Light On Dark Water

I Hate That Song

When I was young, I used to be fairly vicious in denouncing music that I thought inferior, especially if I thought it was merely commercial. If you've seen the movie High Fidelity, think of the two music nerds who worked in the record store, especially the character played by Jack Black. I don't think I was that bad, but I guess I was pretty bad. 

Sometime in 1969 or '70, when I was in college, I had a brief and rather confused relationship with a girl named Linda. That was her misfortune, I think–in retrospect, I wouldn't have wished my then-self on anybody. She might have been good for me, if I'd given her a chance.  Anyway, I guess she had heard one too many of my denunciations, and one day she interrupted one of them with "You know, it's really obnoxious when you do that." I remember being almost stunned. The thought had never occurred to me, and I really took it to heart.

Forty years later, I still remember it. And ever since then, I have tried to moderate my natural intemperateness where judgments about music and literature, are concerned. I try to remind myself that the fact that I don't like something doesn't mean it's a worthless and dishonest piece of junk. I've tried to restrain the impulse to hate a work of art, and, if I can't do that, at least to restrain the impulse to say so.

Nevertheless, I want to go on record as saying that I hate "I Will Survive," at least in its original version. Those who were appalled at my posting a cover of it may consider yourselves as having been revenged. Because I can't  so much as glance at that post without the original hated version of the song getting stuck in my head for several hours. Which just makes me hate it even more.

I wonder whatever became of Linda. 

7 responses to “I Hate That Song”

  1. Janet

    Haven’t you heard? She’s one of the Puppini Sisters.
    AMDG

    Reply
  2. Mac

    lol
    However, I don’t think the Puppinis are anywhere near the 60s that us ’60s people have now reached.

    Reply
  3. Grumpy Ex Pat

    I don’t hate ‘I’ll Survive’. I don’t particularly like it, or any disco music, and I thought the cover was worse than the original.
    Everyone naturally wants to get to the top and belong to an elite, but we make ourselves particularly idiotic when we exercise this impulse in relation to pop music. It’s pop music whether it is Leonard Cohen or David Cassidy. It’s not that there’s no differentiation, and how would I know anyway, but the differentiation is within a narrow range of very similar items.

    Reply
  4. Grumpy Ex Pat

    I probably told this story before. Once, when I was about 14 and my brother 16, my father asked us why we despised such and such a pop song. I said, ‘it’s commercial’. My brother kicked me under the table. He knew my father could destroy that in minutes, simply by asking how the singers I liked were less ‘commercial’ than the ones I despised. Which he did. I cringe to recall myself using the word ‘commercial’ in that way. But, without excusing myself, I am glad to have been on the inside of a certain kind of elitist puritanism, especially of such an easily ridiculed sort. I know this mentality from the inside.
    The thing is, for others, surely Maclin for instance, there could be actual musical reasons to prefer something less ah, what shall we say. For me, being essentially unmusical, it was purely and simply about snobbery.
    Glad I been there, glad I got over it. But I still don’t like the Puppini sisters singing ‘I’ll Survive’. I didn’t actually see the name on the video before I played it.

    Reply
  5. Mac

    “It’s pop music whether it is Leonard Cohen or David Cassidy.”
    You’re trying to bait me, aren’t you? 🙂
    No, really, I know what you mean, and Leonard Cohen would probably agree with you.
    If you’ve told that story before, I don’t remember it. Very easy to imagine that scene. I had a somewhat similar one with the aunt and uncle who introduced me to folk music, including Ian and Sylvia. At some later point I said that I&S were “commercial,” but only got a snort from Uncle Jimmy rather than a dissection. I didn’t really mean to be dismissing them, because I still liked them, but what I was getting at was that their music was very polished compared to its sources, which was true, but “commercial” was a pretty dumb way to put it.

    Reply
  6. Grumpy Ex Pat

    I meant to say ‘Seigur Ros or David Cassidy’ but couldn’t remember what Seigur Ros are called! So I came up with the most obvious example I could think of, though, notably, I didn’t write Neil Young or Bob Dylan! (my own youthful favourites – I’ve never liked Cohen all that much).

    Reply
  7. Mac

    Young & Dylan are potentially amusing instances, because by any remotely fair or dispassionate comparison some of their stuff is way worse than David Cassidy’s. e.g. Dylan’s notorious “Wiggle Wiggle.” At least I feel safe in assuming that–I actually can’t remember anything in particular that David Cassidy ever did, I just remember the name & teeny-bopper associations.

    Reply

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