Both Alicia Keys and singer-songwriter Ryan Tedder of the band OneRepublic have faced accusations that, well, if their songs were toilet paper, they could be labeled as containing at least 35% post-consumer recycled materials. This spring, Kelly Clarkson called Tedder out on the more-than-passing-resemblance between her 2009 hit single “Already Gone” and “Halo” by Beyonce, both Tedder originals. Meanwhile, our good friend Money Mike has noted here and elsewhere the Force MD’s impression Keys pulls off on “That’s How Strong My Love Is”, a highlight of her latest (and best yet) record The Element of Freedom. But in the case of a couple of recent singles, it seems that Tedder and Keys have independently arrived at roughly the same song, roughly simultaneously. Though Keys’s song was released and charted modestly as a single last year while OneRepublic’s is only just now starting to scale European charts and isn’t yet receiving any U.S. airplay, the albums the songs are taken from appeared within weeks of each other last fall. Neither artist could fairly accuse the other of even accidental plagiarism. Both are great songs, but it’s hard for me, when I’m singing along with one, not to sing the words and melodies of the other over it. I’d love to hear Alicia Keys co-fronting OneRepublic with Ryan Tedder on a mash-up of these songs.
Like the National Biscuit Company and Kentucky Fried Chicken before them, the Young Men’s Christian Association, heretofore known as the YMCA, has adopted the popular abbreviation of their official corporate identity as their official official corporate identity. The group will now simply be known as the Y. This change, of course, has serious ramifications for disco lovers and wedding reception attendees around the world. If YMCA (the organization) is now to be known as just “The Y”, whatever will become of “Y.M.C.A.” (the Village People song). I mean, “It’s fun to stay at the Y”? What about those three remaining syllables in the chorus? What are we supposed to sing there? What dorky dance moves are we supposed to do now? And most importantly, what about the children?A mock-up of the revised cover art for the Village People’s 1978 hit single, produced prior to Victor Willis’s statement.
Thank heavens for Victor “Hot Cop” Willis, the group’s original lead singer, who took time out of his busy day to ISSUE. A. STATEMENT. reassuring the confused masses that the name of the song will not change thereby averting pop-cultural panic on a grand scale. What’s that I hear? Oh, that must be the collective sigh of relief heaved by the executives at Casablanca Records knowing that they would not have to put the 1978 album Cruisin’ back in print in order to correct the title of the group’s most (in)famous hit single. (Or maybe it was the collective sigh of relief from the Y’s Board of Directors that after more than 30 years of trying to distance the organization and distinguish its mission from the homoerotic double-entendre offered up in the song’s lyrics, they’ve finally stumbled on a tactic that has a small chance of actually working.)
In related news, The Escape Club have confirmed that they will not be changing the lyrics to their 1988 hit “Wild Wild West” in order to reflect the prevailing wisdom that we are no longer heading for the 90s or, in fact, living in the 80s. Also, a representative from the James Brown estate issued a statement earlier today that the title of the Godfather of Soul’s 1985 single “Living in America” will remain the same despite the fact that Brown is, y’know, dead.
{Personal note to Mr. Willis: Dude! I love Village People, okay? Especially Victor Willis-fronted Village People. I mean that. In totally unironic ways. When people ask me what my Top 10 favorite albums of all time are, Macho Man is there right between Pet Sounds and Doolittle (and the 1977 self-titled debut is probably in my Top 20). And when people ask me who my Top 10 favorite frontmen are – dude, you’re there, right between Freddie Mercury and Prince. I mean that! Okay? So, speaking as fan: don’t do this. It makes your legacy look like a bigger joke than most people already regard it as. It hurts. Deal? Thanks, man.}
This is a song Glenn Beck stole from Sam Adams. Titus Andronicus is stealing it back. It’s a seven minute indie-rock epic, named for a clause from the Preamble to the Constitution. It opens with an excerpt from Abraham Lincoln’s 1838 Lyceum Address. It ends with a quote from prominent 19th Century abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison. Along the way, it (literally) shouts out punk rock transliterations of Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg (a folk singer who, unlike most recently polled Americans, can speak with some authority on what is and what is not socialism), and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, all while sounding like Bright Eyes singer Conor Oberst trying his damnedest to front a volume-uncompromised Thin Lizzy, circa ’76 (Seventeen-76, that is.). I had no idea what I was watching when I, half-sleeping, caught my first glimpse – the last thirty seconds or so – of the video for this song on TV a couple months ago, but it kept me awake that night, the same way watching Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds did.
“A More Perfect Union” is the lead single from the New Jersey quintet’s sophomore album The Monitor, and it comes on with the sort of triumphal mob rage that Lincoln’s Lyceum Address presciently decried and warned against – the 28-year-old Lincoln believing more than anything that the Union’s demise would come not at the hands of some foreign conqueror (or al-Qaida), but by the pitchforks and nooses of its own rioting hordes (Fox News?) – the same triumphal mob rage that seems to fuel the current Tea Party movement, blindly and nonspecifically angry, fairly puking on its own broad hubris, wrapping itself up in the spirit of the American Revolution, creating itself in the time-and-history-and-politics-distorted image of the Founders. It’s a punk rock opera built out of slogans – “Rally around the flag!” – and proud nationalistic proclamations – “Will I not yell like hell for the glory of the Newark Bears!”. In couplets that Woody Guthrie could sue over, they sing (?) the praises of “brutal Somerville summers” and “cruel New England winters”; of interstate highways, the Garden State Parkway, and the lights over Fenway. You could imagine Sarah Palin as a compulsively literate New Jersey loyalist (I think I just discovered the formula for Sarah Palin anti-matter!); or maybe Springsteen as a fervent, third generation punk rocker on the campaign trail for Van Buren ‘48. Either way, this song is wicked awesome.
Sadly, the video edits the song down to a more manageable length, but it’s well worth hearing in all its unruly 7 minute glory. Listen here:
