I've been gone for some time and my return isn't my usual blog entry. I have an enormous amount of things to take care of, though, so I have to make it quick.
This came up organically in conversation today and I've been thinking about it. I mean reallythinking about it. Racking my brain thinking about it. I started running through 22 years of musical experience (well, probably 18 or 19 conscious years) and my database--which I consider reasonably substantial--was coming up empty.
I cannot think of a song I hate more than Asher Roth's "I Love College".
I mean, really, I can't. I like and listen to classic rock, indie rock, world, rap, hardcore, electronica, pop, indie pop, industrial, classical, folk, punk, and R&B. I can even tolerate country, unlike most people. I enjoy Taylor Swift, Bad Brains, Death Cab for Cutie, Chris Brown, John Denver, The Arcade Fire, Van Halen, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and The Roots. When I say I'm not a Beatles fan, it doesn't mean I don't like them; it only means I don't worship them. I consider myself fairly open-minded.
On the one hand I became instantly angry when I realized this about The Song Which Shall Not Be Named Again. My generation produced the worst song I can conceive from any era of music. And it's bad. Not lovably bad. Not "Achey-Breaky-Heart" bad. Not "We Are The World" bad. Not "Blue (Da Bu Di Da Bu Da)" bad. It's intolerable. It's hostile. It sucks the life from you. It embodies everything that's wrong with humanity and packages it in an offensively bad tune. I wondered if this was a sign of the musical apocalypse--if Asher Roth is the first of the four horseman to emerge from a rift in the ground to streak flames across the sky and initiate The Fall.
But then I turned the coin to see the bright side. Of all of the music I've had the privilege of hearing in my lifetime, songs that incite this sort of rage in me are few and far between. Maybe music has finally experienced and overcome its low point. Maybe this is the sort of near-death experience one needs to really appreciate life. We now have a paradigm of what not to do.
I hope the latter is true, or I will be nervously waiting for the three other horsemen to emerge.
The worst part of it all might be that he's coming to TCNJ for the spring concert. And to add insult to injury, it was originally Jack's Mannequin who was coming, but when that fell through, Asher Roth was next on the list for whatever reason. Pretty devastating, going from great to terrible so quickly.
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