JOE: When Adam gave me the challenge of a love-song 1990s-vs-2000s battle, he gave me an hour to come up with a song, except it took me the time walking up the stairs to get it: Dan Deacon’s “Wham City.” It’s no love song per se but it’s also perfect. I mean, the two top comments for this live YouTube video are “this is why i love white people” and “This song makes me feel like kissing strangers.” You know what I mean? Look at this pudgy little guy with his blissed out devotees crunching in the dark. And then look at Adam’s Guitar Wolf like a shining god on stage. You know? Perfect.
ADAM: I could spend days trying to figure out this question: which is the better decade for music, the 90s or the 00s. It's like a math problem with several angles of approach, and limiting it to “love songs” helps focus it. Your choice kind of epitomizes the 2000s, and it has a broad take on love. My first choice was “Explode and Make Up” by Sugar, but that isn’t on Youtube. What the heck? I thought everything was on Youtube. I mean, Extreme’s song “Hole Hearted” is there, so I almost picked that because it surely embodies the pre-Nevermind 90s. But that’s only like one year. I thought about hitting you with "Holland, 1945" but Neutral Milk Hotel is surely a 2000s band, even if that record came out in 1998. Then I thought about Nick Cave's murderous "O'Malley's Bar," because it's long and conflicted (“If I have no free will then how can I be morally culpable?”) and I think that's what the 90s were, too (as opposed to your long song’s celebratory and anthemic here-we-are-now-let-us-entertain-you). But “O’Malley’s Bar” is all about death, and death is the 2000s purview, as well. So of course I have to pick Nirvana now, like maybe “Rape Me” or something. Except screw that. I submit to you Guitar Wolf’s “I Love You OK,” which is epic everything, and which embodies the last throes of good stadium rock, brash punk, a guitar, an icon, and a heart on a sleeve.
Adam Robinson runs Publishing Genius and Joe Young runs your mom.
No comments:
Post a Comment