Rules Of The Game #15: Grown-ups Make Puppy Love
Latest column: why teens sing adult lyrics: a theory (which is that it's the other way around); also, Britney as the little engine that couldn't.
The Rules Of The Game #15: Grown-ups Make Puppy LoveOnce again they botched the italics. And I just spent five minutes debating with myself as to whether it should be "Grown-ups" or "Grown-Ups." (Oh, and ( Read more... )
The Rules Of The Game #15: Grown-ups Make Puppy LoveOnce again they botched the italics. And I just spent five minutes debating with myself as to whether it should be "Grown-ups" or "Grown-Ups." (Oh, and ( Read more... )
To: "Frank Kogan"
Subject: RE: Rules Of The Game #15: Grown-ups Make Puppy Love
Date: Thursday, September 13, 2007 9:14 AM
"[M]y feeling is that all of pop's breakups and infatuations and crushes and reconciliations involve issues that still remain in adult life but aren't so high-pitched." I think you have this exactly right, and you must think so, too, because this is the thesis you explicate in later paragraphs.
I have a few random comments on the thesis. First, reasonable synonyms for "high-pitched" might be intense, all-consuming, or novel.
Second, the adult desire to continue to deal with these issues can have many sources, from enjoying (and so replaying) the best of romance; to recapturing the greater sexual energy of youth; to rehashing the issues that one still has not resolved satisfactorily.
Third, in this context, it is probably worth an hour of your time to quantify the novels sold each year in various different genres (including the paperbacks sold at grocery stores). I assume the sales of romance novels, broadly defined, will vastly outweigh those of all other genres combined. This isn't just popular music we are speaking of.
Fourth, and even so, romance in all its stops on the cycle may dominate music even more than it dominates other forms of discourse. The reason is that romance is so elemental that it does not require a lengthy lyric to evoke the required memories or emotions. A good murder mystery really does necessitate the use of more of the space-time continuum, so there will be relatively fewer 2-minute musical who-done-its than literary equivalents.
Finally, obsessing about teenage angst by musically re-living its emotions is not confined to romance; one can obsess in written work about high-school social groupings, for instance. But there is some merit in getting beyond the strong feeling that were evoked in adolescence, so that one can be more richly integrated into adult life and get more out of it.
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