Love The Way You Lie (Eminem and Rihanna)

So there's this song by Eminem and Rihanna. It's clearly about domestic violence. Yeah.

It's obvious that all the discussion about this song is going to be about whether it's offensive. I mean, I've seen it. I've read a ton of it just in the past week. And leaving aside all the lyrics and meta around it, there just isn't that much to say. It's Eminem in serious mode, and the track sounds pretty much like you'd expect it to. So what do we have? The words. The meta. The shit-ton of stuff to unpack. And now that it's #1 in downloads, showing up on the radio (and I should be writing about it in much more condensed form), let's just do this. I'll just warn you: the following is a bit of a brain-dump, likely tl;dr. Don't expect sparkling prose. It'll be condensed later, of course, but you can't condense what isn't there in the first place.

First up: it's neither my place, nor yours, nor anyone but Rihanna's to question why she chose to do this particular song. She hasn't been all that forthcoming about it, but again, that's her right, and pressing her on that point is kind of like being the asshole journalist asking the parents to please relate exactly how their child died for the camera. Maybe she relates it to Chris Brown; maybe not. Maybe it's therapeutic for her; maybe she doesn't care. We don't know.

The key question here is going to be whether this is a critique or an endorsement of domestic violence. At first the question seems so simple. Of course it's a critique. You wouldn't put an endorsement on the radio! (Except that it's happened before.) An established artist would never write an endorsement! (Except that Eminem has, going to far to build a persona around it.) I could never be a fan of something endorsing violence! (Except that fandom doesn't work that way and tends to get ahead of one's critical faculties more often than not.)

In order to be a critique, I think, you'd need a couple key elements:
-- clear "characters," fictional in some way, to explain themselves
-- hinting, subtly or not, that said characters' viewpoints are morally wrong.

The song satisfies both of these criteria. But is it effective? There you have another criterion:
-- Will the audience recognize it as such?

That one I'm not sure about, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's look at the first few criteria.

- Characters. When Eminem's overtly talking about himself, or a thinly-veiled version of himself, it's pretty clear. Take a recent example, his verse on "Airplanes." You'd have a hard time arguing that he's playing a character, especially not when he mentions his daughter's name. But here? There isn't much of that. You have what's essentially a dramatic monologue; it'd be a soliloquy if it weren't for the chorus.

So we know Eminem's writing a character. But does he relate to him anyway? As stated before, this IS a persona he's adopted. And his relationships haven't exactly had a track record of being healthy. The key line here, I think is, "I'm Superman, she's Lois Lane." See, Eminem's referenced Superman before, in the song of the same name, playing a similarly caustic character. It isn't that Superman's such an off-the-wall point of reference, of course. But the connection is hard to ignore. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this; I knew a man with a similar fixation on Superman, as far as his own relationships go. He related to the first song, quite a bit. It isn't that he was abusive, but something in that mythology spoke to him as a mythology. Is it that much of a stretch to see Em as doing the same?

As far as Rihanna's character, she really isn't fleshed out much at all besides being a victim. Don't get me wrong; this doesn't make this character one-dimensional. Between the lyrics and Rihanna's performance -- again, I'm not speculating as to how much is which, how much is experience -- this role is treated with some nuance. There is another purpose, though, to her being there -- a story purpose, that is. I'm not quite cynical enough to think the ONLY reason Rihanna's on this is to drum up controversy or to get a big name as a featured guest. No, her presence helps with the critique.

- Said critique. Eminem's made a narrator; now, for this to be a critique, he must be shown to be unreliable. And he is; his words here fall almost exactly into the abuser's script: There's plenty of evidence in the song:

-- "I can't tell you what it is / I can only tell you what it feels like." Avoiding the word "abuse" is a common rationalization, as is taking it into subjective territory like emotions. You can't dispute those. See also "laid hands on her," which is putting it... mildly.

-- "You ever love somebody so much / you can barely breathe when you're with 'em?" Sure. Who'd say no to that? The point the narrator leaves out, of course, is the violence part, but it's a lot easier to win someone over to your opinion when they're agreeing with your first points.

-- "I feel so ashamed. / I snapped," and many other statements of remorse. Some people have criticized this person, asking "why should we sympathize with people like this?" Abusers are real people, though, and they have feelings; they're not cartoon villains. Treating them as such does the issue a disservice. Of course this character probably feels remorse, it's natural. Stating that isn't a defense of the character.

-- "Your temper's just as bad as mine is / you're the same as me!" Projection. The other thing too many people miss in what I've read about this song (although to be fair, it's a different set of people who tend to miss this one) is that we don't know whether this is true. We don't know whether it's mutual violence. All we know is what the narrator tells us, which means that if you WERE to believe it true, you are taking the narrator at his word.

-- "Told you this is my fault / look me in the eyeball..." This entire section might as well be a re-enactment. His voice is raised, he's practically yelling; what on the page look like reassurances are actually orders. "Eyeball" is also a bit of a fakeout, in that the phrase is "look me in the eye," so you'd expect a different word to go there. Then there's the bit about "next time," hastily retracted.

All this, though, is still sort of reading motivations into the song. They're all valid interpretations (at least I think they are), but nothing really stands out on its own. Nothing, that is, until the last line, the line everyone's going to quote: "If she ever tries to ****ing leave again, I'mma tie her to the bed and set this house on fire." Notice how this line breaks the structure, meter, how the backing drops out. Notice how it's the last thing he says. This is important. This is the point of no return, the point where the narrator is no longer morally defensible. It casts a shadow on everything else the protagonist said before.

It isn't, however, the last word in the song. That would be the title, sung by the female character: "love the way you lie." That last word is critical. All his rationalizations are lies, all his defenses don't work. He is clearly in the wrong.

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But are people going to read it as a critique? That's the problem, again. It's difficult enough convincing people that no, Rihanna did not in fact deserve it. Let's be fair; I haven't yet encountered any comments saying this is normal. But I've encountered a lot of "but they really love each other!" a lot of "it isn't really domestic violence, she's attacking him too!" and such. People taking the narrator at his word. It's a bit worrisome. But then, it's nothing new.

So should it be played on the radio? They have a right to, of course. It's nothing that violates obscenity doctrines. But slotted in among love songs, club songs, party songs, it seems a bit out of place. And just this morning, I was walking to work, fresh out of the coffeeshop, and someone was playing it in their car, loudly, and it got to that line. It wasn't pleasant, and I haven't even lived something like the song says. How might others have heard it?

I don't know. Overall, I think it works. I really don't want to hear it very much, though.

How to listen to Justin Bieber's "Somebody to Love"

1. Notice how oddly similar it sounds to September's Cry For You, especially that chorus.

2. Roll the two choruses around in your mind until they fuse together.

3. Start singing this: "I just need somebody to love... SO NOW WHO'S GONNA CRY FOR YOU? Somebody to love, NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO!"

(More substantive post coming soon, promise. Until then, yeah, just do that.)

Stray thoughts

Good God, it's been a long time since I've posted here. I blame work. (Hey, actually, I really CAN blame work -- last post May 21, first day... May 21? In that stand of the ballpark.) I also blame, in a good way, the Jukebox, where I've been doing some writing.

But now those CDs I burned for the commute (I traded up from 40 to 50 minutes!) are all scratched up and I have things to say.

- OMG is the most depressing song ever, no? I'm mystified that "oh my god" is way too offensive to say but "honey got some boobies like wow oh wow" somehow isn't. (Although maybe my ears are wonky, but doesn't it sound like will.i.am is saying the real thing?) If you needed an example of how American culture has its priorities seriously mixed up, this is it.

Maybe it'll accomplish something good, though! Maybe it'll excise "loving one's style" from the lexicon, even though the "lexicon" here is primarily that of teen magazines. No, Cosmo Girl, he doesn't "love your style," or if he does, it's only insofar as it reveals the proper latitude/longitude of skin.

- So there was a video for Alejandro. It's a step up from her last one, thankfully, and even if it's just bleak atmospheric piffle, it uses that for all it's worth.

But correct me if I'm wrong, and I can't be very wrong: Is every single person in the Alejandro video pasty as hell or what? Like, you name your song "Alejandro" and you talk about two other guys named Roberto and Fernando who may or may not be Alejandro too and bleagh tangent, but you get to the video and there's a bunch of questionably-SS dudes with oil-slicked sea otters on their heads. What?

It gets me thinking. The last video you did with a lot of half-naked dancer guys was LoveGame. (Telephone and Paparazzi were too short-film; the dancers in Bad Romance weren't guys.) And LoveGame didn't have this problem, from what I remember of the video. It had a nice diverse cast of half-naked dancer guys. They were also playing criminals. So let's recap here: overtly hawt soldier objects of lust = ALL PASTY; less overtly hawt (or at least not specifically cast to blare that) criminal objects of standoffishness = NOT ALL PASTY.

I don't like this pattern; it's beginning to sour the song for me. Make me want to listen to Ace of Base even more. Except the guy there is a confirmed white supremacist, or was at least, so I don't even know.

- I remain perplexed as to why the radio is just NOW finding out about La Roux and look forward to Little Boots hitting in summer 2011.

From the 'Did You Even Pay Attention To What You Wrote?' department

In another life, I'm a copy editor. (Which guarantees that there will be some sort of error in this post, naturally. I throw up my hands and defer to Muphry.) Now, this doesn't give me any sort of godlike ability, writing or otherwise. It mainly gives me late hours.

One thing it does give me, though, is the nagging compulsion to pick apart the lyrics to songs I listen to. And to my dismay, a lot of them are quite pickapartable. They don't make sense. They refute themselves. They grocery-bag. Luckily, most people only blatantly succumb to this once or twice per song. Most people. There are, sadly, people like...

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Katy Perry! If We Ever Meet Again and California Gurls: OK, Katy. I really want to like you. You are the sort of singer I should like: kind of irreverent, suffused with post-girlpower that's fake as hell but still real enough. And when I don't hear any of your songs, just read your tweets or see you in a fashion slideshow, it almost works.

But then you start writing songs, and everything falls apart. That PMS line in the otherwise great "Hot N Cold" (well, OK, the inability to write the letters A and D too.) Katy, Katy, Katy. This ain't how you reclaim a word, not that you care. Then there's the entire conceit of "I Kissed A Girl." The entire existence of "UR So Gay." The crashing mediocrity of "Waking Up In Vegas." You disappeared after this, of course, and your aesthetic was partially taken up -- and more! -- by Gaga and Ke$ha. And once again, I'd forgotten that your songs pretty much suck.

Take "If We Ever Meet Again." It is probably unfair for me to criticize you for this, because you didn't write it. It's still associated with you, though, and it's the smaller of your two big welcome-backs, so I'll mention it anyway. Your chorus. It does not work. Now, students, let us analyze:

"I'll never be the same if we ever meet again..."

Two components: "I'll never be the same" and "if we ever meet again." The first part refers to the past. Now that X has happened, I'll never be the same. But the second part refers to a hypothetical event in the future. If X, I will Y. It seems like it should work! If we ever meet again, I'll react to something that's happened in the past and oh wait. If this was a tossed-off line I'd just sigh and move on, but this is part of your chorus. The first part of your chorus. That ain't a sigh, it's a facepalm. And since I only listen to this under duress while driving and when nothing else is on, it's a facesteeringwheel.

But all this pales in comparison to "California Gurls" (sigh). I was willing to overlook the fact that you bottle-of-Jacked "TiK ToK," because Ke$ha did the same to you with "Your Love Is My Drug." And either way, the music is kind of catchy. But then I hear what Katy is saying, and I want to jab a red pen into my ears. Let's go through this:

- "Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top." Katy, Dukes of Hazzard took place in Georgia. So as you're playing referent roulette, you're actually repping Southern girls.

- It's patently obvious that "melt your Popsicle" is supposed to be some kind of double entendre. Now, this isn't like "If U Seek Amy" where the "double" is missing; there's both a literal and figurative meaning. The problem here is that the figurative meaning is fucking horrific! Unless, y'know, you like your junk to shrivel away like the Wicked Witch of the West.

- "Snoop Doggy Dogg." Does your radio station play Puff Daddy before that? Right after the Artist?

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Most people aren't so, er, prolific. Like I said, most people stick to one or two per song. But sometimes they're just really... memorable. For instance, there's a certain line in "Nothin' on You" by B.o.B.: "Women call me Mr. Fantastic. Now stop... think about it." I know what he's getting at. But when you give listeners' minds this kind of free rein, you get thought processes like "Mr. Fantastic. You mean like the Fantastic Four? ..." Ahhh. Nothing like sudden immaturity. All the better to facesteeringwheel. See you by the side of the road!

In which she propagates some leaks and spreads some news

Keeping up a good and steady one-month interval between posts here, it seems. But I've finally got some free time, so let's talk about leaks!

They never get old, at least not to me. Why not? Sonic packratism, maybe. Impatience. The slight-to-moderate transgressiveness that means I can hear them at all. Not all that ethical, perhaps, but I'm not the one originally leaking them. It's a weak justification but it works for me.

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At any rate, the biggest buzz in the blogosphere -- god, I hate typing that; it seems like the next thing I'll be doing is scraping Google Trends for the latest celebrity fuck news -- is for this leaked version of "Telephone" purportedly by Britney Spears. Well, actually, it isn't so purported anymore. We'd known for a long time that Gaga originally wrote it or Britney, and now, according to Darkchild on Ustream (skip to 3:15), we know it's probably real, albeit an early demo that hadn't been mixed yet.

So now that we've settled that question, how is it?

Well, it's a demo; of course it's going to suck when compared to the real thing. So it's really hard to call this anything but a testament to the power of mixing. The vocals are either AutoTuned to oblivion or barely-there wisps; her pronunciation is off ("sorry, I cannot hear you" in particular leaves a lot to be desired in the unslurred-words department); there's a large Beyonce-shaped hole that I know is just hindsight but nevertheless can't unhear. It's all off. If this was a sculpture it'd be at the "whacked a few blocks of clay off the block until it's kind of octagonal" stage.

But I will say this: the alto harmonies kind of kick ass. I almost want them, hearing this, to be higher in Gaga's final mix.

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Gaga's been silent on her leak -- there's probably no way to attribute it to her little monsters -- but the same definitely can't be said of Kelly Clarkson, who got rather upset at the leak of "Cleopatra".

According to Kelly, this was written for another artist and isn't actually hers, but I'm pretty sure it's her on vocals (sure, the verses sound uncannily like Pink, but so does her latest single.) It's a much cleaner demo -- as in, it stands alone as a song -- and it's kind of wonderful.

Sure, it has its derivative elements -- the intro is "I'm a Slave 4 U" and everything else is a melange of Middle Eastern-ish stylings (including the vocalise in the end out of "Naughty Girl"), but at least this time it sort of has an excuse -- if you're using Cleopatra in your lyrics, I can't really fault it.

And sure, it fits more with the early 2000s pop crop than the current one. But that just adds nostalgia value (for me) to everything else great here: the guitars that do what Jason Derulo's "In My Head" should have done, the protector-pugilist lyrics that provide a welcome dose of strength. Oh, and the fact that I've listened to this roughly fifty times on repeat without it getting old.

If there's a downside to the leak, it's that the full song will probably never see the light of day -- in a perfect world this would be retooled into WIP publicity, but it's clearly far too late for that to happen. But if I'm wrong, I know who I'm going to be listening to.

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"Cleopatra" may be an anachronism, "Naked Eye" definitely isn't. In fact, it couldn't be less of one, being a Guettafied update of "My Life Would Suck Without You" and its ilk. I like it well enough -- it's light years better than the Teddered-out Kelly -- but it's also utterly, utterly predictable.

(Side note: Is it just me, or does the chorus sound kind of like "So You Say" by Siobhan Donaghy?)

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Oh yes, and I had some news to spread. I'm contributing reviews for The Singles Jukebox and have been for a few days now. It's hardly an explanation for lack of posting, mind you, but, well, it's news. News I find fit to print. So there.

Orianthi - According To You, and quick hits

Orianthi - According To You

I'm a bit late to the party here. The tides are already turning; I don't hear this on the radio every four songs anymore. Good riddance, if you ask me; this is utter shit. That's not a reflection on Orianthi; she didn't even write it. The writers, instead, were Steve Diamond and Andrew Frampton, the latter of whom I am assuming is not the footballer Wikipedia links to.

You'd be forgiven, however, if you thought Orianthi wrote it. The song's packaged that way: the grrl-power (but not riot-grrl; that'd be a bit too transgressive and not sufficiently marketable) empowerment anthem of a young girl making big. "So many people have gone through the experience of not feeling good enough," Orianthi said in an interview with Reuters. It's meant to make teens -- more pertinently, girls -- feel good about themselves.

So why the hell does it have such a terrible message?

It starts out OK, as Orianthi enumerates all the failings her ex-boyfriend ascribes to her, presumably building up to the Big Refutation. Her voice is likable. "I'm a mess in a dress" is a great line. And the guitars come crashing in, all played by her, and she gets ready to deliver the big kiss-off: "But according to him -"

What.

Not only is it asymmetrical -- "according to you" should logically be countered by "according to me" -- it completely fucks up the message. So what you're saying is that no matter what kind of crap your ex puts you through, it's OK, because you'll just put your self-esteem in the hands of another future ex! And to the listeners, most of whom are young, any girl or guy they slot into that spot will most likely become future exes. That's how it works. It makes the song weirdly circular -- how long will it take before the New Guy becomes the Crappy Ex? -- but horrible.

And it would have been so easy to fix it, too. Almost all it'd take would be a pronoun swap. But apparently we can't have independence unless it's approved by Ne-Yo or sells a Charlie's Angels movie. Oh well.

You could interpret this another way, of course. The song's on mainstream top 40 radio, sure, but top 40 radio stations aren't averse to a little vague Christianity where their dick's at (or even not-so-vague -- remember that song "I Can Only Imagine"?) So you could make that Him capitalized and make it a religious song. Sounds great, right? Until the rest of the chorus happens with the "irresistible" and the "everything he ever wanted" and "he's into me," and the whole thing sounds like you're the Lord's personal courtesan. Yuck.

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And now for some quick hits:

- I don't know why Timbaland - Carryout is catching on. First of all, it's got to be the least sexy conceit ever. I mean, even Donne's flea had some sucking action going on. Fast food just reminds one of polyester uniforms and frying grease. And when it's not talking about that, it's weirdly clinical; "areas" is such a boring word for the erogenous anatomy (almost as boring as "erogenous anatomy"), and "foreplay" is something better shown than told.

- Christina Aguilera - Not Myself Tonight is out and it's decent, if a letdown after the iamamiwhoami hype. It's still a grower. But I don't understand why they released the lyrics first. It's like Kraft releasing an ingredients list before a new product: generally this stuff is best unseen. I mean, even something massive like Bad Romance would look like shit as words on a page.

- Taylor Swift - Today Was A Fairytale -- She's just parodying herself at this point, isn't she?

My thoughts on Telephone, let me show you them.

So I was all ready to send a post on Orianthi down the chute (fuck that song, incidentally; more on this later) when Lady Gaga decided to release the music video for "Telephone."

Now, before you read any further, please understand three things:

- "Telephone" is my favorite fucking song right now. You have no idea. I first heard it on our local radio station a month or so ago and it turned an absolutely crap day into something beautiful for a few minutes. I listen to it at least three times per day. I don't know how much of this is attributable to Gaga and how much to Darkchild (because I was a heavy, heavy, heavy Mya fan back in the day. Still am.) but still.

- The "Bad Romance" video was the best video I've seen in a long time, if not ALL TIME, and if it does not win big at the awards ceremonies I will personally hunt down someone to Kanye that shit. So I was one of the masses who refreshed YouTube right at midnight. I was looking forward to this. But then...

- If you are a true fan of something, you will be open to criticism of it. Period. White-knighting only makes you look immature.

With that said, I thought the video sucked.

Why? Let me count the ways!

- The product placement. The product placement. Oh my fucking God, the product placement. Now, I understand that in an interview, Gaga meant this as "commentary" on how many ads people see. This is where people will argue "See? You just don't get the art!" But look. You can't do product placement ironically, because it's still product placement. It accomplishes its goals either way. And you can't do it satirically either for the same reason. You've either got to make up tacky fake products (like lots of speculative-fiction authors do) or take your real-world product placement to such vulgar extremes that you can't see it as anything but as an indictment. And this is harder than it sounds -- Idiocracy is about the only thing I can think of that pulls it off.

So what we have here is an extended ad for Virgin Mobile, Diet Coke, Coors Light, Wonder Bread, Plenty of Fish, Honey Buns, etc -- and the fact that I can remember all of these brands two hours after watching the video is proof of how damn insidious this shit is. Your video's about diner poisoning? This is mind poisoning. Seriously, Gaga, fuck the product placement. You have enough money to go without it, and its presence is annihilating your attempts at being transgressive.

- The fact that the warden is on a dating site at all is a standard laugh-at-the-ugly-person and/or laugh-at-the-old-person joke. She has the GALL to want to find companionship, but of course she's FAILING, because she's so OLD and UGLY and has a MANNISH VOICE! Laugh, little monsters! Yeah, not cool. And you'll also notice that damn near all the people who get to parade around in near-undress fit conventional skinny-blonde beauty standards. Which reminds me....

- I'm by no means averse to nudity on principle. I'm the farthest thing from a prude that you'll find. But damn, can we get some equal opportunity in here? At least LoveGame had shirtless guys. Here, all the men get clothes and all the women get outfits from a porn set. I give it five years before porn and pop culture are indistinguishable. This is where a lot of people are going to argue "But it's not exploitative -- it's art!" Those things aren't mutually exclusive, though. Look at art history. You can have both.

- From a racial perspective, it's concerning how Beyonce basically plays the sidekick here. Yes, I know about Video Phone. But which video became a worldwide event? When was the last time you heard Video Phone on top 40? (On a related note, a commenter on the YouTube site pointed out that, apparently, Beyonce's "fuck" is bleeped while Gaga's isn't. Food for thought.)

So what's an overlord to do? Simple. Continue to love the fuck out of the song and forget the fact the video ever happened. Should be pretty easy. I'm not hurting to watch Just Dance or Poker Face.