Songs For Your Day

It’s bad enough that rap music has chosen to evolve from a minority’s angry shout for equality and recognition into an amoral celebration of substance-less materialism, but now we’ve got a sing-along, genre-less (because it tries to be pop and hip hop and maybe even fucking calypso, who knows) top ten radio hit by a guy named either Travie McCoy or Travis McCoy (the internet knows not) that triumphs a hyperbolic avarice until now relatively unknown.  The song, in case you haven’t figured it out yet, is called “I Wanna Be a Billionaire.”  It is unoriginal, shallow, ridiculous, and available for listen every six to ten minutes on the What’s-Hot-Now! radio stations that plague our country.

It is true that we are raising a nation of wimps; that the pursuit of wealth with a minimum of exertion has become the norm.  That the sweat of one’s brow has decreased in value while the depth of one’s pockets has become the standard measure of stature and worth.  Aside from the very noble profession of engineering, the top college majors of 2010 were those whose sole raison d’être are the making of money: namely, Business.  As Rebecca Mead so eloquently put it in her New Yorker article “Learning by Degrees”:

“… one needn’t necessarily be a liberal-arts graduate to regard as distinctly and speciously utilitarian the idea that higher education is, above all, a route to economic advancement.  Unaddressed in that calculus is any question of what else an education might be for: to nurture critical thought; to expose individuals to the signal accomplishments of humankind; to develop in them an ability not just to listen actively but to respond intelligently.”

When economic advancement is the sole motive behind a person’s life decisions (go to college, become a shitty musician, etc.) the quality of an individual’s actions decreases.  We get businessmen who throw their clients under the bus in the name of profits; people in the music business (can they really be called musicians? half these people don’t even know an instrument beyond the beat machine and AutoTune) distill away any sense of musical identity so that they may appeal to the lowest common denominator and get their songs on the radio.  They glorify sex and violence and money as ends in and of themselves, and not means toward something higher.

What bothers me the most is not the presence of this kind of music; there has always been terrible, shallow music.  But the extreme popularity of it today is soul-crushing.

John Ruskin, the revered British art and social critic, wrote a series of essays on political economy which, when compiled, were entitled Unto this Last.  The essays, written in 1860, deplore the prevailing economic mindset of the time, which calculated human beings as only another variable in the calculus of the means of production.  What Ruskin argued was that by forgetting the human element–love, compassion, need, appreciation for beauty, honesty, integrity–our economics were doomed to create an unfeeling population whose chief interest was in obtaining their neighbor’s purse and not promoting their well-being.  He foresaw a world in which altruism was extinct and man’s pleasure came from wealth alone.  Yet there was hope left in his predictions.  As has been the belief of my family for generations, our salvation lay in honest and dedicated work.  In the fourth and final essay, “Ad Valorem” he writes:

“What is chiefly needed…is to show the quantity of pleasure that may be obtained by a consistent, well-administered competence, modest, confessed, and laborious.  We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek–not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honouring themselves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace.”

One of the musical champions of simpler pleasure, one who has pursued peace throughout his career, is Stevie Wonder.  I thought of him immediately when I was unfortunate enough to hear “I Wanna Be a Billionaire” yet again on the radio at work.  Especially on his 1976 masterpiece Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie celebrates the joy and worth of family and love; the “harmless pride” of one’s heritage; the pursuit of peace through acknowledgement of the obstacles toward it; and the simpler pleasures that make life joyous.

To prove that a massively popular song can still be filled with such ideals, look no further than “I Wish.”  It’s a rollicking song, and Stevie glorifies his youth, despite the poverty, and the brief and harmless departures the young sometimes take from their parents’ wishes.

I feel that I must clarify my point of view: wealth is not necessarily an evil; only the worship of it, and the glorification of the base activities wealth, at its simplest, allows.  One of the great songs about money is Joe Walsh’s “Life’s Been Good,” from his 1978 album But Seriously, Folks.  The song is sarcastic and insightful, with Walsh listing all the things his money has bought him, and how truly worthless they are.  The one important thing, and the one thing that will last when all his money has come and gone, is his appreciation that “Life’s been good to me so far.”  It is the rock star version of one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings: every day, count your blessings; you will see that you want for very little, and need even less.