Wednesday, October 27, 2004
This Coward We Have Empowered
Weaned as I was on CCRs, "Who'll Stop the Rain" and "Fortunate Son," CSNY's "Ohio," and Edwin Starr's "War," the lack of dissenting voices in popular music at the start of the Iraq war disturbed me. It didn't surprise me, given that contemporary celebrities often seem to be interested in little apart from protecting their celebrity, but it was disturbing that people who call themselves artists--and who, by one definition of "artist" are supposed to reveal to us things we can't necessarily see on our own--saw fit to say so little about something so important. That silence has continued, mostly. While artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Dave Matthews joined the Vote for Change tour to speak out against Bush, it's possible to argue that a significant percentage of these performers' audiences are already politically aware. What we need are voices with the power to reach the disengaged and put issues in terms they can understand, and then hammer home those terms so they become like a hit song that gets stuck in your head and won't go away.
Enter Eminem. His new video, "Mosh," actually made it onto MTV's teenybopper-oriented TRL yesterday afternoon. But it ain't kid stuff; neither does it rely on the cliches that pass for creativity elsewhere in the rap world. Neither is it the sort of thing that falls lightly on the ears of fortysomething Upper Midwestern white guys of Norwegian extraction such as I. It's pretty harsh--musically, and in its criticism of you-know-who:
Weaned as I was on CCRs, "Who'll Stop the Rain" and "Fortunate Son," CSNY's "Ohio," and Edwin Starr's "War," the lack of dissenting voices in popular music at the start of the Iraq war disturbed me. It didn't surprise me, given that contemporary celebrities often seem to be interested in little apart from protecting their celebrity, but it was disturbing that people who call themselves artists--and who, by one definition of "artist" are supposed to reveal to us things we can't necessarily see on our own--saw fit to say so little about something so important. That silence has continued, mostly. While artists such as Bruce Springsteen and Dave Matthews joined the Vote for Change tour to speak out against Bush, it's possible to argue that a significant percentage of these performers' audiences are already politically aware. What we need are voices with the power to reach the disengaged and put issues in terms they can understand, and then hammer home those terms so they become like a hit song that gets stuck in your head and won't go away.
Enter Eminem. His new video, "Mosh," actually made it onto MTV's teenybopper-oriented TRL yesterday afternoon. But it ain't kid stuff; neither does it rely on the cliches that pass for creativity elsewhere in the rap world. Neither is it the sort of thing that falls lightly on the ears of fortysomething Upper Midwestern white guys of Norwegian extraction such as I. It's pretty harsh--musically, and in its criticism of you-know-who:
Imagine it pouring, it's raining down on usLike Springsteen, Matthews, Pearl Jam, REM, and the other artists who've spoken out against Bush this fall, Eminem is rich enough and powerful enough not to fear being Dixie Chicked. Nevertheless, that he's dared to drop a bomb like "Mosh" is a great and patriotic thing (especially given his history of antisocial behavior). It's likely that Eminem can reach more young voters faster than all the Vote for Change artists put together. Whether he's done it in time to get them to the voting booth . . . well, we'll find out.
Mosh pits outside the oval office
Someone's trying to tell us something, maybe this is God just saying
We're responsible for this monster, this coward, that we have empowered...
Let the President answer on high anarchy
Strap him with AK-47, let him go
Fight his own war, let him impress daddy that way...
Look in his eyes, it's all lies, the stars and stripes
They've been swiped, washed out and wiped...
If they should argue, let us beg to differ, as we set aside our differences, and assemble our own army, to disarm this weapon of mass destruction that we call our president
