Do you ever stop to think about the
sheer magnitude of excellent, musical talent there is out there?
This is a question I
asked a good friend (and fellow music lover) of mine earlier on today. His response
was - “I had given it some thought before, but never in a long/medium term sense.
Was always just ‘wow, a lot of good albums out at the mo’, then I'd forget,
then rinse repeat! It is vast. It’s kind of jaw dropping in fact, to think
there are so many endlessly talented people out there making excellent ear porn”.
Well said.
Now, with this in mind, do
you reckon anyone has ever said something similar with the likes of Gagnam
style in mind? *Cue the harsh sound of a sudden stop of a spinning vinyl record*
Nope, me neither. I’ll
explain why I am bringing Gagnam style into this a little further on.
I spotted a tweet from
someone earlier today, which read, “Sound-tracking my Monday afternoon –
[insert YouTube link to the animal song he was on about here]”. It got my attention straight away. Love a good
song recommendation, me. I clicked through to discover a beautiful tune by a
chap called Mike Rosenberg, AKA Passenger, entitled ‘Let Her Go’. It took me
all of about 4 seconds into the song to give it the old ‘closed eyes nod and
smile’ of approval. And so began quite a chilled afternoon in the office, the playlist
for which, was the aforementioned. Thanks to Mike S for that tweet.
As I was working away, another
Tweetdeck alert caught my eye. Quite a different sentiment this time, though. Yet
another person was wanking on about how "This one is DEFO the best of the
234 Harlem Shake videos I've seen so far… blah, blah, fart" etc [insert
YouTube link to brain-cell depleting video of people who appear to be having fits here]. This was probably the 50th tweet of it’s kind that
I had seen in the last 24 hours.
Chalk, meet cheese.
Cheese, this is chalk.
I’d like to say that it baffles me, how much
airtime mind-numbing tripe like the Harlem Shakes and the Gagnam Styles of the
world get, when there is so much excellent creative content out there for us to
consume, and enjoy, and share, and discuss, and of course… recreate. But this
doesn’t baffle me. I get it. I work in the comms/media industry and I understand
the appeal of this kind of thing. I even understand its 'mass' appeal. I understand that
you simply cannot compare this kind of thing to, let’s say, a touching acoustic
rendition of Black Key’s Lonely Boy. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
YouTube estimates that
by the end of last week over 40,000 versions of Harlem Shakes had been uploaded
and collectively they have been viewed over 175 million times. The song is
currently at number two in the UK charts… and I have been invited by no less
than two different groups of friends to be involved in a Harlem Shakes video.
The University of
Georgia’s men’s swim and dive team did one
under water. The Norwegian army did one. There are (at
least) two Star Wars-themed Shakes. There’s
also now a Harlem Shake Roulette single-serving
site that will pull a series of the videos one right after the other,
Chatroulette-style. This is the stuff of internet dreams, people. Is it, though?
IS IT?!?!
*Giant face-palm*
Whilst I am happy with
the thought of Harlem Shakes becoming yesterday’s news quicker than you can say
the words, “New Pope celebrates appointment with Horsemeat sandwich and PS4
tournament”, what remains is the lurking feeling that something else will come
along to fill the void. And at this rate, god only knows what that will be.
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