is reminiscent of being bombarded with fucked up headlines & the entire subtext is "the world feels fucked and the feelings it creates are difficult to wrap your head around but this approximates the feeling" imo"

The additional thing I'd say is that I think there is a sense in which Katherine and the reviewer (Iain?) she is quoting are correct in saying "ironic slogans are still slogans": for me, one of the things that this song is about is the idea that contemporary society reduces the world to a permanent state of "We Didn't Start The Fire" - and whether Matt is a mouthpiece for the phrases in the lyrics or not is actually complex question. In my view the song is not merely about being overwhelmed by disgusting popular culture and current politics, but also about being implicated by them, about the fact that you cannot participate in popular culture while also holding yourself apart from all the toxic stuff and say "but I am not responsible for that". So you could say of the criticism "ironic slogans are still slogans", "yes, that is precisely what this song is about".

― Tim F, Thursday, August 16, 2018 5:52 PM (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really well said tim, thank you

except that the point of "ironic slogans are still slogans" is that regardless of how they are meant, I still have to listen to them

the framing tim is describing is not 'irony,' though

if there's an interpretation of "poison me daddy" that isn't ironic I'd sure love to hear it

(which was sarcasm, I would not in fact love to hear it)

and I have a kneejerk response to the idea that just because someone is attempting social commentary, I am obliged to find it successful, or something I want to listen to, or that I am unreasonable or operating in bad faith if I in fact dislike it. particularly when it involves a man glibly singing the words of trump bragging about getting away with sexual assault — by these standards, that alex jones to the music thing of bon iver meme is also great music.

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 5:54 PM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no, you are expected to engage and assume good faith

I didn't ask to engage

once again, I would have been perfectly happy never talking about this band that I dislike to a bunch of stans, but I made the mistake of reviewing it as part of my regular reviews cycle on an entirely different website

if there's an interpretation of "poison me daddy" that isn't ironic I'd sure love to hear it

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Thursday, August 16, 2018 5:51 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why is 'poison me daddy' objectionable to you again

because it's obnoxious

appropriates and kinkshames the poison culture depicted in the film ‘The Phantom Thread’

there's lots of weird assumptions throughout the jukebox blurbs... the idea that healy "finds joy in crassly exploiting tragedy," idk just seems like people are bringing lots of baggage to bear here. also lots of weird projection that to me seems derived from the fact that a lot of writers nowadays have trouble seeing the world outside of the internet... i.e. multiple invocations of the phrase "hot takes," which to 98% of the people who will hear this song/band is completely meaningless and not a useful/informative concept at all. but this is why most criticism sucks nowadays. iain's blurb basically admits that he can't enjoy the song because he spends too much time online -- this is not the band's fault! (also btw something they write about frequently with both insight and wit). i would encourage ppl who find their enjoyment of art to be effected by how much time they spend on twitter to quit using it. it's not worth it.

but i can't say i'm completely athwart from katherine... the emotional crescendo of the song is kicked off by "i moved on her like a bitch" and it's not something i personally scream along to at the top of my lungs for obvious reasons. and of course the band exists to attract divisiveness, their every move is almost lab-created to bait a certain segment of the population into calling bullshit on them, so that a lot of people (at least on singles jukebox) are calling bullshit on this song of all songs is not very surprising.

but the idea that the song is ironic in any way is funny to me... i don't find it irony poisoned at all, in fact the opposite, and to me reading irony poisoning into it is evidence of one's own fatal dosage. healy has said as much about cynicism/sincerity when it comes to this album & of course no one is forced to believe him but i buy the performance of the song as earnest and pained, conveying suffocation and mania but also a sort of desperately resigned hope that well maybe we will just happen to make it through all this. it me baby.

and i guess as far as the more bait-y aspects of the song -- invoking lil peep, trump, kanye etc -- i find that stuff to be tempered by what i think is rather well rendered social commentary in the format of pop music, especially contemporarily. i'm interested in why katherine is stuck on the "suffocate the black men" line... the full lyric is "selling melanin and then suffocate the black men / start with misdemeanors and we'll make a business out of it"... personally i find it to be pretty efficient and effective songwriting about america's relationship to black people and culture. i'm ok with pop music addressing & indicting private prisons! the lyric "the war has been incited and guess what you're all invited / and you're famous, modernity has failed us" to me is another sober tempering of the more theatrical political provocations elsewhere in the song -- it's a completely accurate reading of modern society to me & a more literal but also still subtle enough (to me) invoking of a general sense of helplessness that, again imo, resonates generationally.

so anyway i think this is one of the only political resonant pieces of art in any medium in the last two years. that it's a mix of ridiculousness and seriousness is what makes this band churn, and thus what explains where the majority of this thread falls on it in comparison to interlopers. but i love it so.

well "poison me daddy" is def ironic but it's also funny

but you know as it pertains to "poison me daddy" the guy was actually a heroin addict & i choose to read the lyric as a sly little commentary on the prescription opiate industry. or maybe it's about feeling like you must be strapped into the news. idk. i like that lyric a lot.

as far as the "suffocate the black men" line, because that verse starts "we're fucking in a car... saying controversial things for the hell of it" and never switches tense off the "we." so the speaker ends up, essentially, role-playing the aforementioned private prison dude, in a context that sure seems celebratory, or ironically celebratory, and also just mentioned saying controversial things for the hell of it.

I don't think this is malicious, per se -- I think it's just lazy, possibly unedited songwriting. and the laziness would be bad enough on its own, but in this case it's a white dude play-acting someone bragging about suffocating black men. like, if you're going to take on this particular subject matter then you should probably use some amount of care and thought to make sure you're not inadvertently celebrating it.

one person's "play acting someone bragging about suffocating black men" is another person's acknowledgement of complicity

i can see how someone would find it jarring out of context or hearing people sing along with it, or dislike it for that reason, and that's a completely legitimate reaction; i just stumble at the point where someone would argue that's the effect of the song when understood in full, when the lyrics are laid out, when someone hears the effect of the whole song

i cant help but feel condescended to when im told im supposed to dislike this, like i cant make the cognitive leaps required without someone holding my hand to say (and it's bad that society is like this)

I'm not saying anyone is "supposed" to dislike it, but I am getting the opposite impression from this thread in general

xp -- the "crassly exploiting tragedy" line I took to be a reference to the line in "Give Yourself a Try" about a fan committing suicide

it def feels like an implicit judgement of anyone who might interpret it this way when you're arguing that a 'slogan is a slogan' & there could not possibly be any kind of mitigating context

i think to even find any inadvertent celebration in that line to be a very classic example of reading in *coughs up enormous fur ball* bad faith

to me the narrator's POV switches every bar -- first from that of a junkie (i think the "saying controversial things just for the hell of it" line heavily implies that healy, though a junkie, is not talking about himself but instead a specific sort of disaffected youth); then to both a more general and then specific rendering of white profiteers (i read "selling melanin" to not be literal in the sense of i.e. slavery but more of a commentary on how black culture is still mostly subservient to white capitalism, which leads into the more literal application of that theory as it pertains to private prisons); then to just like the every day citizen who is having their world both personally and generally being cleaved apart by social media; and then to someone in a specific current day political position who might say "truth is only hearsay". at no point personally do i ever read any celebration into any of these POVs, intentional or otherwise.

i do adore this band more than almost anything so maybe i'm willing to give healy a long leash, but that's how i break it down to an extent. i just think it's really really good political pop songwriting.

More like Maga Healy

for approximately the millionth time, what I meant when I said I agreed with that line is that no matter what one means when they quote “I moved on her like a bitch,” they are still quoting it. (I almost put in my blurb how this does the same thing as “Royals,” in that even though you’re singing a bunch of brand names to criticize them, you are still deploying them to create a catchy hook — I left it out because it seemed tacked on and also I can’t remember where/if I read it somewhere, but it’s having your cake and eating it.)

I think Katherine’s take is fair even if I have a different one.

I do think the opening line is not intended to be a frame for the rest of the song but Jordan’s excellent post above explains that better than I could I think.

As in, I understand considering this song to be trying to have its cake and eat it too.

can we go back to never mentioning me in this thread and my never having to think about this terrible band again

the only thing I have to say re: "poison me daddy" it that it makes me think of all the "ironic" (but not actually that ironic because the future is bleak and terrifying) "I want to die" / suicide memes. I find the irony level tough to gauge as a result.