Category Archives: music

Let Me Tell You “What Happened To Music?”

I enjoy a pretty broad range of music. It’s not just severe differences in genre [from Joshua Radin’s “Winter” to “Squeeze Me” by Kraak and Smaak], it’s stuff that spans several generations. From Elvis Presley to The Mamas & The Papas to Marvin Gaye, all can be my go-to depending on the day and my mood. In fact, it’s that appreciation for tunes through the decades that helps me enjoy so much of what’s on the cdza [or collectivecadenza] YouTube channel.

This isn’t a Fame Day post, so I’m not going to regale you all on why it’s so great. What I am going to do, however, is direct you to the very first video I saw by them. It’s called “History of Wooing Men”:

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Culture War Correspondence: Music – Catchiness vs. Content

KAT: Greetings friends! Tonight Evan and I bring you a topic that is close to the heart of anyone with the ability to hear (or feel vibrations): music.

EVAN: In particular, we’ll be discussing lyrics, appropriate since I can just barely sound out “Amazing Grace” on the piano. As far as pop music goes nowadays the words our favourite artists are singing are not always ones we can agree with.

It’s why this version of a certain Robin Thicke song is the only one I can listen to with a clean conscience:


KAT:
 It’s also why I just can’t enjoy jamming out to Rihanna and Eminem’s romanticization of domestic abuse (“Love The Way You Lie”). Continue reading

The Context and Cultural Appropriation of Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty” Music Video

To begin with, I’m not the most unbiased person to be writing about this. “Sk8ter Boi” came out when I was attending a Canadian public school for the first time, and it had a fairly indelible effect on me. My being a fan of Avril Lavigne extended out into high school, and I can still remembering a friend getting me Let Go for my fourteenth birthday. As far as I’m concerned, some of her stuff continues to hold up.

Like most people I liked Under My Skin a fair amount, but wasn’t a huge fan of The Best Damn Thing. Watching the punk-pop star cavort around to the infectious beat felt wrong, like this was some sort of betrayal of who she started as. Of course, people change, and I eventually came around to tracks like “Hot” and “What the Hell”.

Years passed, and eventually she fell off my radar. I noted when she and Deryck Whibley of Sum 41 got a divorce and gawked at her marriage to the widely reviled Chad Kroeger of Nickelback. They recorded a song together and I thought not much of it.

Then I woke up one morning and signed online to a barrage of accusations leveled against her with “racist!” being the common denominator among them. Being fairly invested in this entire thing [as a lapsed Avril Lavigne fan and a person in staunch opposition to racism in any form] I of course had to check out the “Hello Kitty” music video post-haste. I do want to inform you all that I’ve had to watch it several times for the writing of this post and have not enjoyed it once.

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2 Music Videos That Flipped The Sexual Script [And Failed]

People have been flipping gender roles and sexual scripts for longer back than I care to research. It’s as simple as a sitcom depicting a wife coming back from a long day’s work and her husband meeting her with a pair of slippers and the evening paper. “This doesn’t match up with life as we know it to be!” the audience thinks. They shake their heads, they laugh, they go on with their lives.

Since then we’ve arguably become more open-minded, largely due to pop culture that communicates that women can in fact have professional careers, men can be sentimental and form embarrassingly close relationships with one another, et cetera. That obviously doesn’t mean that there aren’t certain areas that overall continue to be stuck in trends others are making moves to abandon. Take for example, an art form I’ve barely if ever discussed: music videos. Continue reading

Fame Day: Tom Morello

If a musician’s Wikipedia article features more about his activist work than about his music, do we really still classify him as a musician?

That’s the riddle Tom Morello poses us, and not one we’re going to be exploring. As far as we’re concerned, Morello wouldn’t be Morello without one or the other- and rest assured we’re going to be saluting both here today.

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Falling Off the Hate Bandwagon

Last week I touched on writing about [and off] that which we have not personally experienced ourselves and that while we can, doing so can damage our credibility and rob us of what we may actually enjoy. Somewhere in that mess of words I mentioned that basing our opinions on the judgements of others [specifically when they’re negative] is not the greatest. The thing is, it happens all of the time.

An example I brought up in that last post was Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, a show I had despised before ever watching an episode. Of course, my hatred for it was tailored by such gifs as this:

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