Picked up a book at Housing Works a few weeks ago by Nick Hornsby and wanted to share a little passage that pricked at my heart. Hope you like it and if you do pick up a copy. It's a good read.
"That's the thing that puzzles me about those who feel that contemporary pop (and I use the term to encompass soul, reggae, country, rock-anything and everything that might be regarded as trashy) is beneath them or behind them, or beyond them-some preposition denoting distance anyway: Does this mean that you never hear, or at least never enjoy, new songs, that everything you whistle or hum was written years, decades, centuries ago? * Do you really deny yourselves the pleasure of mastering a tune (a pleasure incidentally, that your generation is perhaps the first in the history of mankind to forgo) because you are afraid it might make you look as if you don't know who Harold Bloom is? ** Wow, I bet you are fun at parties.
The song that has been driving me pleasurably potty recently is "I'm Like a Bird" by Nelly Furtado. Only history will judge whether Ms. Furtado turns out to be any kind of artist, and though I have my suspicions that she will not change the way we look at the world, I can't say that I'm very bothered: I will always be grateful to her for creating in me a narcotic need to hear her song again and again."
I always said I didn't understand an addict's need for their chosen substance. But this I GET. I have played single songs and whole cd's literally NONSTOP for weeks at a time. Never getting tired of them. And then I quietly move on. But wow, what a feeling in the meantime. Nick, I get it.
* How's that for a run on sentence, and you know how I adore those.
** Who IS Harold Bloom?
"That's the thing that puzzles me about those who feel that contemporary pop (and I use the term to encompass soul, reggae, country, rock-anything and everything that might be regarded as trashy) is beneath them or behind them, or beyond them-some preposition denoting distance anyway: Does this mean that you never hear, or at least never enjoy, new songs, that everything you whistle or hum was written years, decades, centuries ago? * Do you really deny yourselves the pleasure of mastering a tune (a pleasure incidentally, that your generation is perhaps the first in the history of mankind to forgo) because you are afraid it might make you look as if you don't know who Harold Bloom is? ** Wow, I bet you are fun at parties.
The song that has been driving me pleasurably potty recently is "I'm Like a Bird" by Nelly Furtado. Only history will judge whether Ms. Furtado turns out to be any kind of artist, and though I have my suspicions that she will not change the way we look at the world, I can't say that I'm very bothered: I will always be grateful to her for creating in me a narcotic need to hear her song again and again."
I always said I didn't understand an addict's need for their chosen substance. But this I GET. I have played single songs and whole cd's literally NONSTOP for weeks at a time. Never getting tired of them. And then I quietly move on. But wow, what a feeling in the meantime. Nick, I get it.
* How's that for a run on sentence, and you know how I adore those.
** Who IS Harold Bloom?
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