PubliCola Adds Life
And We Have a Winner. The 2000s Explained! Free Tix to Bumbershoot.
We're not sure we agree with his taste in music, and for what it's worth, long before System of a Down's "B.Y.O.B.," Black Sabbath had a lyric from 1970 that went like this:
Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.
but nonetheless, we're loving our winner, Charles Trillingham's comprehensive look at the 2000s.
Charles wins a pair of passes to Bumbershoot! The previous winning essays on the '90s, '80s, and '70s are here . Hope you all enjoy this weekend's shows. And thanks everybody for all the essays.
On to this week's winner:
The 2000s marked the beginning of problems like we've never seen, and
year after year, the musical landscape changed in drastic ways.
2000 marked a wakeup call for kids after the previous years massacre
at Columbine, and who blew up more than Eminem, who's second album
"The Marshal Mathers LP" because arguably the most debated,
criticized, and revered albums of all-time, and was as unique and
explosive as it was original. But other than a few lines in the song
"The Way I Am" where he raps "And they blame it on Marilyn/And the
heroin/Where were the parents at?/And look where it's at/Middle
America, now it's a tragedy/Now it's so sad to see/An upper-class
city/having this happening", the album is not overtly political.
Hip-hop in general took on a dance vibe as it shifted to the South,
and sure, Kanye West said "President Bush hates Black People" after
Hurricane Katrina, but other than "Diamonds from Sierra Leone", he
doesn't really draw any hard lines of influence based on the times,
and by the pure amount of sampling he did, you couldn't call him
unprecedented. Same goes for say the "White Stripes", a band steeped
in a musical sound unheard of for decades, when they became political
with the hit "icky thump" and the line "White Americans/What? Nothin'
better to do?/Why don't you kick yourself out/You're an immigrant
too".
And let's not be silly and say the girl pop explosions following 9/11
had a bit of influence, other than to bring the push-up bra, forever
21, and a "mean girls" mentality to 12-year-olds across the country.
So if there's one kind of music, one band, one style, that you might
point to as both influential, original, explosive politically, and
born out of the last decade, the answer has to be "System Of A Down."
A mix of metal and melody combined with an opera singer on lead vocals
made for an indefinable sound, but it was the lyrics that you couldn't
ignore. Take the song "B.Y.O.B." for instance and the lines "Why
don't Presidents fight the war/Why do they always send the poor?".
There is no doubting the rage is over the Iraq War, and President
Bush's leadership. Arguably the biggest hit "Chop Suey" even
delivered the band a lot of flack over the line "Self-righteous
suicide" because it was on the radio after 9/11, even though it was
written before that.
In 2002, the band named its record "Steal This Album", a direct
reference to the revolution happening online with the rise and fall of
Napster and illegal downloads. Toxicity speaks of the digital
culture, the idea of people going "mainstream" and rejecting
individuality.
Even when the bands lead singer made his solo album in 2007, it still
sounded like System of the Down, and it brought along with it the song
"Empty Walls." One look at that video, from its opening shot of
Homeland Security's color chart of terror, to the child's toy airplane
crashing into the building block "towers", to the toppling of a bear
in the same manner as Saddam's statue, and you have almost an entire
decade of issues encapsulated in three minutes and 55 seconds.
A unique sound, combined with messages delivered song after song like
a punch to the face, makes this one band that exploded onto the scene
because of the times, not in spite of them.
Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.
but nonetheless, we're loving our winner, Charles Trillingham's comprehensive look at the 2000s.
Charles wins a pair of passes to Bumbershoot! The previous winning essays on the '90s, '80s, and '70s are here . Hope you all enjoy this weekend's shows. And thanks everybody for all the essays.
On to this week's winner:
The 2000s marked the beginning of problems like we've never seen, and
year after year, the musical landscape changed in drastic ways.
2000 marked a wakeup call for kids after the previous years massacre
at Columbine, and who blew up more than Eminem, who's second album
"The Marshal Mathers LP" because arguably the most debated,
criticized, and revered albums of all-time, and was as unique and
explosive as it was original. But other than a few lines in the song
"The Way I Am" where he raps "And they blame it on Marilyn/And the
heroin/Where were the parents at?/And look where it's at/Middle
America, now it's a tragedy/Now it's so sad to see/An upper-class
city/having this happening", the album is not overtly political.
Hip-hop in general took on a dance vibe as it shifted to the South,
and sure, Kanye West said "President Bush hates Black People" after
Hurricane Katrina, but other than "Diamonds from Sierra Leone", he
doesn't really draw any hard lines of influence based on the times,
and by the pure amount of sampling he did, you couldn't call him
unprecedented. Same goes for say the "White Stripes", a band steeped
in a musical sound unheard of for decades, when they became political
with the hit "icky thump" and the line "White Americans/What? Nothin'
better to do?/Why don't you kick yourself out/You're an immigrant
too".
And let's not be silly and say the girl pop explosions following 9/11
had a bit of influence, other than to bring the push-up bra, forever
21, and a "mean girls" mentality to 12-year-olds across the country.
So if there's one kind of music, one band, one style, that you might
point to as both influential, original, explosive politically, and
born out of the last decade, the answer has to be "System Of A Down."
A mix of metal and melody combined with an opera singer on lead vocals
made for an indefinable sound, but it was the lyrics that you couldn't
ignore. Take the song "B.Y.O.B." for instance and the lines "Why
don't Presidents fight the war/Why do they always send the poor?".
There is no doubting the rage is over the Iraq War, and President
Bush's leadership. Arguably the biggest hit "Chop Suey" even
delivered the band a lot of flack over the line "Self-righteous
suicide" because it was on the radio after 9/11, even though it was
written before that.
In 2002, the band named its record "Steal This Album", a direct
reference to the revolution happening online with the rise and fall of
Napster and illegal downloads. Toxicity speaks of the digital
culture, the idea of people going "mainstream" and rejecting
individuality.
Even when the bands lead singer made his solo album in 2007, it still
sounded like System of the Down, and it brought along with it the song
"Empty Walls." One look at that video, from its opening shot of
Homeland Security's color chart of terror, to the child's toy airplane
crashing into the building block "towers", to the toppling of a bear
in the same manner as Saddam's statue, and you have almost an entire
decade of issues encapsulated in three minutes and 55 seconds.
A unique sound, combined with messages delivered song after song like
a punch to the face, makes this one band that exploded onto the scene
because of the times, not in spite of them.
