Nearly 24, And So Much More

The Artists. Get Used To It.

Kids These Days:

Since I retired and became a grandfather, I've been waiting for any random young person to walk up to me and say look at my life, I'm a lot like you were. So far, no takers.

The young folk just don't care, and - aside from Neil - they never have. I know I didn't. During my childhood, the older folks listened to Lawrence Welk and voted for Nixon. We loved our Beatles yet felt defensive about this brand-new culture of ours. 

These days, young folk who are far more secure about youth culture than we ever were just laugh at our music and call it things like yacht-rock, or worse, dad-rock (two words that should never go together). 

Their reaction to us - utter indifference - could be a lot worse. And it will be, once climate change really kicks in. We'll have to buy plastic sheets to cover our graves for when they start pissing on them. (I'm smelling, so to speak, an opportunity here... Time for a patent?)

And they go on making and loving their music. Our opinion of it means nothing to them. How can an old geezer/blogger - who still believes there's something worth hearing there - keep up?  Should he even try? (Asking for a friend.)

Diamonds in the Rough:

It doesn't help that the music industry continues to pump out ever more "product". You'd think I'd be happy about that, but it just makes it that much harder to locate new music to love among the bazillion albums released yesterday. I know it's out there. It's what keeps me going. The results, alas, have been hit or miss. 

I'm tempted to liken the current rate of music production to the thousand proverbial monkeys typing away, theoretically on their way to eventually producing Hamlet. But that's not a fair comparison. After all, this is about guitars, not typewriters, and bands that know how to play them. On a good day, they're producing maybe Henry V. Not bad and often very good. Alas, I'm looking for Hamlet.

This is unfair, of course. I'm chasing that first high (or in my case, the second and third ones, too, meaning the Beatles ('64), Allmans/Dead ('73), Punk/New Wave ('78)), that hit of ecstasy that a new album could provide back when I was seven/sixteen/twenty-one. It's exceedingly rare to begin with and my aged synapses are worn down, much like my taste buds (thank you, Frank's Hot Sauce) Would I even recognize "great" if I heard it? Possibly not, yet I'm certain it's out there. It's just a question of finding it.

Don't Look at My Life, I'm Not Like You Were:

So I bide my time and explore other genres. I retreat to jazz, blues, etc. for a while and when I return, pop, if anything, is even more dominated by high-energy-dance-oriented-female-vocal-calisthenics, the singer intent on ruling the Earth. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it can be exhausting. Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotion, for instance, is quite good but I don't play it much. It feels too much like getting run over by a truck. One with high heels.

Is this what it means to be old? When any display of sustained energy by a young person is by definition exhausting and thus depressing because I am much closer to dying than they are, and I don't like being reminded of it? 

But that's the whole purpose of pop music, isn't it? To celebrate youth. And here I am trying to kick it off my lawn. So keeping up with, and god forbid appreciating it has become a challenge. 

And I look damn silly trying to at my age. Even Mrs. Jaybee wonders what's going on when I get yet another record by yet another often attractive young woman. I try to explain that I've been listening to guys sing about their woman problems for decades now, so it's refreshing to hear women bitch about us. But I'll admit my recent buys are the aural equivalent of hanging around by the local schoolyard. 

Mrs. Jaybee has shown both a forbearance and a healthy skepticism ("Who's this weirdo?"). And while her initial reaction to the music is often a mild dislike, she usually does warm up to it, like she did with me. 

Consulting my no-longer-trusty spreadsheet, I see that it is bigger than ever (8,000 rows>), yet the possible candidates for purchase elicit only a yawn. I keep looking though, and found two artists who, if I hope to just know what the hell is going on, I'd better check out.

And of course, they're young and female. It just gets weirder. As of now, they're both over twenty-one, now. However, these records came out when one was seventeen, and the other was nineteen. Is this even legal?

Billie Eilish: WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP WHERE DO WE GO? (2019)

Wanting to avoid repeating the Carla Rae Jepsen experience, I hoped for something different, and Billie was certainly that, even if I didn't know it. Without knowing who I was listening to, I'd hear a brief snippet of a song on the car radio, barely making it out. She tends to sing in a whisper, you see. And since Mrs. Jaybee hated that, she'd switch the channel before I knew who it was.

But the name was on my radar. While only seventeen when she released this, her first album, she managed to have a bunch of hits, Grammy awards, and critical accolades. Not the usual thing.

It's irritating enough for Mrs. Jaybee when I innocently buy what turns out to be a strange CD.  Knowingly doing so could be considered an act of war. It would take more time before Billie could come into the house. 

It took True Detective using a few of her songs for Mrs Jaybee to reconsider. So I had an opening.

Finally, I took the opportunity when I retired (when everything was about me anyway) to sit her down and inform her that I would be getting Billie Eilish's first CD. I feared a reaction akin to that if I was proposing an open marriage, but she was okay with it. With Billie, I mean.

And we're playing Billie all the time now. She is practically family. And if anything, Mrs Jaybee likes her more than I do.

The whispers, vocal distortions (via her producer-brother), and eerily quiet backdrop are the antithesis of all I have come to fear in pop music. And if anything, it's more like a musical whack-a-mole game. One second, a voice pops out of the right speaker, and a second later it's coming out of the left one. Dodging, and weaving, maybe she's a boxer. Or just shy. And when she dispenses with the sound-affects, and just sings a ballad she's damn near devastating.

After at least a dozen listens I still don't feel I'm at the bottom of it yet. There's always more to hear, even on the very spare ones. And she almost always hits her mark.

And in her unique way, achieving world domination. It's heartening that the young folks would take to such a weirdo.

A-

Olivia Rodrigo: Guts (spilled) (2023)

This one's a slightly expanded version of her second album, Guts, released last year, adding five new songs.

Olivia's not weird, but she does have issues. And she makes the most of them by co-writing a bunch of intelligent, funny, and tuneful songs.

Every song has at least a few things to offer, whether it's her great voice, the thoughtful lyrics, or sturdy melodies, all done in a variety of styles, including rock n roll and country. As a matter of fact, every kind of music - fast, slow, loud, and quiet - is accounted for. And speaking of quiet, the ballads aren't awful (i.e., over-the-top delivery of bad lyrics to compensate for unearned emotion). Quite the accomplishment.  There are no wasted moments or filler. 

When I put it on I braced myself for the onslaught. But right off the mark, I got a different vibe. Okay, she does hit you with the sledgehammer about thirty seconds in, but it's those quieter thirty seconds - with an acoustic guitar no less - that I latch onto. It's like a signal saying, I trust you to listen to the quieter parts. And there are several here. 

This young lady has it all and is just getting started. I'm betting that's her on guitar, too. 

A-

The Kids Are More Than All Right:

Out of caution, I'm being stingy with the grades. They're not quite on the level of So Great I'm Dying to Put It On, but they definitely are I'm So Glad I Did Put It On material. I give the edge to Olivia for now, but Billie may have the staying power. 

They're not GOATs but they give me hope. That's all I'll need for now.