I conceived this piece several years ago, but the notes didn’t settle down until summer 2022, when I recorded the following performance, with my friend Evan Bates engineering the audio and video. Enjoy!
Notes on music by Gregory Kyle
I composed this piece in 2015 and performed it in summer 2022, with video and audio production by Evan Bates. Enjoy!
June 2, 2022
Various critical traditions associated with left-wing politics have promoted apathy or antipathy toward beauty, beginning with Karl Marx, who planted the seeds of the idea that beauty is a distraction from the all-important aim of overthrowing capitalism. Beauty was part of the “ideology” used to validate the privilege and power of the ruling class. Marx’s twentieth-century disciple, Theodore Adorno, openly advocated ugliness in art as a form of protest against the evils of the free market. The vindictive resentment of the far left—whether justified or not—is incompatible with the experience of beauty as a self-transcendent vision. Such an experience would detract from the real end of tearing down capitalism and taking revenge on those who have benefited from it. A similar sentiment is evident in the work of more recent critics such as John Richardson, who condemned Philip Glass’ opera Akhnaten for not doing enough to oppose “the orientialist/capitalist-imperialist project” in its portrayal of ancient Egypt. The power differential between America and Egypt was the real concern. There is, however, no nationalist or imperialist mentality evident in that opera. Meanwhile, there are striking harmonies, compelling melodies, brilliant costumes, fascinating sets, and colorful orchestration—in short, much to miss if one heeds the bad critique.
Certainly some artworks reflect racism or other anti-humanist views, and the critic ought to expose it when necessary; but the critic’s job is also to use wisdom and know when charges of injustice are appropriate. Irresponsible critiques are themselves unjust. Critical theory (as it’s known) errs on this side, i.e. of projecting its concern with oppression onto the work it condemns. Critical theorists, however, are unlikely to admit the error, which they see as a virtue. One can always insist that a pencil drawing is merely two-dimensional, and refuse to admit that two-dimensions are hinting at three, and interpret the diagonal lines as mere angles. In a similar way, the critical theorist—or those infected by his claims—can always insist that the only relevant thing to behold in the art is orientalism or patriarchal oppression, etc. The cost of this fallacy is that one misses out on potentially wonderful experiences, and worse, blocks others from the same. Excellent art—not to mention the seascape, your sweetheart and so on—can and should bring joy without letting political preoccupations get in the way. The extremist’s rage against oppression, however, leaves little psychological room for the disinterested appreciation, let alone the rapt adoration, of beauty. It is a small world to live in.
For the far-left critic, art must explicitly take a political side. The artist must oppose social hierarchies in his work, on pain of being condemned as complicit with the oppressors. You’re either with us or against us, the artist is told. And if you’re with us, you’d better prove it. This mentality has the potential to imperialize the leftist’s brain, so that more and more and soon everything in his world is interpreted through the lens of power differentials. This is unfortunate, not just because it is a sad fate, but because it reflects poorly on the left. “Socialism,” wrote E.F. Schumacher, emphasizes “non-economic values,”—e.g. that which offers “moral, aesthetic, and cultural enrichment.” Socialism wisely rejects the idea that society should be built on the individual’s single-minded pursuit of material profit. Marxism and its related thought-systems, however, envision those with power and privilege on the guillotine, and demand that artists and writers throw garbage at them. This embittered mindset is in competition with the love of beauty. The better versions of socialism, however, are allied with anti-materialism. Similar distinctions can be made of the feminist and anti-racist movements, of which there are extreme kinds fueled by vindictive resentment, and reasonable kinds motivated by the commitment to, let’s say, absolute justice, to borrow again from Plato. These distinctions are important because they show that the problem is not with the left, but with the far-left—which veers into intolerance, authoritarianism, and eventually blood and brutality, as history shows.
*
The beauty we see in art, nature, and people is non-trivial. If we allow ourselves to be arrested by its power, we allow the part of ourselves to live that seeks meaning and joy. This thirst cannot be denied indefinitely in the human race, and as a result, the love of beauty which arouses and, to some extent, quenches that thirst will never disappear from human cultures.
We have not addressed another quality that we attribute to art, nature, and even people: the sublime—that which inspires awe and wonder. Beauty and the sublime have different connotations. A list of things under each heading will yield different results. For me, Beethoven’s Ninth is on both lists. But my things, of one kind or another, will differ from yours. Some of them might coincide. Any two people who share the same experiences are more than fellow-humans that owe respect to one another; they are the same kind of person
May 31, 2022
Last week I was enjoying the vistas of the Sonoran desert hills while the Phoenix morning air was still cool, and mentally visited the old question of whether beauty is subjective or objective—whether it exists in the mind of the observer, or is a real attribute of beautiful objects. It must be both, I thought, but how can that be? I enjoyed the rest of my hike, and when I got home I did some reading on the subject, and scribbled the following list under the heading of Beautiful Things:
- Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
- Borodin’s “Notturno” from String Quartet no. 2
- John Tavener’s “Mother of God, Here I Stand”
- Cabanel’s Birth of Venus
- The Bust of Socrates
- Sedona, AZ
- The Grand Tetons, WY
- Cupsogue Beach, Long Island
- Piazza Venezia, Rome
- Every photo and video of Audrey Hepburn
While writing I was conscious that all ten of these items fall into one of the following categories: Art (music, painting, sculpture), Nature, and People. Then I thought:
Beauty is the quality that stimulates amazement and delight in me as an observer. Beauty does not exist in my brain; the pleasure it creates exists in my brain. The things listed above—they are beautiful. I respond accordingly. People like me respond similarly.
Beauty is a reflection of the face of God. It is a glimpse of that with which I yearn to be connected. God is conceived and experienced differently by different people. He is not like physical objects, the existence of which can be empirically verified. But he speaks to us through physical reality—he fills us with longing, or he longs within us, for connection with the beauty we see in the world—or rather with the deeper reality of which these are the manifestations—divine love, or in Plato’s terms, absolute beauty.
Beauty is the manifestation of divine love acknowledged by human beings, who are also manifestations of divine love. When beauty is experienced, God is seeing an aspect of himself with longing through a physical form into which he has been incarnated.
Thus the experience of beauty is different for different people. God is speaking to them differently—or being glimpsed by them through different things—or glimpsing himself through himself in different ways. Forms awaken longing or joy in the individual that possesses some kind of symmetry with it. Thus beauty is personal. But patterns emerge. Groups emerge. I and people like me emerge, who see beauty in similar things. These groups may be described as informal communities. They are Tolkien fans, supporters of the Phoenix Chorale, Arizona backpackers with REI memberships, subscribers to any number of magazines, etc. None of the individuals in these groups will experience the thing they love in exactly the same way. No doubt they will be as indifferent to strangers within the “community” as to anyone else. But the core agreement puts them into intellectual proximity and is one of the conditions of friendship. Humans are delighted to find others like themselves, who see what they see. The faster the agreement, the greater the joy of discovering the other person. Even as few as two may agree, and form an island together. They will clasp hands and affirm that their opinion is not arbitrary or coincidental, but a natural response to the excellence of the thing they love—because beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but in the object, and similar souls acknowledge it.
*
This attempt to articulate the mystery of the experience of beauty acknowledges its transcendent quality. The individual perceives excellence outside himself or herself. This experience should not be minimized. Accordingly, we should reject the subjectivist view that makes beautiful mean nothing more than I happen to get pleasure from it; and we can reject that view without denying that people obviously have different experiences and will rank the value or impact of them differently.
The subjectivist movement of last century (not the most important intellectual phenomenon happening at the time) coincided with a decline of interest in beauty amongst the artists historically regarded as prominent—Schoenberg, Kandinsky, Cage, Warhol, etc. This hiatus could not last very long because it contradicts human nature. The longing for deeper meaning cannot disappear, and honest people are eventually bound to admit their reflections. By the end of the century there was a renewal of interest in beauty in the academy and in the arts. Of course, subjectivism remains alive, and ever-opposed to the spiritual experience of beauty as described above.
I was reading John Locke and came across this:
“For law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law: could they be happier without it, the law, as an useless thing, would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices. So that, however it may be mistaken, the end of the law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom…”
John Locke, Two Treatises on Government, Part Two, Chapter VI, para. 57
Of course this was stated in the context of a discussion about political power, but it reflects a larger principle, which the great composers of the past from Bach to Stravinksy and so on have duly embraced – compose within restraints, whether it’s “don’t write parallel perfect consonances” or “don’t repeat this pitch-class until these six others have been used.”
January 2, 2022
I am from the United States; but artistically, I identify as closely with my Italian heritage. More importantly than my citizenship or ancestry, however, I am an idealist. Like Abraham, I look for a better country.
In my work I acknowledge John Keats’ simple maxim—“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
September 7, 2016
Vulgarity is understood to mean indecency, obsceneness, and lewdness; but this is the vulgar definition of the word. The classical meaning of vulgar is of or pertaining to the common people, unrefined, undiscriminating, and accessible to all. The title—The Triumph of Vulgarity—captures the paradoxical nature of Robert Pattison’s examination of American culture through the lens of rock—it is a refined, discriminating, and narrowly accessible discourse on music that celebrates the opposite of those qualities.
Pattison contends that rock is “the music of triumphant vulgarity” and “the liturgy of vulgar pantheism.” A reflection of nineteenth-century Romanticism, rock is “America’s most powerful weapon and most successful export.” Having received the embrace of both “high” and “low” classes in less than thirty years since its inception in the American south, vulgar rock has triumphed over the long tradition of humanity’s refined culture, embodied by the work of poets and artists from Homer to Wordsworth. Pattison’s claims hold implications for culture, society and politics, and are as worthy of consideration today as when Vulgarity was published thirty years ago.
Again, the book is paradoxical. The central revelation—“vulgarity has triumphed”—personifies vulgarity, like the Nike of Samothrace, and positions it over its enemies. This personification is a kind of metaphor commonly used in Classical and Romantic literature to uncover otherwise hidden or obscured truths; but the vulgarity that has triumphed scorns such revelatory talk. Pattison writes, “Vulgar is not a word in the vulgarian’s lexicon because he has no transcendent vantage from which to make the implied distinction between the ordinary and the cultured.” That vulgarity has triumphed is not a cry of exultation before the masses, but a frank revelation—perhaps a bitingly sarcastic one—given to those who speak the language of classical poetry—the cultured and the refined. The opening lines of the first chapter capture this irony with brilliant wit.
The Nike of Samothrace
What follows is a beautifully articulated description of vulgarity and refinement, the history of pantheism, and its necessary connection with vulgarity and rock. The author’s stated methodology is “not to condemn [vulgarity], which has been done without success, but to describe it, which has yet to be undertaken.” Pattison’s description of pantheism overlaps with what some term “postmodernism” and “poststructuralism” today—“Pantheism is necessarily vulgar because it rejects the transcendence from which refinement springs, because it delights in the noisy confusion of life, and because it sacrifices discrimination to eclecticism.” The author enumerates the positive features of rock’s vulgar pantheism—infinite tolerance, personal contentment, and outrageous energy, fun, and humor.
The examination of the mythology and pantheist ideology of rock that unfolds in subsequent chapters is challenging, even-handed, and hilarious. The tone long remains objective, however momentous may be the implications of vulgarity’s triumph. In the last two chapters, the author opens his mouth for the voiceless, articulating for the rocker a defense against the Marxists, psychologists, and fundamentalists that have attacked rock. In the end Pattison rebukes his academic peers and President Reagan’s Secretary of Education who “lust after foreign models of culture,” and counsels the few American “champions of refinement” that remain to pay tribute to triumphant vulgarity, which merits no more or less respect accorded to the “prophet of vulgarity” who anticipated the spirit of rock, Walt Whitman.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Make the Most of Vulgarity?
Pattison says “vulgarity is here to stay.” He asks whether we can escape the fate of Rome given “the probability that civilization cannot survive vulgarity.” He estimates that “if vulgarity is without redeeming features, then civilization is lost, because the triumph of vulgarity is assured.” In his satire of American vulgar culture, he imagines a bitter end: “Civilization would pulsate briefly in the throes of anarchy, lapse into the paralysis of overindulgence, and pass finally into the void beyond mind, taste, and decency.” Despite the apparently grim prognosis of culture, the author’s suggestion is to “make the most of it,” and appreciate what redeeming features vulgar pantheism has to offer. There is an implied fatalism in this perspective, despite the appeal of vulgar pantheism’s benefits. Paraphrasing Wordsworth, Pattison says, “We cannot stop at vulgarity unless we are prepared to die in our souls, any more than the child can prevent his growth to manhood unless he is prepared to die in his body.” To accept vulgarity without moving beyond it is to substitute death for eternal life, according to Wordsworth. But his transcendent Romanticism is dead, Pattison says. Meanwhile, the “bastard” version of Romanticism, “unwilling to grow up,” is alive and well in rock. In his commitment to ideological consistency, Pattison offers his cultured readers two unattractive choices—continue to hope in the dead vision of self-transcendent refinement, or make the most of vulgarity’s triumph. It may be that the choices are not quite so stark if traces of transcendent Romanticism can still be found even in triumphant rock.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Is Rock Necessarily Solipsistic?
Pattison states frankly that rock music is self-centered, solipsistic. This is largely undeniable, but surely some songs under rock’s wing are nothing of the sort—“You’ve Got a Friend,” by James Taylor/Carol King; “Don’t Give Up,” by Peter Gabriel; “Tangled Up Puppet,” and other Harry Chapin songs about fatherhood, “Tears in Heaven” by Eric Clapton, etc. The list is long when rock is taken as a blanket term for post-mid-century popular music. In the nineties and beyond, hip hop songs such as “Unconditional Love” and “Keep Ya Head Up,” by Tupac, “Runaway Love,” by Ludacris make the grade of “vulgar” but self-transcending popular music. If the broad definition of rock is just, then without qualification it has become the musical idiom of American culture; but though rock was birthed as a willful reaction to the moralistic strictures of “respectable” society, it is not necessarily fated to remain the music of self-preoccupied youth. Perhaps in the rock idiom there is no way to denote the sort of joy, rapture, and ecstasy that, Pattison notes, is the subject of refined works like Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—and still remain rock. These qualities, indeed, belong to a world of transcendent values, which vulgar pantheism denies. But if the rock idiom is limited by a vocabulary that does not include “joy,” “rapture,” and “ecstasy,” musicians may yet denote those or similar ideas in whatever capacity the language does allow. In fact, the limitations of the vulgar language may permit a form of expression that was denied to Beethoven because his language was limited in other ways. James Taylor can informally deliver lyrics embodying brotherly love before relaxed audiences in the concert hall or living room. He can sing comfortably without projecting vibrato or displaying refined poetic craft, as a solo baritone reciting Schiller. He can use his catchy rock syncopations, warm major seventh chords, vernacular American English, and hint nothing of solipsism.
Though rock was born as the music of self-preoccupied adolescence, it may, for better or worse, move beyond that stage. Steven Tyler and the Stones celebrate rock’s myth of eternal youth—examined by Pattison—to the present day; but Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) has expressed his monist worldview using the rock idiom, and Bob Dylan has opened the Great American Songbook of his generation’s sires. These examples, of course, come decades after Vulgarity was published, but they are living proof for today’s readers that rock is not necessarily solipsistic. Old and young artists, whether a minority or no, continue to prove otherwise.
It is highly likely, however, that certain subgenres of rock lend themselves more to self-transcendent expression. “You’ve Got a Friend,” for one, belongs in the soft or folk rock categories. It is less likely that psychedelic rock or heavy metal should fall short of self-glorification. This is no pejorative comment per se. Pattison has made the case compellingly that, as vulgar pantheist, the true rocker would either welcome the indictment of solipsism with alacrity or else shrug at it with indifference. Pattison’s contention that it is impossible to make the liturgy of vulgar pantheism “respectable” must be granted—but all rock music may not constitute that liturgy.
Does Rock Music Have No Effect On Its Listeners’ Behavior?
Pattison demonstrates that rock is “impervious to the diatribes” of its accusers. Answering charges that rock correlates with violence, immorality, and crime, Pattison argues that there is a gulf between what rockers feel and what they do. Like religious believers, they can “live a full emotional life inside the myths, not in the danger of external events.”
The traditional metaphysician may argue that under true vulgar pantheism, morality disappears. The “kindness, decency, and toleration” of which Whitman was a model become matters of personal preference, and cannot logically be superior to their opposites. Thus Charles Manson cannot truly be condemned for his violent intentions and murders, apparently inspired or exacerbated by the Beatles’ proto-metal song “Helter Skelter,” because to condemn him or anyone else is to stand in the transcendent place and look down like a judge on hateful deeds—but that place is supposed to be illusory under vulgar pantheism. So the one who approves not only the mythic celebration of violence in music, but the enactment of it in the real world as something neither better nor worse than Whitman’s kindness and toleration holds the most ideologically consistent view under vulgar pantheism.
But if the rocker who maintains the moral rectitude of his Romantic predecessors is accused of contradiction for claiming “nothing is forbidden, all things are permitted,”and meanwhile holding signs that say “fuck war,” the response available to him, Pattison says, is a spate of nonsense syllables. “Rock in its vulgarity,” he articulates, “wants no part of eloquence or logic.” Whether this constitutes a defeat of the rocker’s ideology can only depend on one’s predetermined system of values. Insofar as logical consistency and articulateness are good, the rocker loses; insofar as unfettered commitment to the expansion of infinite self is good, the traditional metaphysician loses.
In any case, while the suggestion that rock inspires violent intentions in those who have not already entertained them may indeed remain nebulous, it cannot be that rock (or any other kind of music) is without effect on its listeners. If so, it is meaningless to speak of it as a “powerful weapon.” Pattison writes, “Any connection between rock mythology and the behavior of large numbers of people is unproven and probably unprovable.” And yet earlier he states that the rocker’s apathy toward capitalism “translates into decreasing percentages of voter participation and detachment from public debate and gainful employment;”and later he cites the marked decrease in church attendance that has coincided with the advent of rock. Whether either of these trends are good or bad, again, depends on a predetermined value-system; but if rock helps create or sustain apathy toward religion and politics, then it is not, as intuition seems to confirm, without effect on the behavior of its listeners. Its status as a powerful force is evident in the real world.
Is Civilization Doomed?
Pattison claims that rock is the product of vulgar American democracy, which is premised on self-interest and liberation from authority. In his words, the American revolutionary myth prizes the same values stressed in rock’s liturgy under the names “democracy, pluralism, individualism, limited government, manifest destiny, and civil rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” American democracy, he states, provides “an ideal setting for the growth of romantic pantheism.” Those in American leadership who wish to “save America from its own vulgarity” live in contradiction, because it is impossible to disdain vulgarity while supporting “the democracy out of which it grows.” That the political system of the United States explains the vulgarity of its popular culture is a point well taken. De Tocqueville, Pattison notes, foretold it before the Civil War, and Arthur Sullivan, he observes, trembled prophetically at the prospect of Edison’s talking machine putting great power into the hands of the vulgar masses.
Donald Trump (b. 1946)
Perhaps the American Experiment of democracy has proven that, especially after the Industrial Revolution, vulgarity trumps refinement; but to undercut those who would encourage American citizens, particularly children in the context of education, to move beyond vulgarity is surely fatalistic. Those whose commitment to self-transcendence is absolute may take heart that Jefferson, with Adams, envisioned an America led by the “aristocracy of virtue and talent,” that the political system is not immutable if people are willing to sacrifice for the possibility of achieving a more perfect union; they may respond to Longfellow’s exhortation in his “Psalm of Life” to summon one’s commitment to higher things, and reject the authoritarianism or moralism that serve to stoke the flames of the very vulgarity it seeks to quell. They may do all this and not be guilty of lusting after foreign models of culture. Artistically, Americans have many examples of culture-creators past and present whose work moves beyond vulgarity—Samuel Barber, John Coltrane, Leonard Bernstein, Wynton Marsalis, Eric Whaticre, to name a few. A fatalistic response to the truths, realities, and powerful myths described in Pattison’s work is not the only response available.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
Conclusion
Pattison’s analysis of rock as idea offers unique perspective that thinkers and creators of today ought to consider. His command of world literature and assimilation of a broad spectrum of scholarship inform the challenging discourse presented in Vulgarity. The book succeeds brilliantly in relating the underlying philosophical divisions that are reflected in contemporary music, culture, and even politics. Pattison states that, “American democracy necessarily grows more not less vulgar.” Using popular culture and the RNC as the barometer, who can deny that this statement has already proven accurate in the thirty years since Vulgarity was published? While artists, educators, and critics that still value refined craftsmanship must look squarely at the stark reality around them which Pattison has described, they may yet—perhaps they must—contribute to culture in ways that move beyond or coopt vulgarity, whether or not its broader triumph is absolute.
January 11, 2016
This post marks the first in a series of reflections on books I read in 2015, offered mainly for my friends and family, as well as anyone else online looking for reviews of these works or otherwise interested in subjects ranging from philosophy, science, theology, and spirituality to economics, politics, and history. The first on the list is:
Plato, Republic. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, Edited by Elizabeth Watson Scharffenberger (New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2004).
There is too much in this long and truth-packed document for me to attempt to summarize or comment on in a brief space; but within the greatness, I found many striking parallels with the Bible. After reading through, I closed the book convinced that Plato was a Christian. Of course he predated Christ, but the essence of his teaching harmonizes beautifully with that of Christ. No wonder medieval Christian thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas deeply respected him. Among the striking parallels with the Bible are the following: Glaucon poses the question as to who is happier, the unjust man who is prosperous and celebrated as righteous, or the just man who is viewed as wicked, and then “scourged, racked, bound…and, at last, after suffering every kind of evil, impaled.” Years ago I read C.S. Lewis cite this passage as one of the most outstanding ‘pagan’ anticipations of the truth. Reading it for myself confirmed to me the idea that what I as a Christian call the Spirit of Prophecy is not limited to people who have a conscious knowledge of the Gospel. Equally striking, furthermore, was Plato’s quotation of Romans 8:28 in Book 10 (four centuries before Paul!): “Even when [the just man] is in poverty or sickness, or any other seeming misfortune, all things will in the end work together for good to him in life and death…” Peppered throughout Plato’s Republic are many other images, ideas, and turns of phrase that recall various passages in scripture. If there is a single Spirit of Truth which, as Paul preached to the Athenians in the first century, is not far from all men but quite near, it is no surprise that such spontaneous concord should be discovered.
Overall, Socrates’ task is to answer Glaucon’s challenge to prove that the just person is truly happier than the unjust; this he does by sketching in detail the structure of human civilization, ultimately drawing parallels between the State and the individual, which is a microcosm of the former. Like the State, the individual has forces within that strive for mastery, but which must be ruled by wisdom and love for absolute truth. The dialogue becomes an occasion for Plato to propound his political vision, and to envisage the ideal State. Few works have been as influential throughout history.
Glaucon’s challenge is only resolved in the end when Socrates appeals to the immortality of the soul. The idea that there is reward and/or punishment beyond the grave offers rational justification for preferring the life of a just man, even when it means misery and sore travail, to the life of the unjust man, even when it means adulation, merriment and delight in this life.
Also paramount in this book, and of special interest to me as a composer, is Plato’s view on literature and music. Its purpose, he says, is to impart and reinforce the love of virtue within the citizens of the State, particularly the young in the context of education. Music and poetry—Plato often singles out Homer—can be judged based on whether it tunes the strings of the soul either to courage and temperance or to pusillanimity and lust. Reading this reminded me of Beethoven, whose personal library included the Republic and whose music often embodies the virtues Plato praises in this work. The essence of Plato’s teaching, I believe, remains relevant today: goodness in art reflects goodness in humans, and both should be encouraged and celebrated heartily.
September 10, 2015
I continue my look at the pinnacle of pop-music success, #1 on the billboard hot 100. Apart from my personal curiosity as a classical composer, I hope to put into words what attentive listening looks like. Pop music is not meant for attentive listening, but for passive listening either as aural sugar or else dance music. But what happens when you listen to it attentively? This is the ongoing experiment. Finally, a discussion about popular music is a discussion about culture—what we value, how we think, who we are collectively, etc. It is never a bad thing to know such things about the society one finds oneself in.
For the week of September 12 the no. 1 song on the charts was “Can’t Feel My Face” by The Weeknd.
The song opens with a synth emerging out of silence like a star walking onstage. Soon he seizes attention with lyrics to a simple pop melody. Comparisons to the King of Pop are warranted: there’s a Jackson-esque urgency in his voice—hot, sharp, full of self-assurance and performance energy. It’s the repetitive cadence of the melody that belongs to the present decade, as The Weeknd celebrates the perennial theme of badness.
What makes the song ‘bad’? Look at the opening lines:
And I know she’ll be the death of me, at least we’ll both be numb
And she’ll always get the best of me, the worst is yet to come
But at least we’ll both be beautiful and stay forever young
This I know, yeah, this I know
Obviously there is a contradiction. Will you die or stay forever young? But contradiction is the point. There is a strange pleasure in intentionally embracing falsehood, especially when you are addicted to something.
The celebration of contradiction, though, is an old strain in rock music (broadly conceived). Think of U2’s “With or Without You,” Meatloaf’s “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” and even the Beatles’ “Getting Better”—it’s getting better all the time (it can’t get no worse!).
But still: what the heck is the song about? I can’t feel my face when I’m with you…but I love it?
The first thought is that it’s simply about an erotic relationship. But if so, how could numbness of face have any significance? Isn’t facial sensation a good thing in the midst of (ahem) romantic interactions? How could it possibly be construed as a compliment: “I can’t feel my face when I’m with you”?
Apparently it’s a reference to cocaine, which can act as a numbing agent. Like Eric Clapton’s “she’s all right,” this song personifies the stimulant with the feminine pronoun—She told me ‘don’t worry about it’. So the song is about cocaine personified as a girl. On the other hand, it could be about a girl who is compared to cocaine. Either way, to understand the song, one has to get the reference. If one doesn’t, it must be exceedingly meaningless.
But how many people playing, streaming, or dancing to this tune know or care about what it really means? There doesn’t seem to be any widespread acknowledgement of its real meaning. The whole situation looks like a very sad, but not surprising, commentary on the state of popular taste. “Who cares what the song is about; it makes me feel good!” There is no need to satire this; the masses are already satiring themselves.
The song is in some way parallel to the name, The Weeknd. First of all, he’s saying “I’ll spell my name however I want to. I don’t want another e in there. Done.” But now non-initiates might think: “Are you supposed to pronounce it ‘weekend’? What else would it be? I guess it must be that.” Then, “Oh, of course, The Weekend!” when they hear someone else say the name, or look it up on Wikipedia. Abel Tesfaye creates an image for himself that people don’t quite understand unless they’re initiated—in the circle. People desperately want to be in the circle. Now they’re singing “I can’t feel my face” thinking it’s just a dope love-song. It looks like The Weeknd is playing on how ignorant people can be—when the beat is good enough.
What about the music itself apart from the lyrics?
The first verse doubles as a sort of intro. Synth sounds keep the tension up until the beat comes in. The beat has a slight disco-feel, and is obviously simple and repetitive, which lends to its rhythmic power. It makes you want to move. Without this beat, the song wouldn’t be #1. There are other factors too, but the beat is the sina qua non.
“Woo” happens every time the chorus starts. Tesfaye channels the height of feeling, which is what dancing in da club is all about. Yielding to the power of the beat is analogous to yielding to the power of cocaine, or this girl who is like cocaine, or both.
An interlude forms the bridge—the beat stops, and the spotlight is on what’s going on in the subject’s mind, regardless of any external realities, like the noise and bright lights of a club. This breaks up the monotony and creates some real contrast. It also recalls the intro, so that when the chorus starts again it’s like a new beginning. It also emphasizes the conscious choice the subject (i.e. the singer with whom the listener is supposed to identify) makes to enter and reenter the state of inebriation which the beat symbolizes. The song is short; but offers plenty of playing ground for DJs, who can mix it, sample something over it, make it last as long as necessary.
In sum, it’s the latest popular oblation to goddess of hedonism, the mainstay of the popular music industry, inviting people to discard their moral inhibitions and yield to the object of their affections, whatever it may be, whether it’s addictive, destructive, face-numbing, fatal, or worse. And why? Because this is what sells.
