The Best Songs of 2012

I’ve been working for a while on this year-end song list. I did it mostly by combing lists of the best songs of the year, and found fifteen I really liked. Presented in ascending order so that you don’t just scroll to the bottom to see the top song.

1. Grimes, “Oblivion”. What’s left to say about Oblivion? On an album (and a career) full of electronic arcana, Grimes layers low, dark hooks with her high-pitched, mousy voice. It’s a dance floor hit, a work of odd creativity, and the summoning of some otherworldy spirit, all wrapped into one.

2. Alabama Shakes, “Hold On”. Alabama Shakes put together a truly wonderful soul song for the modern era. Singer Brittany Howard shows the combination of vocal energy and restraint that makes for great R&B vocals, a skill that many singers today lack. The band’s music sounds thoroughly old-school, but the lo-fi bluesy sound wasn’t a gimmick, as it is for many retro stars.

3. Frank Ocean, “Thinkin Bout You”. Displaying the inverse talent of the above song, which conveyed energy through restraint, Ocean stole the stage with a low-key jam. His tale of first love is captivated the ears of mainstream and indie listeners alike as nothing else this year.

4. Dirty Projectors, “Gun Has No Trigger”. As often happens with the Dirty Projectors, the lyrics aren’t exactly clear (a political skewering? a drug anthem? free-form surrealism?), but the effect of this mysterious song isn’t lost on us. The group strips away its usual arcane rhythms and noises for a simple but effective Bond-theme-esque hit, rising the tension to a boiling point with incredibly controlled voices.

5. Of Monsters and Men, “Little Talks”. It takes a special kind of indie pop song to chart as high as Of Monsters and Men did this year, and “Little Talks” was just that hit. Their cheery love song harnesses careful guitar strums, bouncy horns, and the tale of two star-crossed lovers riding a boat to safety.

6. Usher, “Climax”. The brainchild of producer Diplo (“Paper Planes”) harnessing Usher’s surprisingly good voice, no pop hit caught the ear of critics this year like “Climax”, an addictively sweet breakup song.

7. Lianne la Havas, “Is Your Love Big Enough?” Other critics have called it “the best pop song this year that no one heard,” and rightly so. Havas’ genre of not-quite-pop-but-not-yet-soul wasn’t made for Top 40. But the single, youthful yet wise, sweet yet substantial, is surely the sound of  a star in the making.

8. Psy, “Gangnam Style”. No, it’s not ironic appreciation. While some critics have compared Gangnam Style to the drab pop hits of LMFAO, the devil’s in the details. Where most pop bands put laziness, hedonism, and nihilism, K-pop star Psy brough real energy to the table to make this year’s catchiest song.

9. Plan B, “Ill Manors”. British rapper Plan B dissects the class tensions of modern-day London in this overseas hit. At turns sardonic and violent, “Ill Manors” is the near-official theme song of the 2011 London riots.

10. Japandroids, “The House that Heaven Built”. Though I’ve heard punk songs with more complicated chord progressions- I’m not certain there’s even a third chord- Japandroids’ shouty energy can fill an arena like no other song this year, and still feel a bit constrained.

11. Kendrick Lamar, “Swimming Pools (Drank)”. As part of Lamar’s favored theme of peer pressure and group dynamics, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” dissects tales of alcoholism with a sociologists’ skill. He blends current trendy production and techniques with his early-nineties-style low-key, free-form rapping style. It all fits together perfectly.

12. Jessie Ware, “110%”. British pop star Ware sings with such subtlety she’s almost muttering, and the washing instrumentation is similarly low-key. But the end product is as comfortable and warm as a blanket. It’s just a shame Ware didn’t make it properly overseas.

13. Beach House, “Myth”. It’s not the dream-pop perfection they reached with their 2010 hit “Zebra”, but the Baltimore duo is just as much a master of the genre as they were then.

14. Chromatics, “Kill for Love”. Chromatics captured the essence of the new-but-retro synthpop sound making the rounds in the music world with “Kill for Love”. It’s the kind of song you’d hear in a movie like Drive, all substance but no gimmicks, the instruments of 80’s pop grown out of awkward maximalism into an impeccably sleek sound.

15. First Aid Kit, “Emmylou”. I’m not certain what it is that sets this slow country ballad a cut above the rest. Is it the band’s inclination towards hooks? The singers’ soft voices? The wall-of-sound atmosphere?  But there’s no uncertainty that this rising country duo, at only 19 and 22, have made their mark on this year’s music.

Why Won't the World End?

I hope everyone is having a wonderful apocalypse today. I know I am, just like I was having on last October’s apocalypse. Though I don’t remember how the apocalypse went for me last May. And on Y2K, I didn’t even know the world was ending. You would think my parents would somehow give me the memo, but no.

I’m beginning to notice a pattern here. Despite all of the rigorous testing and thorough examination of claims through the scientific method that goes into determining the dates of the apocalypse, the world just keeps refusing to end. It’s almost looking as if people want the world to end- like they can’t wait for it or something.

It seems like every time I turn around, a different group of Christians/New Agers/cultists/general multipurpose oddballs are screaming about doomsday. People get deep into these things. One article I saw from the two failed Harold Camping apocalypses[1] featured complaints from two children whose parents were so devout in their belief that the world would end that they refused to think of the childrens’ futures, including impending college decisions. Even without all of these predictions, facts about the predicted apocalypse remain worrisome. For example, according toReuters, close to four in ten Americans believe that climate change is theresult of the biblical end times.

Knowing the little that I do about psychology, this seems utterly absurd. Evolutionarily speaking, all human urges should derive from three needs: self-preservation, sex, and filial preservation, which allow one’s genes to replicate. The end of the world would kill you, kill your children and therefore your entire genetic investment, and prevent you from ever having sex again. It would also destroy the entire purpose of many people’s lives, which is providing for the security of the future of the world.

My initial reaction is that believing that the end of the world will happen to you, right now, could be a form of egotism. Essentially, the world that I live in, the world right now, is the most important world that has ever existed, and all of human history has been leading up to my accomplishments.

There are other social-psychology principles at work here. There’s the human inclination towards blind trust. If a charismatic, authoritative-looking person is telling you the world is going to end, you might believe them, no matter how illogical their logic. There’s also confirmation bias. If you’ve started to believe something, you will do almost anything to protect that belief, to avoid cognitive dissonance and/or the recognition of your own stupidity. There was plenty of confirmation bias (people seeking out information that matched what they already know) in this apocalypse, thanks to Nostradamus, The Discovery Channel, and the usual idiocy coming out of the New Age movement.

The biggest draw, however, is a bit more logical: the apocalypse is the ultimate solution to all of the world’s problems. We are facing, as a world, issues with extreme weather and global warming, hunger, poverty, disease, discrimination, war, and government corruption. People tend to believe the world’s problems are worse now, because they can see the pain people feel now, even though, really, all of the issues I just mentioned except global warming have gotten exponentially better since the dawn of civilization. It’s nice to believe in a simple solution to all of the world’s injustices.

Remember, many apocalypse preachers believe in an afterlife where all people will be judged and they can retain meaning from their lives, not the extinguishing of all humanity. It’s generally not the atheists shouting the end of the world. (The exception is ecological catastrophe, which isn’t actually the end of the world, but sounds more interesting if you cast it as that.) Studies show that marginalized groups tend more frequently to believe inthe impending apocalypse and, therefore, return of justice.  

Well, unfortunately, there is no such cosmic justice. It looks like humans will just have to fix our social problems on our own. Oh, well.

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[1] I shouldn’t have to use the plural “apocalypses”. It doesn’t make any sense.

Completely Unnecessary Analysis: "Elf"

In Completely Unnecessary Analysis, I’ll find thematic and literary elements in books, movies, and other narratives that demand no analysis whatsoever. In the words of John Green, “nerd life is so much better than real life.”

The film that got me thinking about this was the 2003 film Elf, where Will Ferrell plays Buddy the Elf, a human raised since childhood at Santa’s North Pole believing he is an elf. After growing up, he heads to New York to meet his family, who are a bit shocked to see him, and not entirely in the Christmas spirit, so he has to save Christmas, etc.

I doubt anyone involved in the Christmas-movie-mass-production industry ever thought about this. But every time I see it, and my family watches it just about every year, I think about the literary caricature of the Noble Savage.

The Noble Savage emerged during the Enlightenment as a product of the writings of philosophers Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. The two believed that people were inherently good, but that living in society turned them to unhappiness and corruption. The Noble Savage, then, is the character who has lived outside the bounds of society and retains his natural moral goodness, emotional well-being and physical vigor, often with a certain childlike naïvete. Prominent examples include Friday from Robinson Crusoe, the hobbits in Lord of the Rings and Disney characters like Tarzan and Pocahontas. The idea is also scientifically and anthropologically invalid, but that’s a different story.

Buddy the Elf, like the Noble Savage, has retained his superhuman abilities. He sleeps about 45 minutes a night and possesses superhuman decorating and snowball-making and -throwing abilities. He walked all the way to New York City from the North Pole. Near the beginning in the film, he communicated with both animals and snowmen, symbols of nature. Not to mention that he can consume physically impossible levels of sugar.

One scene near the beginning of the film contrasts him with his skeptical love interest, played by Zooey Deschanel, a disgruntled department store employee “just trying to get through the holidays.” Her water has shut off and she finds no joy in her job. The pressures of proletarian production, financial stresses, and living in a degenerating urban environment have eaten away at her cheery spirit. Only with the help of Buddy the Elf’s superhuman charm can she reach her “natural” level of happiness.

Sometimes archetypes like these become so entwined in literature we don’t even notice them. The Noble Savage has a great appeal: the idea that people would be good if only we got in touch with the beauty of nature more, the idea that we can solve everything in one fell swoop, one simple solution: removing society. Even though the circumstances that encouraged it are gone, the Noble Savage is in its second life through low-culture films.  

Web Gems #2

Some things I've seen on the internet in recent weeks:

http://knowyourmeme.com/videos/54768-creepypasta: A psychologist created this video, an representation of what it’s like to have schizophrenic auditory hallucinations, based on hearsay from actual schizophrenics. It’s beautifully terrifying.

http://pandyland.net/random: The makers of the nihilistic comic Pandyland created this random comic generator, which shows you a sequence of three images with no necessary order whatsoever, providing strips alternatingly silly, depressing, and Kafkaesque.

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/: A wonderful interactive graphic explaining logical fallacies in layman’s terms, including examples for each.

http://grist.org/news/words-the-coal-industry-doesnt-want-to-hear-senator-ashley-judd/: Confirming rumors swirling around the media, country music star and environmentalist Ashley Judd announced she is considering a run for Senate as a Democrat against Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. I’m not certain what her actual chances are, but the prospect is quite exciting.

http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html: An informational blog post, in response to the Connecticut school shootings, about the American mental health system. Written by the mother of a child with unknown mental health issues, I doubt anything has enlightened me surrounding the shootings as this.  

I've been busy with school recently, but I'll be posting plenty more once winter break starts.

Foxconn on a Trolley

The word on the street (“street” here refers to the internet) is that Apple will start producing some of its computers in the United States. This will not be a modest switch: The people at Apple will be selling laptops with a big “Assembled in the USA” stamped on the box. The cost of labor in China is apparently not what it used to be- it’s about five times what it cost in 2000[1]- but the shift will still necessitate an increase in cost.

It’s no secret that working conditions at Foxconn, the Chinese corporation that produces products for Apple and several other technology companies, are awful. Last year, they made headlines when they had to install nets around their factory after eighteen employees attempted suicide. The incident was so notable, in fact, that it has its own Wikipedia page. The factory has been described, apparently, as a “labor camp” in which employees work up to twelve hours per day for terrible wages compared to United States workers and are discriminated against based on ethnicity.

This whole thing brings up, in my mind, some interesting questions about the morality of labor. By buying into products produced at places like Foxconn, we become morally culpable for their actions. We are now financially supporting this type of exploitation. So it would seem that the obvious best thing to do would be to get ourselves out of this moral culpability and do our part to stop it.

But at what cost? We are not literally dealing with a labor camp here. An employee who gets sixty cents an hour is (usually) not being forced to earn that money. They are participating in it willingly because the alternative is scrounging for food on the streets. If we, as a nation, decide we will only buy products made in the USA, other nations will remain impoverished.

Besides, when money moves into the local economy, these conditions do improve. Wages do go up, as has just happened in China, and eventually reach industrial-nation levels. Not to mention, overall, the suicide rate at Foxconn is below the national averages of both the US and China.  

It reminds me, a bit, of the famous trolley problem. The question: A trolley is on track to hit and kill five people who cannot move for some reason. You have the option of flipping a switch which diverts the trolley to an alternate track in which one person, also immobile, is standing. Do you flip it and become morally responsible for one death? Or do you not get involved and fail to save (net) four lives? Do we, as consumers, buy into a cruel and exploitative scheme, or do we let workers in foreign nations go jobless?

Presently, this is the no-win situation we’re in with Apple. Isn’t there a better way? Can’t we sell computers that are made in foreign nations without labor violations? Can’t we pay third-world employees fair (if not American-level) wages? Aren’t there any responsible living conditions or precious-metal mining techniques? We’re talking about one of the largest companies in the world here. Is it too much to ask for them to stop the trolley?

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[1] http://investorplace.com/2012/12/is-apple-prepping-a-made-in-usa-boom/