Time to pretend...like we don't care! Right? Right?!
Watch out, guys. It's a short, stabby, probably unfounded post from Leah this week.
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Several months ago, I read a magazine article somewhere (probably Rolling Stone...god this is bad journalism) with MGMT's Andrew VanWyngarden. It was a typical interview, but something jumped out and stuck with me all these months and it's been gnawing away ever since. Andrew said something along the lines of the writing on Oracular Spectacular being nothing more than deliberately cheesy, terrible pop songs.
My initial reaction was "Wow, what an insecure thing to say."
Now, I really like MGMT. Sure, I have to see a good 10% of my Facebook friends using lyrics from "Electric Feel" as their status update, but that doesn't mean I'll enjoy their music any less. I wouldn't call Oracular Spectacular a genius, life-changing album. But it gets a good, solid B in my book- it has a handful of tracks I listen to regularly, and I'll listen to the full album when I occasionally feel like it. But when listening to this album, in no way do I get "cheesy pop song" out of anything. "Electric Feel," sure, mostly for its masterful use for the underused phrase "babygirl."
While I pay an embarrassingly low amount of attention to the current trends in music, it feels like I'm seeing this attitude a lot lately. It's like the stereotype of a musician taking themselves too seriously is being replaced by artists putting on the guise of not taking themselves seriously to avoid artistic criticism.
Don't get me wrong, there are few things I hate more than anyone taking themselves too seriously and lacking a sense of humor, but I want to see artists looking at their work realistically. I'm going to give MGMT the benefit of the doubt and say this attitude probably comes from being two kids thrust into indie stardom, they most likely don't know how to handle it all.
'
But still, I never thought I'd say this, but this whole fascination with irony in the entertainment world kinda sucks now. Oy.