Loney, Dear Is Just Like You And Me
This past weekend, I drove with some friends from New York City to suburban Boston for a wedding. Etiquette dictates that the driver gets to choose the music. Since I was not the driver, rather than listen to my impeccably chosen and impossibly cool music selections, we listened to a mostly R&B mix CD--Destiny's Child, Mary J. Blige, Mika, etc. It wasn't my favorite car ride. But after being subjected to Riskay's "Smell Yo D**k," a different, more pleasing sound came over the car's crackly speakers. A tumbling melody. Plaintive female backing vocals. Sugar rush rhythms. Joyous bells. I was in pop bliss.
The song was "I Am John" from the 2007 album Loney, Noir by Swedish folk-rock auteur Loney, Dear (the pseudonym of singer/songwriter Emil Svanangen). A new Loney, Dear album is in the works for Spring 2009. I don't have particularly high expectations for it. Aside from "I Am John," Loney, John was a bit of a snooze. But that one song might have been my favorite three minutes and thirty-one seconds of music in 2007.
That Loney, Dear wasn't able to come up with anything else approaching "I Am John's" plaintive genius only reaffirms something I love about popular music. Almost any schmuck is capable of coming up with a catchy melody and a killer chord progression. There are only so many notes--and it doesn't take a genius to rearrange them in a pleasing order. I think this is why pop music produces more one-hit wonders and guilty pleasures than any other form of mass entertainment. Simply put: It's easier.
Even a cinematic piece of cotton candy like, say, Step Up 2: The Streets, requires a screenwriter, a director, actors, months of filming and editing. All of which is to say that making a movie is far beyond the means of the average person. Same goes for writing a book. I have a hard enough time writing coherent emails. But a song? Toddlers can spend hours riffing on a made-up melody. Approximately 78.36% of all great rock songs employ three chords. You can easily download idiot-proof recording software for free. Writing that one great song is well within our reach. Just ask Loney, Dear.
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