As a die-hard pop music fan, I'm fairly convinced it can (and should) take on every topic imaginable. Incest, masturbation, abortion, the death penalty, racism -- they've all been covered in song to good effect. And yet oddly, our troubled times have yielded very little memorable music that addresses our national concerns head-on. Where, you may ask, have all the great protest songs gone?
While our summer multiplexes reflect America's significant societal changes since the 2001 terrorist attacks -- Spider-Man 2's brotherly-love Manhattan and Fahrenheit 9/11's stirring of pent-up rage and confusion -- the Billboard charts offer straight-up denial. (And when Jadakiss comes on the radio, his reference to Bush gets edited out.) Usher, Alicia Keys, Beyonce and the rest are reveling in pop's sweet escapism, its ability to streamline life's complexities into simple boy-girl love and dance-floor fun. And there's some great singles out there, to be sure. But when a great entertainment like Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban can also subtly reflect a culture's shared loss, well, can't somebody lay down a track that speaks to us in the same fashion?
That's part of the problem. The folks who have tried keep doing it wrong.
The most recent example is the Beastie Boys' nostalgic To the 5 Boroughs, an ode to New York and old-school rap before the World Trade Center collapsed, but it's far from the most egregious. Saluting the strength of their home city by falling back on easy '80s hip-hop references, the Beasties blast Bush in all the expected ways and unconvincingly assure the faithful that everything's gonna be OK. Not unlike Bruce Springsteen's ripped-from-the-headlines The Rising, 5 Boroughs deserves credit for its high intentions, but that doesn't keep it from feeling instantly dated. Reactionary to its core, 5 Boroughs consistently tempers its fun and good humor with its heavy burden. And, also like Springsteen, the Boys' colossal critical and commercial standing works against them, reducing their 9/11 response to something more sermon-on-the-mount than peer-to-peer. Since they're no longer quite feeling the pulse of the zeitgeist, it's easy to resist the platitudes of three very rich white guys trying to retain their market share.
But don't assume I feel any glee in delivering that opinion. Like most everyone else in the 18-34 demographic, I see my life almost divided into two distinct sections: pre-9/11 and post-9/11. And I'm desperately craving entertainment that speaks to the uncomfortable post-9/11 feeling taking over me with disturbing familiarity -- this surety that we're going to be warring with terrorists for years to come, this belief that we aren't gonna feel safe for quite some time, no matter who wins the election in November. But when pop tries to address these issues, we get awkward music. And part of the difficulty comes in the baggage the artist brings to the mic.
Thus far, we've had mostly major stars sounding off on the post-9/11 era: Toby Keith, Alan Jackson, Madonna, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, R.E.M., John Mellencamp, Springsteen. And none of them have been able to escape the trappings of "Hey, I'm a celebrity, so here's what I think about all this." Rather than organically insert their messages into a terrific piece of music, they barrel headlong into the discussion, turning self-indulgent and preachy. Even when Jackson admits to a common-man lack of understanding in the differences in Iraq and Iran, there nevertheless exists an assumed superiority in the music. The singer is more famous than we are; he has the recording contract, we don't, and therein lies a big difference.
Ultimately, the voices we may be seeking are the ones whose names we don't know. Which is why Brian Henneman may have written the best 9/11 song thus far.
Last year, he and his hardly famous band, Bottle Rockets, released Blue Sky another sturdy effort from the roots-rock/alt-country group. On there was a track called "Baggage Claim," a ballad whose narrator was waiting for his gal's flight to arrive. Wistful and anxious, he remembers a time when they used to meet right off the plane. Teasing out a beautifully romantic country melody, Henneman balances his affection for his lover with sadness at the end of a universally shared public memory: the separated couple embracing passionately at the terminal. Now, he must wait at the impersonal, cheerless baggage claim with everybody else, which is a deeply unromantic moment for anyone who knows how it used to be.
Without ever mentioning Iraq, Iran, Saddam, Osama, Bush, or Ashcroft, Henneman encapsulates the essence of how all our lives have fundamentally changed since 9/11. In a basic, everyday way, we have had to alter our daily routine, probably forever. The Bottle Rockets don't blame anyone and they don't preach; the singer barely even gets that worked up over his casual observation. But it's there nonetheless. With a simple ballad, he subverts one of country's enduring themes -- the reunion of lovers -- and adds a topical poignancy that is all the more moving for how understated it is.
Henneman does what Springsteen used to be able to conjure effortlessly, a narrative of normal individuals whose existence has been shaped by events beyond their power or sometimes comprehension. Hence, Bruce's Reagan-dissing Nebraska towers above The Rising because its creator feels human-sized. (And, remember, Springsteen was already a significant star in the early '80s when he released it.) Likewise, the stealth of commentary in '87's Document succeeded at least partially because R.E.M. wasn't a household name yet. Rather than resembling long-winded op-ed pieces like so many recent knee-jerk protest songs, these albums (not to mention "Baggage Claim") feel like reports from the front line, touched by realism. Similarly, Steve Earle's 9/11 album Jerusalem sometimes suffered from pedantry, but he managed to bang out a couple winners such as "Ashes to Ashes" and "Conspiracy Theory," which used extreme narrators to speak to the ever-growing paranoia infesting our country since the terrorist attacks and Patriot Act took hold.
This need for a little hard-earned reality in popular music has been felt in other art forms as well, often with the same sort of dire necessity. A quick comparison should underline the rewards to be found from laying off on the preaching.
Writer Tom Wolfe has long argued that the novel must embrace the mess of real life in order for it to stay relevant in contemporary culture. In fact, he criticized insular, shut-off authors -- rich, famous, smug, fat with reputation and prestige -- for no longer examining "the lurid carnival of American life." These tired old relics, he argued, had become irrelevant, stodgy. They weren't interested in connecting; they merely wanted to talk down to their lowly readers.
It's just as true in popular music. Our wealthiest singer-songwriters may still care, but they no longer possess rock 'n' roll's fundamentally underdog, outsider vitality. That's why their work -- To the 5 Boroughs, The Rising, even Young's ambitious and gutsy Greendale- -- don't quite resonate. Regarding literature's similar identity crisis, Wolfe fought for the so-called "journalistic novel" and he quoted Alfred Kazin to prove his point: "The greatest single fact about our modern American literature [is] our writers' absorption in every last detail of their American world together with their deep and subtle alienation from it."
No one's holding popular music up to the same level as the novel, but it does suggest what we've been missing since 9/11. We need more Bottle Rockets, more artists willing to share narratives and anecdotes -- rather than self-satisfied first-person commentaries -- which can begin to capture the essence of our modern era. This is not to say that great pop songs like "Cry Me a River," "In Da Club," and "Yeah!" must be banished from our consciousness. (If we no longer want to shake our asses, then indeed the Rumsfelds have won.) But we also need powerful documents of our time; we need our There's a Riot Goin' On and Fear of a Black Planet and Born in the U.S.A. and OK Computer. We need a series of time capsules, powered by visionary artists in their prime who, maybe unaware of just how profoundly they're touching a societal chord, leave a musical legacy of the post-9/11 age. Thus far, we have had noble attempts by well-pocketed stars, but their lack of a common touch has robbed them of insight.
Rock music has forever been both absorbed in (and alienated from) the American world. What I want now is a handful of great albums I can play for later generations when they ask me "What was 9/11 like?" I'll put on those records, turn up the volume, and say, "It was like this."
And then they'll know.
