Thursday, July 24, 2014

Humiliation:

When your 13-year-old daughter catches you listening to a song by One Direction.

And mocks you.


5 comments:

heresolong said...

I actually commented the other day to some friends that I liked this song. No idea, of course, who it was by. Think being mocked by a 13 year old is bad, try being mocked by a bunch of bikers.

heresolong said...

Whoops. Premature click.

I wonder how much music (and other stuff) we dismiss because of who the performer is.

Dr. Φ said...

Well said.

As I blogged awhile back, I'm a fan of Kurt Hugo Schneider's arrangements and productions in general. In this case, the original is also pretty good, but after listening to a selection of their other work, I've concluded that it must be the only one.

It suddenly occurred to me that there is a parallel between my daughter's dismissive attitude towards any music by One Direction and my own decision to ban Lady Gaga and Katy Perry from the house based on what I know of their work in general. "But this one song isn't bad!" is not a distinction I was especially interested in making after having looked up the lyrics to, say, "California Gurls".

heresolong said...

I had that discussion with my youngest stepson when he was about thirteen and listening to Eminem. I wrote out some lyrics that were pretty offensive to women and showed them to him, suggested that he might want to think about who this was directed towards (his mother, for example). He came back with the "I don't really listen to the words" but I didn't hear Eminem coming from his room as much after that.

Dr. Φ said...

"I don't listen to the words." Exactly what my daughter said, and I said at her age. Of course, we all were listening to the words, though perhaps not understanding them, and certainly not engaging them on an intellectual level. Rather, we experience the music on a visceral level. But I'm not sure that's an improvement.

As an aside, she came to me last year sometime with a request for an Eminem track. I remember the controversy when Eminem appeared, what, going on 20 years ago, so I was skeptical. But after watching the video I said, well, the song is dark, but not immoral. Or rather, expressing the pain and consequences of immorality rather than celebrating it. So the track got a pass.