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I am currently in the throes of wooing. Not sure yet if she's really interested, or if she's just trying to stay my friend. Signs could point to either, though obviously I'm probably being more optimistic than I should be. More as it develops.
Lately, I can't stop listening to ABBA. I find this hard to reconcile with my fandom for people who make music with more than two brain cells' worth of thought to it, like Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, or even Tim Curry. Why ABBA? Why now? Hell, WHY THE FUCK DISCO?! Why did the universe of pop music choose the mid-to-late seventies to vomit up every iota of wretched excess and disgusting emotionless pap onto the unsuspecting ears of the world?
And let's make no bones about it: I STILL HATE DISCO. It's awful. Fucking awful. But christ, this ABBA greatest hits CD is trapped in my CD player and it won't leave. I walk in the room, and the first thing I want to hear is "Dancing Queen," or "Take a Chance on Me," or (my true personal favorite) "The Winner Takes It All." I feel as though this impulse is something I must understand and control immediately, otherwise I could go on some kind of sadistic shit pop rampage and waltz into my room someday with an armload of Journey, Thompson Twins, and *gasp* Matchbox 20.
I think what it boils down to is that, buried beneath the overinstrumentation and melodrama, there are truly gorgeous melodies. No, let me take that back; there isn't really much overinstrumentation involved. I don't think too much of excess when I hear ABBA. I think of really well-crafted pop music, with all the wit and cleverness of my shit.
Not that there isn't wit in the music, or cleverness in the arrangements. But FUCK, come on: "You can dance/You can jive/Having the time of your life"?! A thousand monkeys typing for ten minutes could craft more clever words. Yet the melodies break through the words; they are clever and catchy in ways mere mortals can't understand, but four Sweedish fucks can. Literally, the chorus from "Knowing Me, Knowing You" has not left my head or lips for days. It's just amazing. It's really rambling, actually, but all the pieces fit, like this endless stream-of- consciousness spoken by a genius or something, where every single word fits into each other but it keeps going, and going, and going. Really, there must be a gift of genius to crafting really great and effortless pop music that's catchy and fun in a memorable way, just as there's a gift to what Dylan or Costello do. Flip sides of the same coin, probably.
It's a classic pop paradox: catchy but stupid. It's so rare that you find catchy and SMART. I'd cite the aforementioned Elvis Costello as an example. I guess sometimes you just need catchy and stupid to get you through the long, cold night. At least, I do.
Must sleep. . .poem to write tomorrow morning (20 lines of rhyming couplets telling the story of Sisyphus from the point-of-view of the ROCK! What fun!) and seven to ten pages of my honors project are long overdue. Keep the faith, comrades.
(And I guess it would make the most sense to pretend there are thousands of readers hanging on my every word, instead of two ready to hang me for every word. HA! So I will.)