A Nation Who Love To Hate

Can I just start by using this public platform to state how unscared I am of that Swine disease? People die all every day, and do you know what, I’m pretty tired so if the whole world is enveloped in this disease and we all die dinosaur style then fuck it, I had to pay my council tax next week anyway so it would be good timing.

*non music discussion over*

I received an email the other day that simply asked the question, ‘What do you think of Mark Ronson?’ and my immediate reaction was to begin writing in response, ‘prick’, ‘annoying prick’, ‘massive prick’, etc, you get the idea. And then I thought, wait a second, what exactly has this man done to merit such all encompassing hate from the majority of the British public? I know he’s made fortunes out of an album entirely formed by singers singing covers of really good songs but with horns on them (lazy), and has a bit of a reputation for being all drowsy an nonchalant to press (arrogant) and seems to be featured in the celeb section of thelondonpaper and other showbiz styled features on a regular basis (sell out) but really, that doesn’t merit the inbuilt gag reflex so many have become accustomed to when his name is referenced. In fact, I’m pretty sure that in a long time we’ll look back at some of the things he’s done and say, well yes, he did contribute some pretty good pop songs to the world this decade, and he never killed anyone (Spector) or helped to spread the swine disease (see swine disease intro).

Similarly, I was watching Moby on Never Mind The Buzzcocks and he was very placidly questioning why so much hate is inflicted on his poor moonhead. Placid, probably, because he couldn’t give a flying fuck what anyone else thinks because he’s a millionaire, but still I thought it was interesting that he’s subject to so much unnecessary hate. That song ‘Porcelain’’s pretty good, and he’s not in our faces all the time selling insurance and the like, he’s just made some very commercially successful dance music that became totally ubiquitous in its heyday. Give him a break!

In America I think they are all a lot more pat-on-back about their musicians, which is good but also totally over the top. When I watch American Idol and how hysterical people get about the most bog standard voices I’ve ever heard it makes me much happier to be somewhere that is a bit snooty. But despite that, when I am old and regaling my children tales of music old, when their small faces are looking up at me as they beg, “Mummy, Mummy, tell us about music when you were young!” I’d quite like to reference a couple of iconic musicians who have changed the face of music without Mr Gibsone piping up, “Yeah he was a bit of prick though, wasn’t he?” (not that I’ll reference Moby and Mark Ronson to my children, but you know what I mean). Music’s good. Let’s all be nice to each other.