Have we discussed John Mayer's new Trustafarian anthem?

DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME AT ALL?

John Mayer is "funny" but also "pointed."

REGGAE, MON

Damnit, now I'm being all Cpt.-Save-A-Mayer.

Will his audience agree?

imho what separates the trustafarian from the slacker is a certain sense of entitlement and lack of introspection for which contemporary collegiate reggapreciation seems a sufficiently credible shorthand.

So that would be yes. Slackers listen to Pavement.

If you paint a picture of a duck and your audience insists it's a donkey, at a certain point what your audience thinks ceases to matter.

i think that's Leibniz, verbatim

I wanna run through the halls of my high school
I wanna scream at the Top of my lungs
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you've got to rise above

Bands that hipster types diss to sound superior

Sweet vindication.

why write a traditional protest songs when nobody likes protest songs anyway and my mom buys dixie chicks records for politics not music and her generation's protest songs proved vainglorious and futile? it's probably fashionable to pretend i'm making a difference, but i know i'm really not. all that said, still not sure the song works as well as i'd like. more "clarity" and esquire columns plz

This is still relatively ambitious songwriting for radio-play, though. He goes for 60s pop singer-songwriter "relevance" while acknowledging his modern, privileged status. He'd need a few slaps to the face to really be great, but that's all it would take.

OTM!

which is why zwan's right that the song is a little too proud of its own apathy

no, but it helps feed some hungry people some soup

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood

= the trustafarians are misunderstood = WE AREN'T JUST ALL ABOUT KEGS AND ULTIMATE [FRISBEE] = WE FUKKIN CARE ABOUT SIHT TOO

they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could

= the trustafarians actually do stand for something (assuming the 'they say' refers both to the 'we stand...' clause as well as the 'there's no way' clause; if not, the fatalism of the bro-hemians is deeper than I anticipated)

now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it

= we didn't see before

we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

= ain't shit we can do; sux0rs to be brown, etc.

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

= passivity incarnated; democracy negated; free-rider problem manifested

it's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance

= we gotta get closer to the system, whence we will strike

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change

= nm, bro, let's just stay back here, where teh kush is at, instead of getting closer

now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war

= self-evidently (conveniently) we do not have the power; also: motherfuck our not-neighbors? ("neighbors" as crypto-Xtian target-market semantic voodoo?)

they would have never missed a Christmas

= crypto-capitalist Xtian solidarity gambit?

no more ribbons on their door
and when you trust your television
what you get is what you got

= having a press is self-defeating OR journalists are conspiring to maintain the status quo = DO NOT TRUST TEH MEDIA/WORDZ/&c.

cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want

= wtf; I guess the media is an instrument of the White House, or something

that's why we're waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

= arteries: still blocked, so whatevs

it's not that we don't care,

= cuz we totally do

we just know that the fight ain't fair

= once some other dudes make it fair, then text us

[...]

one day our generation
is gonna rule the population
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

= we will be the overlords eventually, and then everything will be sweet ipso facto = the presently fuck-it-someone-else-will-fix-it logic will have political force behind it and everything will somehow be good despite this disturbing fact so puff-puff-pass on fucking chillax the fuck out bro 'cause I think he's fucking with scales now or some shit

It's pretty early on a Sunday so I hope something makes sense in the foregoing

btw, i destroyed your best friend's noise rock band.

a person who loves "daughters" /= "trustafarian", FFS!

(Confession: I kind of like that "run through the halls of the high school" song when I hear it, but I always get the feeling it's ripping off the melody of some other song I like but can't quite place.)

We all know Miccio, don't lie.

(Also: I actually do see in the Mayer phenomenon echoes of OAR's tragic, epidemic assault on logic/aesthetics/&c.!)

((and gracias, Miccio))

(When I'm at school, Marc, I kinda am, yes; the demographics here aren't very inspiring, and don't exactly make me feel like I'm part of the family [not that I really want to be part of a H2-driving family-army]) (Also I should stress again the types part, because they're not strictly trust-fund kids, they just hail from the higher income brackets + share a narrowly bounded pool of tastes, for whatever reason) (Yes I'm a little biased against the rich, it is true)

that's such a great line.

http://www.myspace.com/tommyeichmann

*thinks "ILM people are trustafarians?"*

is there some law that every one of these EZ listening nu-folky dudes has to put either A) Marvin Gaye B) Al Green or C) both as one of their "influences"?

You'd have thought it would've been "bubblegum tongue," but...

http://villagevoice.com/music/0636,kamps,74354,22.html

"The last few decades of progressive mewling have really only amounted to Bravo's programming lineup; the revolution will not be televised, but Project Runway will be."

Uh, anybody? I have not got the first clue here. "Progressive mewling?" Is he talking about music? Can we please be spared another long "think piece" in which the writer extrapolates his own irritating personality as representative of the entire world? If Garrett Kamps needs music that feels "safe," as he puts it, that's fine, but perhaps he could break down for us exactly what kind of person M. Ward's music lends this head-under-the-electric-blanket, cookies-and-milk brand of safety to? The answer to which, I think, will probably tell you a little about Kamps' politics.

http://paulidin.com/media/ThatsEnoughJohnMayer.jpg

The only thing this idiotic song encourages: repeal and creative expansion of that pesky cruel-and-unusual punishment ban. John Mayer should be very cruelly and at least somewhat unusually punished for his corpus. Anyway, assuming he's earnest here . . .

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood

= the trustafarians are misunderstood = WE AREN'T JUST ALL ABOUT KEGS AND ULTIMATE [FRISBEE] = WE FUKKIN CARE ABOUT SIHT TOO

they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could

= the trustafarians actually do stand for something (assuming the 'they say' refers both to the 'we stand...' clause as well as the 'there's no way' clause; if not, the fatalism of the bro-hemians is deeper than I anticipated)

now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it

= we didn't see before

we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

= ain't shit we can do; sux0rs to be brown, etc.

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

= passivity incarnated; democracy negated; free-rider problem manifested

it's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance

= we gotta get closer to the system, whence we will strike

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change

= nm, bro, let's just stay back here, where teh kush is at, instead of getting closer

now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war

= self-evidently (conveniently) we do not have the power; also: motherfuck our not-neighbors? ("neighbors" as crypto-Xtian target-market semantic voodoo?)

they would have never missed a Christmas

= crypto-capitalist Xtian solidarity gambit?

no more ribbons on their door
and when you trust your television
what you get is what you got

= having a press is self-defeating OR journalists are conspiring to maintain the status quo = DO NOT TRUST TEH MEDIA/WORDZ/&c.

cause when they own the information, oh
they can bend it all they want

= wtf; I guess the media is an instrument of the White House, or something

that's why we're waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

= arteries: still blocked, so whatevs

it's not that we don't care,

= cuz we totally do

we just know that the fight ain't fair

= once some other dudes make it fair, then text us

[...]

one day our generation
is gonna rule the population
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

= we will be the overlords eventually, and then everything will be sweet ipso facto = the presently fuck-it-someone-else-will-fix-it logic will have political force behind it and everything will somehow be good despite this disturbing fact so puff-puff-pass on fucking chillax the fuck out bro 'cause I think he's fucking with scales now or some shit

― Roque Strew (RoqueStrew), Sunday, July 23, 2006 7:25 AM (2 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thought 4sho this was gonna be a burt_stanton post

thought 4sho a guy who was boning jessica simpson and jennifer aniston would have deeper thoughts than this :-(

No, if you are John Mayer you would much rather be balls deep in something other than thought.