March 6, 2023: I Digress, Studied Irreverence, Crap is King

 

"When its said and done we haven't told you a thing
We all know that crap is king"

           ---Don Henley, "Dirty Laundry"

I ran across an article on the ‘internets’ published by the “Hollywood Cheat Sheet”, or some such rubbish, where a critic listed 5 Beatles songs he summarily branded as “awful”.  I’m not giving the source, nor the name, of the critic; for it is unimaginable that real money was paid for the production, not to mention publication of such crap.  Among the 5 listed were “The Long and Winding Road”, “Her Majesty”, “Free As A Bird” and two others.  Of course, I took him to task.  Here was my response.

Awful? This critic is clueless. "The Long and Winding Road" is McCartney (in Lennon's words) being "a good boy", at his lyrical best. "The long and windy night/that the rain washed away/has left it's pool of tears/crying for the day".  A great composition. I agree with his three bandmates that Phil Spector's orchestration elevates this composition and is the correct interpretation. Christmastime is a piece of fluff, but I remember McCartney releasing this after the group disbanded.  Lastly, "Her Majesty" hits the mark, a humorous ditty with the Beatles being their irreverent best. Really, what is 'rock and roll' if not a studied irreverence? . If this guy were serious, he would have listed "Wild Honey Pie" and "Revolution Number 9" from the White Album as perhaps the only tracks that should have been left on the cutting room floor. What we have here is a critic unfamiliar with the genre.

It is clear that the essay in question was posted in order to generate click bait in order to generate advertising revenue.  Never mind serious artistic criticism.  What we got instead was artistic cretinism, for no discernable purpose other than using The Beatles to elevate the publication, employing outlandish headlines backed by complete bullshit.  These are the signs of our times.

Welcome to the world of John Bannon (1), aka Caesar Disgustus, aka Donald J. tRUMP.   A world where, in the words of Don Henley “Crap is King”.

Indict. Prosecute. Convict. Imprison.

 ______

1, John Bannon is the pseudo persona adopted by Donald tRUMP, a fictional 'reporter' in the person of Donald tRUMP pretending to represent himself to New York media as an tRUMP 'insider'. A man in a position to know.  tRUMP engaged in thinly veiled attempts at creating fake news about himself as he sought to inflate and burnish his already grossly exaggerated image as a man of great wealth and business acumen.  The press, especially the tabloids, would publish his outlandish claims laying the basis for his inclusion in Forbes Magazines lists of the richest Americans leading to his later fraud "The Apprentice".  I'm returning to tRUMP here because he was and remains fundamentally the product of this kind of shabby journalism the consequences of which can be very serious.