Meditations on the Rise of Bro-Country, the Death of Rock and Roll

No song better epitomizes current-era country music than Jason Aldean's “She's Country.” The song's in-earnest beginning is an extraordinarily simple riff which is more in the vain of AC/DC than of Conway Twitty. The lyrics are a mix of southern regionalisms (this girl is apparently from 7-8 different states, depending on which “Brunswick” you interpret as the location mentioned in the song) and the new country cliches (jacked-up trucks, mildly sexist tropes about how the titular daddy's girl couldn't afford to add her own pointless accessories to her truck, cowboy boots; you know, store-bought things to convey what kind of person you are). If “She's Country” had been released in 2014 or 2015 rather than in 2008, it would be assumed to be a parody of, say, Luke Bryan's “That's My Kind of Night” or Florida Georgia Line's entire catalog. It is the definitive modern country song. And you know the weirdest part? It's not even a country song.

At least not in the traditional sense it isn't. It's a rock song. This is the sort of thing that annoys rock fans to hear, so let me be perfectly clear—it's not a good rock song. Just like it's not a good country song, in a universe where it's labeled a country song at all (so, this one, I guess). But songs along the line of this have always existed. They just weren't performed by “country” artists. Last year, I heard a bar band perform “She's Country” within a song or two of performing “We're An American Band” by Grand Funk Railroad, from 1973 and categorized by both Wikipedia and everybody I've ever met as a hard rock song, and it felt right that this band was performing the two songs together. A band like Grand Funk Railroad would be the ones doing this song in 1973 if that's when it were written. Or maybe Nazareth. Or, in a moment of weakness, Thin Lizzy or Bad Company. But hard rock bands in this sense do not exist anymore.

When people speak of Nirvana's impact on music, it's often reduced to “it killed hair metal.” But it also killed the notion of a rock star being a desirable thing. Which is a shame, because while Bret Michaels might make being a rock star look boring, Freddie Mercury made it look utterly amazing. Ironically, it's less the actual actions of Kurt Cobain (while he may not have been a dynamic rock star in the mold of Mercury or even Bono, that's just who he was—it's not as though he actively campaigned against specific artists) and more the narrative. It's been 21 ½ years since Kurt Cobain died and there still aren't rock stars in the literal sense (well, not literally rocks, but you know). Liam Gallagher had the stage presence but also had an ambivalence to his fans, though at least it wasn't the contempt of Axl Rose. Billie Joe Armstrong never had the transcendence to go beyond his own guitar to truly reach a screaming crowd. The closest thing to a “rock star” post-Cobain, ironically, is his former bandmate, Dave Grohl. And the Foo Fighters are an rare example of a band that's allowed to just be a hard rock band without being tangibly “alternative”. I suppose they got grandfathered in. But when a hard rock band comes in without having apparently listened to a Talking Heads album in their lives, they're dismissed and mocked. Like Nickelback. Like Creed.

The yesteryear equivalents to Nickelback or Creed were arena rock bands like Journey, Styx, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, and Bon Jovi (the latter is often miscategorized as “hair metal”, which is arguably even more ridiculous than categorizing Guns N' Roses as such). And all of these bands had and still have their critics. But it wasn't universal. And you know what? Nickelback's the best selling band of the 21^st century other than The Beatles, who broke up in 1970 (if you hadn't heard). But they're the exception. Artists don't want to be stigmatized as much as Nickelback, but Chad Kroeger and company are smart enough to realize that if you can make as much money as they have making extremely average, party-line rock, it's worth it. I give them credit for that.

But perhaps the most staggering difference in rock now and rock before I was born is that rock music used to have solo artists. Even beyond the obvious pre-Beatles rock stars, almost all of whom were solo acts (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, James Brown, etc.), we had Bruce Springsteen. We had John Mellencamp. Hell, we had Bryan Adams. Who's the major rock star post-grunge to be a successful solo artist without having initially been part of a successful band? Keep in mind that Dave Matthews was part of an eponymous band and wasn't actually a solo artist until 2003. Who is it?

So what we have had was two former forces in rock music which barely exist today: simplistic balls-to-the-wall riff rock, and solo artists marketed by dynamic stage presences. Rock doesn't have those. But country has those. Boy, country has those. And the reason that “country music”, however it's defined, has never been bigger. Country music in 2015 is still closer to being country music in 1980 than rock music or hip hop music or top 40 in 2015, so it's not like the people who like old-school country defected. And if they're still hung up on listening to Hank Williams Jr. music constantly, they were probably unlikely to embrace new music no matter what it was. Meanwhile, people who were buying up Sammy Hagar records in the 1980s don't have an equivalent to Sammy Hagar in modern rock. That guy's not welcome. And even though I'm not personally a Hagar fan and I am a fan of alternative rock, I don't necessarily think this is a good thing. True weirdo bands like Talking Heads don't get enough play—the closest thing to that kind of band getting play even on rock radio would be somebody like Queens of the Stone Age or Arctic Monkeys (both of whom I love, for what it's worth), semi-oddball bands who nevertheless remain firmly entrenched in conventional-ish alternative rock. In 1983, rock fans got the silly mainstream rock of Def Leppard's Pyromania, it got the truly alternative Murmur from REM, and it got things like The Police's Synchronicity, which fall somewhere in between. And everybody was happier because if the Stipeheads didn't dig “Rock of Ages”, they could ignore it. But in 2015, it's a somewhat homogeneous group of a fairly small number of bands releasing rock music.

Anyway, while the weirdos can't get play, the dumb rockers (meant mostly with affection) can't either. So they play country. People who have musical tastes in the same vicinity as mine don't understand how Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton are as popular as they are, but I totally get it. The reason Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton are popular isn't because people had an awakening and would've bought Johnny Cash albums in droves back when he was doing concept albums about the plight of Native Americans (Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian). It's because people do have an appetite for simple songs they can sing along to, and as the moody post-grunge bands that had only a peripheral idea of what Nirvana represented with about a hundredth of the musical talent failed to understand, a lot of people also like their musical heroes to smile a little. Ozzy Osbourne on a good day is a mediocre vocalist and his career has been built on two things: his uncanny ability to hitch his wagon to three of the greatest metal guitarists ever, and the fact that people love him because he's always happy and smiling. And this is the so-called Prince of Darkness. And while it's corny as hell (and soooooo corporate) for Luke Bryan to open concerts while standing on a pickup truck, it gets people excited. I guarantee you none of his fans can rationalize it as a great artistic statement, and frankly it doesn't matter.

But perhaps the strangest thing about the modern country revolution isn't that it's essentially big dumb rock—it's when it isn't. As much distaste as I have for the Big Dumb Rock Charismatic Solo Artists, their music isn't stagnant. These artists are doing something that all good artists do—they incorporate new sounds. And this is a good thing. Even if their efforts fall short, which they often do in miserable fashion, they do deserve some credit for trying. Hell, even Blake Shelton's “Boys Round Here”, a tribute to country dudes not listening to the Beatles and not knowing how to dougie and chewing tobacco and spitting, is spoken-word pseudo-rapping. Jason Aldean had freaking Ludacris perform with him on his biggest hit. Florida Georgia Line had their biggest hit remixed by Nelly. Luke Bryan name-dropped T-Pain in a song. I recognize that country artists are stopping well short of working with Run the Jewels or even Kanye West (who would TOTALLY do it, by the way), but they also aren't just trying to sound like Buck Owens and Glen Campbell forever. The genre isn't just stagnating; the people who are at the forefront of what we call country music are listening to other music and trying to work those influences into their product. And this is the thing that annoys the establishment. Not the sexism, not the stupidity of the lyrics, none of that. The fact that, against all logic, the silly men who act as the musical caretakers are actually TRYING is what offends people.

It's entirely possible that modern country is in its hair metal stage. That awful minor stars like Cole Swindell will soon be forgotten; that artists who have half a foot in bro-country and half a foot in less objectionable territory (Sam Hunt, Dierks Bentley) will survive with a few adjustments; that Jason Aldean and Luke Bryan are in for a precipitous decline that will eventually gain some salvage value when a weird sense of retro pride sets in. But hopefully the end result isn't that country, one of the few non “pop” popular genres to have any sense of fun, doesn't lose theirs. It's bad enough that hip-hop is plagued with a self-serious sense of duty to pound and scream about REAL hip-hop and that the parameters for what is allowed in a rock band are so exclusive that nobody is allowed in the club anymore. Music is supposed to be fun and even when it's bad, I don't want that to be lost.

I Guess It's Happening Now--A Preview of the 2015 St. Louis Rams Season

The day that I have been dreading since early last January is finally here--the day during which the St. Louis Rams make their 2015 regular season debut at the Edward Jones Dome against the Seattle Seahawks. Fuck.

Fuck the 2015 season. Fuck absolutely everything about it.

Fuck Stan Kroenke. Fuck Stan Kroenke's parents for giving him the names of iconic St. Louis figures without giving him any sense of loyalty to anything but his big fat fucking bank account. Fuck Wal-Mart and fuck Wal-Mart's heirs for allowing this anthropomorphic mustache to hold the hearts and sleeves of metropolitan St. Louis in his probably tiny hands. Fuck Quin Snyder for succumbing to Walton family influence and regularly starting Josh Kroenke, who was barely qualified to be Mizzou basketball's mascot, on basketball teams that were one actual shooting guard away from making actual noise in the tournament. Fuck the Utah Jazz for not yet figuring out what a toady dipshit Quin Snyder is yet. Fuck Kevin Demoff. Fuck whoever failed to teach Kevin Demoff even the slightest sense of community as a child, whoever allowed an adult man to become such an incontrovertible kiss-ass that he would be perfectly willing to travel across the country and vouch for countless of his coworkers to lose their jobs, because it's not like Stan Kroenke has a propensity to spend money so large that he would pay for stadium vendors, security, et cetera to relocate. Fuck any company in St. Louis that gives Kevin Demoff anything better than an entry-level job once he's canned by the Rams.

Fuck the homer local football media that spent the last five seasons before this one ridiculing St. Louis fans who worried about the future of football in their town as a paranoid, fringe minority. Fuck the homer local football media who then seamlessly transitioned into trying to convince a predominantly working-class fan base that they are obliged to give money to an owner that we all know damn well has zero interest under any circumstances of spending that money on keeping the Rams in St. Louis instead of, I don't know, mustache combs I guess.

Fuck Jeff Fisher, who has made the last (presumably final) four seasons of St. Louis Rams an unwatchable mess. Fuck Steve Spagnuolo for being such a disaster in 2011 that the Fisher era looked good enough that it wasn't worth immediately canning him. Fuck a team having such gall, before a season in which the team desperately needs to get off to a fast start, to draft a running back that all reasonable people knew would miss the first month of the 2015 season. Fuck Janoris Jenkins; if the Rams are indeed moving to Los Angeles, I hope they fucking trade him to Buffalo. Fuck that in a season where on paper I should be optimistic--a new quarterback, a healthy Brian Quick, no Brian Schottenheimer--I find myself writing this.

Fuck anybody who tries to reassure me "At least you have the Cardinals." Fuck Cardinals fans who try to tell me this, especially. Fuck the Cardinals for giving a generation of spoiled St. Louis assholes an unrealistic sense of how good their sports teams should be. Fuck my dad for instilling in me a sense of community, which has kept me tethering to this awful, clusterfuck of a franchise that doesn't even want to be here. Fuck the people who don't have this sense of community and get to feel happy every fall because Their Packers, Their Cowboys, or Their Steelers are in playoff contention again.

Fuck that I still care. Fuck that I haven't found something else in my life, anything else, into which to funnel the passion I have for the Rams. Fuck people with wives and kids and shit that enables them to pay just a little bit less attention to their football team. Fuck that once noon rolls around, I'll be yelling and screaming and laughing and crying and probably watching the Rams get absolutely demolished by a team which, unlike them, actually bothers to prepare during the first month of the season. Fuck the 2015 NFL season and that I'll have a harder time getting through these 16 games than I had getting through the 162 games of mediocre Cardinals seasons or the 82 games of outright bad Blues seasons.

Fuck.

A Simple Exploration Into the Souls of Tinder Bots

After hearing a lot about the phone application for some time, I was eventually swayed into trying Tinder. For those unfamiliar with it, Tinder is a cell phone app in which users “like” or “dislike” (also known as “swiping right” or “swiping left”) on fellow users. The users are not informed that the other person has “liked” them until they “match”, at which point the two users may engage in a text messaging equivalency conversation. It's an exceptionally simple premise and that's largely why the app has been an overwhelming success—user bios are limited to 500 or fewer characters and thus the process of “liking” users is highly informal and casual; there is no fear of feeling embarrassed to “like” somebody who is well out of your league because they have to like you back before they would ever know; there are no parameters for what a Tinder interaction entails. Purportedly, the app is used for hookups—being 1. A gentleman and 2. Not the hottest guy on the app, I know nothing of this. The app is definitely used for dating. But the app can also be used for casual conversation and meeting new people. And I've met some pretty cool people in my relatively brief time on the app, people whose correspondence I will not share, because that's tacky and I consider my correspondence with other people to be private.

This post is about a marginalized group—the Tinder bot. While many Tinder users are people just like me—bored folks with smartphones who are approaching dating in quite easily the laziest way on the planet—others are not people at all, but rather automated computerized programs. But these people, who aren't people, are people too. And here are some treasured interactions I've had with these “people”.

Carrol

Carrol was an early interaction for me, and she typified most of the traits I learned to love in my Tinder bots--her pictures are fairly obvious glamour shot type pictures, she has a first name I associate mostly with old people, and for some reason she asks a question. "I want to have sex with strangers who are also skilled and very intimate in bed?" I'm Ron Burgundy?

Sharon

I'm really not that much of a grammatical stickler, but one should really be better at it than this.

Patricia

I have to give Patricia two things. One, she never unmatched me. This conversation is still technically ongoing. Most of the bots talk about how they want to sleep with you and then unmatch, which...maybe I don't understand women very well. But two, she sent this message several hours after we matched. Normally, the bots strike fairly quickly--within a few minutes often. But Patricia, who appeared to be a spambot from the beginning, lingered so long that I started to think "Wait, is she NOT a spambot? Since when do I talk to actual humans on here? How do I do this? What's my name? What do I like to do? How do I...oh wait, she's one of the superfluous question mark ones, never mind, we're good here. NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS!"

Delores

First of all, yes, I really wanted to go the Seinfeld route with the name Delores, but obviously she wasn't going to get the reference. Not because women don't know Seinfeld episodes, but because this is way too old person of a name to be real. I was very confident right away that she was a spambot, but even if she wasn't, this felt like a flattering thing to say to a woman. So I rolled with it. Sometimes, this experiment got boring. There aren't quite as many spambots as I would like. Sometimes, you have to sift through a bunch of actual people to find them. And yes, I was more likely to swipe right on people I suspected were fake.

Vina

I think this was a good question.

Francesca

I will go further in depth on this later, but I've noticed a lot of spambots are 9 miles away from me. Maybe the St. Louis center of operations gravitates around one specific location that happens to be nine miles away from me. So this made me more inclined to swipe right on Francesca. But, frankly, she looked like she was about 12 years old, so I wasn't actually interested. But, this had good spambot potential, so I decided to stalk the Instagram account she referenced in her bio.

I don't think this is Francesca. I think this is somebody named Naomi. Anyway, we matched but she unmatched before I ever got the chance to be redirected to a website that required my credit card information.

Allyson

This con seems much more plausible than the hookup-based ones. After all, who doesn't want a safe Tinder experience? The whole thing can seem overwhelming and scary and, like, you don't want to end up hitting it off with somebody and then you meet them and they aren't who you thought they were. And if you check out the website, which you totally should, they make some good points. Also, they ask for your credit card information. You know, to verify you are an adult. This seems like a reasonable thing.

This different person, from yesterday, actually presented this spam pretty well. But my response I think is integral here. What, was she going to meet me right away? Didn't want to talk a little bit first?

Ruth

So I didn't realize Ruth was a spambot at first. At "Whassup ?", I had a suspicion, but even then I wasn't sure so I played it semi-cool (by sounding like a dork, but that's just my nature anyway). Her dog did look cool though.

Margie

Margie was a nice looking girl but I just didn't KNOW if we were compatible in bed just yet! I think this is a fair thing to request.

Colleen

You notice something here? No, not the arm tattoos. No, not that her Instagram appears to be for a person named Emily Andersen. Nine miles. Colleen is nine miles away. What a wild coincidence. I better ask about this.

Judith

The first two lines read like Mad Libs. "Vuh-lay-dee-yuh." Valadia? Also, @titsablaze is a fantastic Instagram name, even though searches indicate that Judith as pictured above probably does not own said account. I worry about the "420 friendly" listers not because I have a strong ethical objection to people smoking pot but because I don't want to have to listen to a bunch of Phish, but hey, she says no hookups. Doesn't sound like a spambot to me.

Don't do drugs, you will lose all of your memory and inhibitions

Daniela

. 

Daniela has a nice smile. She's apparently religious and isn't looking for a hookup and has realistic Tinder goals--meet new people. And hey, she listed a (real) university which she attends. Oh, and we matched! Awesome. Hey, I just noticed something weird--doesn't it seem like a college athlete would be back at school by now? If she really attends a school in southeastern Tennessee, how is she, um, 9 miles away?

I felt weird with the "Hi!" But I wanted to match her enthusiasm. She seemed nice.

She unmatched me. If she doesn't like ice cream, it wasn't really meant to be anyway.

The All-American Team

My criteria: A functional 25 man roster of Americans to comprise the best team possible. I can pick injured players, working under the assumption I simply get them at the ability they'll be at when they come back (i.e. I could include a guy currently out with Tommy John surgery, but I run the inherent risks that come with it). This team is limited to America-raised American citizens who have not played for other countries in international competitions (so, for instance, the American-born Adrian Gonzalez is not eligible for the team since he played for Mexico in the World Baseball Classic). I don't feel great about my bullpen.

Starting Lineup
C--Buster Posey
1B--Paul Goldschmidt
2B--Jason Kipnis
SS--Troy Tulowitzki
3B--Josh Donaldson
LF--Bryce Harper
CF--Mike Trout
RF--Giancarlo Stanton

A few of these guys I think are indisputable--Posey, Goldschmidt (another guy is probably close, but trails Goldy by pretty much any measure, if not by an enormous amount), Donaldson, Trout, and Stanton (unless you're much more scared of his current injury than I am, I guess). Jason Kipnis was unexceptional in 2014 but he was good in 2013 and is actually the ZiPS projected best second baseman in baseball for the rest of the season, so I'll take the moderate risk. Tulowitzki has been mediocre in 2015 thusfar but I was so confident in his stature as baseball's best shortstop before this season that I'm standing by him. And as for Harper, I tend to be bullish on the notion that this is actually what Bryce Harper is now. Maybe not THIS, but something close enough to it to make him a slam-dunk candidate for this lineup.

The Bench
C--Jonathan Lucroy
1B--Anthony Rizzo
3B/SS--Manny Machado
3B/2B--Anthony Rendon
CF--Andrew McCutchen

Lucroy has had a disturbingly down 2015, but he is a year removed from being better than Buster Posey for a full season, and there isn't really another great option as far as American catchers go (since Puerto Rico is a separate nation from the United States for international sports purposes, their catchers are not included as eligible for Team USA, to my eternal annoyance). Rizzo is a slightly poorer man's version of Goldschmidt and would be an incredible lefty option off the bench as a pinch hitter. Machado might be the second best defensive shortstop in baseball behind Andrelton Simmons, although he is instead relegated to being the best defensive third baseman in baseball, and he has seemingly turned the corner from being a fine MLB hitter to being a really, really good one. Rendon and Matt Carpenter got some consideration for the same bench role since they have experience at both second and third base in the Majors but I went with Rendon for three reasons--he's a righty whereas Jason Kipnis (of whom I'm more skeptical than Josh Donaldson) is a lefty so there's a possible platoon there, he has balanced the positions more recently (Carpenter hasn't played second base since 2013), and I'm scared of Matt Carpenter's recent tailspin. I don't expect a lot of disputes of Cutch except for those who would like a fifth outfielder, but with the ones I have, I can't imagine ever wanting to actually start #5.

The Rotation
Clayton Kershaw
Max Scherzer
Chris Sale
David Price
Corey Kluber

Scherzer has been so dominant after his move to the NL that there's a case for him as #1, but it's hard to go against Kershaw's track record. Sale and Price are high-end pitchers among each of the three measures I examined by and large: 2014 production, 2015 production, and 2015 projections for the rest of the season. As for Kluber, the fact that he would never be included in discussion for this team a year ago does scare me a bit, but he's been so good for the last season and a half that I'm not THAT scared.

The Bullpen
Wade Davis
Dellin Betances
Jake McGee
Madison Bumgarner
Zack Greinke
Chris Archer
Jacob de Grom

I went with three true relievers and yet I didn't pick a true closer. But I feel all right about these guys. Wade Davis has been a dominant reliever since he moved from starting, Betances seems to be held back from closing mostly for silly Yankees ideas about what a "closer" is, and McGee has been the most dominant non-Chapman lefty reliever in baseball for the last year and a half. Bumgarner, annoying as his hype is, is a rock solid MLB ace or near-ace, depending on how picky you are. Greinke gets overshadowed by Kershaw but there isn't a better #2 in baseball going right now. Archer has been one of the three or four most impressive pitchers in baseball this year, and although he wasn't QUITE this guy last year, there's enough track record to make me believe this is at least mostly not a fluke. As for de Grom, I'm sure Matt Harvey would be a popular pick among the Mets young starters, but the one I'm most confident will be a really good starter (if not a Cy Young winner) for the next decade is Jacob de Grom. So I went with this. I still feel like my bullpen is missing somebody.

Audio Johnapedia 46--If the Beatles stayed together...

John is joined by Ben Province (@BenProvince on Twitter), host of STL TV's "Show Me the Music" and certifiable Beatles fanatic, to discuss a hypothetical world in which The Beatles did not break up in 1970, and how the ensuing years would have affected the world of music and the band's legacy.

The Unique Pop Perfection of Prince's "Kiss"

Prince is, in spite of famously being a perfectionist, not actually a musical artist whose appeal generally centers around his perfection. Most of his best songs--pretty much anything off of Purple Rain is a good example of this--center around Prince warping a relatively basic song around his own personal eccentricities and tastes. 

Take, for instance, "Let's Go Crazy"--it's a great song, but it's not perfect. No pop-rock song needs to have a spoken-word intro meditating on the meaning of life and the afterlife, and no song tailored towards Top 40 radio is supposed to conclude with a blistering, unapologetically pretentious guitar solo of sheer "I'm the best damn guitar player on the planet and if you disagree because I'm a 5'2" scrawny black guy wearing purple stilettos I'm going to prove you so damn wrong right now" audacity. Don't get me wrong--"Let's Go Crazy" is awesome, but it's not perfect. Arguably, it's its lack of perfection that makes me love it. Similarly, look at "When Doves Cry", a song which, if your only exposure to it is through the radio, you may not be aware is nearly six minutes long. It has really cool pop hooks, even if it's done in a minimalist way, but the second half of it gets weird. The album version of "When Doves Cry" is a fine song from the beginning but it takes so many twists and turns that it won't be until a dozen times or so that it really hits you just how dense it is.

"Kiss", however, may be the single most perfect pop song in the rock and roll era.

In 1987, Michael Jackson released Bad, in which Michael Jackson does, for all intents and purposes, an impersonation of Prince. As somebody who prefers Prince to MJ, I'm perfectly okay with this--as immense of a talent as Michael Jackson was, I tend to prefer the rougher edges of Prince, so to see Michael Jackson move a bit more in that direction is fine by me. But in 1986, Prince made a bit of a move towards Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, after years of being the dictator of his own, weird little musical municipality known as the Minneapolis Sound. That move was "Kiss".

"Kiss" opens with nine chiming guitar notes before any other instrumentation or vocals are to be heard. It sets the stage for the frequently overlooked guitar work on the song--it doesn't have a long guitar solo like "Purple Rain" or "Little Red Corvette" but it holds the entire song together. And it draws inspiration from some of the seminal guitar stylists of the era--Johnny Marr, Peter Buck, Bernard Sumner--men on the fringe of the musical mainstream whose chiming, eccentric guitar playing allowed them to be more influential than popular. Of course, Prince was already a megastar by 1986, so he was allowed to do this sort of thing while being massively popular.

Once the intro is over and the vocals kick in, two things are immediately noticeable--Prince's karaoke staple falsetto vocals, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the understated and sparse guitar riff buried low in the mix. The vocals, as an extension of Prince's voice in general, are often mimicked. It's so common to hear a 21st century singer go for the highest notes that it's easy to forget that this wasn't always a pop staple. Prince didn't invent this extreme nature of high-pitching singing--he certainly drew from Stevie Wonder, who drew from Little Richard, and so it goes to the beginning of music as an institution. But the next time you hear "Blurred Lines", listen to the first verse, and come back and try to convince me that Marvin Gaye was the vocal legend that Robin Thicke was mimicking. And as far as the guitar: it manages to somehow, inexplicably be both dense and minimal. The riff is so simple and there's so little else going on in the song and yet it still manages to find the background. It's less a part of pop music and more a staple of most experimental forms of rock--I'll take this moment to interject how Trent Reznor has cited Prince as one of his main inspirations when he was recording the first Nine Inch Nails album Pretty Hate Machine. 

Bet you didn't think I was going to simultaneously call a Prince song his attempt to write a true pop song as well as Prince inspiring one of the weirdest, darkest alternative rock icons of the 1990s, did you?

The chorus, sung in three unique styles by Prince--first, in a relatively straightforward manner; second, venturing into falsetto; and the third, with Prince going full-fledged James Brown and screaming his ass off. Lyrically, the song isn't poetry, but that doesn't mean the song is imperfect; the song isn't meant to be a poem. Critics tend to fall into the trap of construing complex, meaningful words as an asset when often times, they're a distraction. To use another Nine Inch Nails analogy, take the song "Hurt" (or the Johnny Cash version--both excel for the exact same reason). The musical is small and understated because the lyrics are dark and brooding and if "Hurt" had a three minute guitar solo, it wouldn't make any sense. At the same time, "Closer" lacks introspection but instead is built upon stark drum machine and keyboard sounds. Without the music to compliment its often vulgar and uncomfortable lyrics, "Closer" would have been inclined to scare off listeners. With the music, it works. And likewise, "Kiss" isn't a sonnet but it isn't supposed to be. And its music matches its lyrics. Even a clever quip like "Act your age, not your shoe size" isn't overbearing: It settles in so nicely with the music that you can probably hear the song and most of the time, not consider how dated its reference to the TV series Dynasty is.

"Kiss" is pop perfection because it is everything. Every style, every sentiment, everything that can be great about pop music is incorporated. It's a song that would've been worthy of any of the great rock and roll showmen in history but was best placed in the worthy hands of one Prince Rogers Nelson.

A Birthday Present: Age Differences in Twentysomething Dating

Note: Because today, May 20, is his birthday, I promised my friend Nick (@grobot05 on Twitter) that I would write a blog post about the topic of his choosing. This is the topic of his choosing.

My name is John and I am 26 years old. The inspiration for this post, Nick, is 25 years old. We both live in a society in which an enormous amount of attention is given to the age of women. It's weird, because nobody cares how old I am. Most people don't, at least. As far as most people are concerned, I might as well be 21 or I might as well be 38. That is, of course, unless my age has to be given consideration in relation to a woman.

Being in our mid-twenties, people such as myself and Nick are put in a unique scenario when it comes to dating. We're old enough that it is no longer considered scandalous to date somebody who is slightly younger (when I was a junior in high school, I had a friend of mine who dated a freshman, and you'd have thought this was worse than Watergate) but we're also young enough that it's considered somewhat strange, if not outright taboo, to date somebody more than a year older than we are. But the question I ask, to ironically borrow a phrase from one of the world's most famous asexuals, "What difference does it make?"

Now, don't get me wrong--there should be age boundaries on dating. Here is the boundary: I, as an adult man, should not date somebody who is under the age of consent. It is illegal and it is illegal for good reason. But that's it.

Aside from somebody who is underage, context is critical is determining whether or not a relationship with a great age disparity is legitimate. For instance, although I am 26, in many ways I feel that I am younger: I have far more friends who are younger than I am than who are older than I am; it took me a couple years and a few jobs after college to feel like I was truly past the 22 year-old phase of my life, even though I was in reality probably 24; I *feel* much closer to 24 or 25 than 26. This is a subtle difference, and it's neither an inherently good nor bad thing, but it does change the equation a little bit. In theory, a 24 or 25 year old would be the ideal age for me to date, but this works under the faulty assumption that all people other than me are created equal. Some 21 or 22 year olds are culturally closer to 24 or 25. Some 28 or 29 year olds are culturally closer to 24 or 25. Particularly for those in their twenties, there is a wide range of people with a wide range of lifestyles and attitudes.

But a stigma exists, and its basis is actually surprisingly sexist. Towards both genders, really, but more disturbingly towards women. The notion is that if I were to date, say, a 19 year old girl (I don't think I even know any 19 year old girls, but I assume they still exist), it's solely because of physical attraction and not for any sort of intellectual stimulation. It feeds into a "men are pigs" narrative I don't particularly like, but I guess I can live with it. Men can be pretty terrible, after all. But what does this imply for 19 year old women? It seems to imply a few things: One, that 19 year old women lack agency and are incapable of making educated decisions about whom to date; two, that 19 year old women are incapable of being particularly smart; three, that 19 year old women have some kind of obligation to only date 19 year old men. This final implication disturbs me the most. The world is full of stupid adolescent men who believe that women owe them--that because they're "nice guys", they deserve women as some kind of prize. Screw that. As a former 19 year old male, I can assure you that 19 year old males are, generally speaking, shitheads. Some are okay, and if 19 year old women decide to date 19 year old men, that's their choice. But the idea that they are beholden to dating 19 year old men, or 26 year old men, or men in general, or ANYBODY, is despicable.

In general, I think the "half your age plus seven" rule is a good baseline. This means that I can date anybody who is twenty or older. But while this is a good baseline, it's not a good rule. There's a lot of twenty-something year old women who are emotionally and intellectually vapid and there are also a lot of women who are under twenty who are smart, funny, and good people.

Bonus Blog: Nick has asked me to objectively rate the attractiveness of several famous people. I will then follow this with a comment on the exercise as a whole.

Ariana Grande: She has a very nice smile. I find her hair oddly distracting and 5'0" is probably a little bit too short for me (I don't really care about height in evaluating female attractiveness, but the idea of being a full foot taller than a woman is a bit much for me; if you're shorter than Prince, you're pushing it). She has a nice singing voice, too, even though her music isn't really my cup of tea. Overall, if I knew a girl who looked like Ariana Grande, I'd probably think she was a nice looking girl--maybe not jaw-dropping, but attractive.

Sarah Hyland: She's not bad looking, but I don't really see her as some kind of jaw-dropping celebrity. You could go to a department store on a Saturday afternoon and see a dozen women who are more attractive than Sarah Hyland.

Selena Gomez: Like Ariana Grande, she looks very young, though I think I find Gomez more attractive. She has pretty eyes and seems to be more attractive as time goes on.

Shailene Woodley: She was really good in The Descendents and she looks really good with short hair. And I, for one, prefer female celebrities who have something somewhat different to their look. I tend to find a lot of women attractive but don't find a lot of women that attractive, so something about a uniqueness like Shailene Woodley's short hair is a nice feature.

One of the stupidest things that we as people (and I'm absolutely every bit as guilty as ANYBODY on this) do is mock people (particularly men) for being attracted to young-looking girls. It doesn't make sense at all. For instance, Ariana Grande looks really young. Like, she looks like she's in high school. And people (me) make fun of guys who think she's hot. But the key thing is she ISN'T a high schooler--she's 21, almost 22, years old. She's an adult and it's perfectly healthy and normal to be attracted to somebody who is an adult. And the reason that an age of consent exists isn't so that people don't engage in sexual relations with people who look young--it's so that people don't engage in sexual relations with people who are young. Like, emotionally. Like, intellectually. It's illegal for a damn good reason for an adult to be with a 15 year old even if he or she looks 30--that person is deemed unable to make good enough decisions about that sort of thing. If the person looks 15 but is 30, it means they are deemed able to make good decisions. People are weird, man.