HOT: Lorde Works in Mysterious Ways?
South Park’s ability to instantly respond to current events has long been a marvel, but a recent episode took things to meta new heights. After a throwaway gag where one of the kid’s dads dresses and performs as Lorde at a party, a writer at Spin knee-jerked a self-righteous article about how atrocious it was to portray the teenage star as a middle-aged man (despite the joke not being pointed at Lorde in any way). The “Leave Lorde Alone!” rant indicated the writer either hadn’t seen the full show or didn’t understand the joke, so the South Park writers worked the misunderstanding into a follow-up episode in which it turns out the dad really is Lorde, the result of dressing as a woman at his job and making auto-tuned-to-the-max songs on his computer. Best music writer smackdown since Sid Vicious beat Nick Kent with a bike chain. Spin never offered any explanation for the original article (and it’s still on the mag’s site), but it did seem excited to be made fun of. To her great credit, Lorde seems to have gotten a kick out of the episodes.
WARM: A War on The War on Drugs
The Soft Rock sounds of Sun Kil Moon belie the mean-spirited personality of its mastermind, Mark Kozelek. After building a reputation for insulting audiences (calling one “fuckin’ hillbillies” earlier this year), the cranky songwriter set his sites on rockers The War on Drugs, who had the nerve to play a festival show in such close proximity to Kozelek’s set there was sound bleed-over (annoying perhaps but hardly the louder band’s fault). After insulting the group (who seemed baffled by the disdain), Kozelek apologized, then kept the one-sided beef going in interviews (repeating his critique of the band’s “beer commercial lead guitar”) and capped off his attack with a song, “War on Drugs: Suck My Cock,” in which he calls them the “whitest band” he’s ever heard. Kozelek is either attempting satire about the gossipy state of the music press or is simply the biggest dick in music (if Chris Brown didn’t exist, of course).
COLD: The Don of Henley
Don Henley very much wants you to love him … enough to pay the king’s ransom it takes to buy an Eagles concert ticket. But whatever you do, DONT TOUCH HIS STUFF! The Eagles are extremely protective of their music, especially if they think they deserve more money for its use. Henley also hates people tampering with his masterpieces, telling Rolling Stone he disapproved of reworked covers of his music by Frank Ocean and Okkervil River. Don doesn’t like you messing with his name, either; he’s currently suing a company for making a T-shirt with the nonsensical phrase, “Don a Henley and Take It Easy.” So next time you’re considering singing “Boys of Summer” at a karaoke contest, keep an eye out. Don Henley might be right there, ready to take your genius-ruining ass straight to the cleaners.
This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2014.