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August 30, 2003
Pop Muzik
I realized a long time ago that I am getting old. I realized for the first time last night that this is not such a bad thing.
We watched the MTV Video Music Awards. The only reason I even paid attention was because I was hoping that one of my all-time favorites, the legendary Johnny Cash, would win Video of the Year for "Hurt," and there would be one of those transcendent moments in music history; an ailing legend upsetting today's flashes in the pan, and making his way on stage to a standing ovation and show of respect that would make a music fan proud of this generation for recognizing the pioneers, and would make anyone with an emotional side well up with tears. Once I saw "Hurt," I was sure it would happen - for the video is an amazing piece of film work.
As anyone who watched the show by now knows, Missy "In 5 Years, I'll be asking if you want fries with that" Elliott won. Other than Madonna and Britney tongue kissing during the opening number - a beautiful and transcendent moment in itself! - the entire show was a waste of time and an homage to useless music by disposable and forgettable flavors of the week.
Things like this used to piss me off; this was one of the quickest ways to get me to go off on one of my patented rants. Missy Elliott - who is so unintelligible that the chorus of her song sounds like a tape being played backwards - and Justin "Who Was Leif Garrett?" Timberlake over a god of music like Johnny Cash?? Have these people NO sense of perspective? But then it hit me. Yes, they do have a sense of perspective: the perspective of the young.
Young people don't revere the idols of previous generations; they create their own - some deserving, many not. And they certainly don't understand or appreciate pioneers and legends. To appreciate such artists, they have to have been exposed to more than Top 40 pop or hip-hop. And that only comes with age and experience.
It's no different than when I was younger. I could not have cared less who Bob Dylan or Crosby Stills & Nash were. I'd heard the Beatles and Stones, of course, but they didn't hold a candle in mind to NEW bands like U2, or R.E.M., or even Guns N Roses. 60s music sucked. Anything that wasn't rock sucked. Johnny Cash? He was just that wannabe rebel who dressed in black that my dad liked and who sang (yuck!) COUNTRY.
Of course, I know better now. My life has been enriched for the experience of learning the music of Johnny Cash, of B.B. King, of Albert Collins, of Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck, Willie Nelson, Nina Simone, Etta James... and Bob Dylan, Crosby Stills and Nash, and the Beatles. I see music for what it is: the irrepressible expression of the joy of the human soul, and the comfort of knowing that somewhere out there, someone wrote a song that SPEAKS to you, making you just a little less alone in the world - because somewhere, at least one songwriter GOT what it's like to be you.
I didn't have that perspective when I was 17. Or 20. But I have it now, and that's okay, because I earned that perspective through living a life. Today's kids - the ones who screamed excitedly for Good Charlotte and Beyonce last night - will someday too laugh at the fact that they once thought "Work It" was a great song, just like I laugh at myself now for once thinking "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" was poetry. But they'll have to earn that perspective just as I have, and as countless generations before mine did. And that's exactly how it should be.
As I thought about this last night, it was actually comforting. I'm not "old," I am more complete - not yet the man I will someday become, but certainly more than the boy I once was. I actually LIKE my perspective compared to that of MTV's target audience. Rather than being depressed over having outgrown not just MTV but pop music in general, I am grateful. And, I'm even willing to let it slide that MTV didn't give me my transcendent moment last night. Maybe they weren't supposed to after all. After all, I'm not their audience anymore.
And that's okay.
