It's going to be too overdone. There will be nothing left to say. All of my music critic friends are already making snarky jokes about it. Those were the justifications I whispered to myself.
See, on Sunday night, I live tweeted the Grammys without actually watching the Grammys. Part of this was because I like live-tweeting, part of it was because I don't like watching the Grammys, and part of it was a sort of social experiment, devised to see how much of the pomp and circumstance can come through in a parade of like-minded people speaking in 140 characters about the same event.
Hit the break for more.
Not that this is the point, but I got a surprisingly accurate picture of what happened at the Grammys. I might as well have seen the shock and disappointment on Justin Bieber's face when he lost Best New Artist, from what I heard in Retweets from Bieber fanatics and what I saw they did to that catagory's winner Esperanza Spalding Wikipedia page. I figured out how old Bob Dylan looked and how comparatively fresh Mick Jagger looked. I heard about Lady Gaga's egg and BMX bikes with cameras and Eminem being pretty damned intense.
I also heard the explosion of the indie scene when Arcade Fire won their Grammy.
But this isn't about them winning the Grammy, or my thoughts on that album or what it does for indie music or whatever. I got a tweet from Marissa Nadler (an amazing musician who I unfairly snarked on when she celebrated Spalding's victory on Twitter) saying that she felt a true sea change was coming for music, and maybe it is. But what I'm more interested in has been the fallout.
* * *
Within hours of The Suburbs, the website Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? launched, highlighting tweets and Facebook comments of people indignantly asking who the band was, and how they won the Album of the Year Grammy when-- obviously-- no one had ever heard of them.
And on Billboard, Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff posted a live diary that ended on this scalding quote regarding the manner:
"On my flight home this afternoon, I scrolled through [Who Is Arcade Fire??!!?]. I read pages and pages of people shouting in all caps "I'VE NEVER HEARD OF THEM!" as if that's a valid musical critique, as if that's anything but a braying declaration of proud ignorance. As if somehow the prefab pop royalty whose handlers dropped the most money on promotion are promised a Grammy as a kind of birthright, the way that Will Smith's kids are guaranteed hit singles and blockbusters if they want them; the way that Gwyneth Paltrow is apparently allowed to show up anywhere at any time and sing, whether or not we want to hear her. I've never heard Esperanza Spalding either, but now I'm excited to. It was fun to watch the losers win for a change."
He's got a point.
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What I like best about that Sheff quote is the line "... as if that's a valid musical critique, as if that's anything but a braying declaration of proud ignorance." Shouting that you don't know something doesn't devalue that thing's worth, which is something that too few realize. And I thought it was worth mentioning.
But it also made me sad that he mentioned it, in a way. And the whole Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? site made me sad, too. After all, what is the purpose of such a site other than to make fun of the people who-- obviously-- don't have the kind of enlightened music taste that we do? What's the point of such a website other than to be the smart kid sitting in the back of the class, making cutting remarks about the popular kids?
The site, and Sheff's article, made me sad because they reiterated this divide between pop and indie, between world renowned and critically acclaimed, that doesn't have to exist. Like so many countercultures, there are those within it that embrace the counterculture's otherness more so than its actual content. What's important to them is that it stands apart.
The existence of something like Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? doesn't actually help Arcade Fire's case for a Grammy at all. It actually creates an even larger barrier between the people who didn't know the band and those who do. It's not constructive, it's not enlightening. It's the versus in "Us versus Them."
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I love pop music. I've written about Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne, Kanye West and Britney Spears, all in a positive way. I think that's the biggest reason why it makes me sad when I see something like Who Is Arcade Fire??!!? Because it's unnecessary. It's possible to like Eminem and Radiohead, to embrace Beyonce and Band of Horses.
Barriers between genres, between cultures, between people, are more hurtful than helpful. Too often we allow those barriers to become definitions of who we are. But they aren't. Those of us who feel good about knowing who Arcade Fire is, who go to that website and laugh at the tweets of others, were probably just as confounded when Esperanza Spalding won her Best New Artist Grammy. In another situation, we'd be the ones whose tweets ended up on whoisesperanzaspalding.tumblr.com.
These self-imposed barriers are not definitions of ourselves. In fact, if we care to tear them down, it's possible to find quite a bit of common ground with those on the other side.
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