Fat bear yearning and random pop similarities
Sharon's Weekly Head Dump
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I am convinced—convinced—that I am partially ursine. Every year when the days get real short and darkness descends way too early, I find myself inexplicably 1) hungry all the time and 2) desperately wanting to sleep most of the day (and night). Clearly I yearn to be a competitive fat bear.
Jokes aside November is weirdly a rough month for me; I don’t know if it’s SAD, accumulated fatigue from just doing stuff through the year, or the absolute cruelty of having to be productive between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it has been a few weeks of being extra tired, having less energy, and riding the struggle bus way too often.
I think it’s also a sort of depressing month because when the sun sets earlier, the darkness makes me think the day is over and sends me into a “Oh no, the day is done and I haven’t accomplished everything” spiral, which when combined with “Oh no the year is almost done and I haven’t accomplished everything” is a potent combination that very effectively wipes out whatever remaining motivation I have left.
Book of the Week
I am normally not an avid reader of the types of books that have maps in the beginning and are sprawling sagas of empire-builders jockeying for power—so I was really stunned by the gorgeousness of Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun. I was so into the world that Parker-Chan had created, in fact, that for days—DAYS—after finishing the book, I would happily think “Oh boy, I’m so excited to read more of this book” before remembering that I’d already read…all of it.
The novel exists in a sort of nebulous in-between genre, not quite fantasy, not quite historical fiction. It’s loosely based on the twilight of Mongol rule in ancient China, and is absolutely replete with cultural detail (done in such a way that is not condescending to readers on either side of the knowledge/language divide) and is so evocative in its scene-setting. It also uses the lightest of supernatural touches used to illustrate a cultural concept; the Mandate of Heaven here is depicted as a literal manifestation of magic. One of my favorite elements of Parker-Chan’s storytelling is one of the most thought-provoking; she uses genderfluidity in a way that seems wholly natural and yes, historically plausible (no anachronistic-seeming concepts here) that just makes so much sense in the story. It’s like if you took Disney’s animated Mulan and just dialed the transgressive nature up to the max.
Articles I Enjoyed
Madison Malone Kircher: The Fake Scorsese Film You Haven’t Seen. Or Have You? (New York Times)
Tumblr cinephiles have a new favorite movie this week. It’s decades old, so maybe you’ve already seen it. It is called “Goncharov” and stars Robert DeNiro in the titular role as a Russian hit man and former discothèque owner. It takes place in Naples, Italy. Cybill Shepherd plays his wife, Katya, and rounding out the cast are Al Pacino, Gene Hackman and Harvey Keitel.
The 1973 film, billed as “Martin Scorsese presents,” has everything: murder, a love triangle, homoerotic undertones, a striking original score and a dramatic final scene that film buffs have been debating for years.
There’s only one other thing to know about “Goncharov.” It does not exist.
I am not on Tumblr anymore, but I have really enjoyed seeing bits of “Goncharov” fandom bubble up onto my radar. There’s just something really, really great about seeing people come together on a wholesome inside joke—the “Goncharov” bit feels like a larger-scale version of that time the people of Reddit switched to Spanish to clown on this guy.
Jeffrey Arlo Brown: Requiem for a Tweet (VAN Magazine)
When I heard Yannick Nézet-Séguin lead the Philadelphia Orchestra in Florence Price’s Symphony No. 1 at the Philharmonie in Berlin this fall, I thought: Twitter did that. Well, not just Twitter—the offline work was at least as essential—but for years, musical pockets of the platform had used it as a grassroots tool. It was not unlike the early days of Black Lives Matter or any of the countless other social movements that relied (and rely) on the platform for organizing. Classical Music Twitter pushed for more programming diversity, and orchestras and other institutions began to listen.
As the future of Twitter as a place for pockets of productive discourse for marginalized folks looks increasingly uncertain, I find myself wondering what the future of Classical Music Twitter is, and feeling like a certain era is already over—even if the platform survives, enough has already changed that our little community will never quite be the same. I appreciated this heartfelt (and clear-eyed—no nostalgic falsehoods about the downsides of Twitter) paean to what we had.
What I’m Listening To
I went on a bit of a journey this week, and it all started because I thought, “Hmm, I feel like listening to Fall Out Boy.”
(I discovered, like, three of their songs in high school, and added them to multiple playlists that I listened to a lot, and I guess I was feeling both nostalgic and in the need for something heavier than the pop I’d been listening to recently.)
I did what I usually do when I feel like listening to a band/artist but am not super familiar with their discography—I pulled up their Essentials Playlist on Apple Music and got to listening.
First things first: I have never understood the lyrics of a single Fall Out Boy song, because diction—already a loose concept in non-classical music—just…is not the leader singer’s strong point. I still have no idea what the lyrics are in the chorus of “Sugar, We’re Going Down,” which just sounds like French yaorting to me. “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s An Arms Race” is one of the three songs I loved in high school and I still hear one of the core lyrics as:
I’m a leading man / And the Lysol weevil also educates, also educates, ooh
(The actual lyrics, according to Genius, are “I’m a leading man / And the lies I weave are oh-so intricate, oh-so intricate” which my brain just refuses to accept. Lysol weevils ftw.)
Anyway, in my travels through the Essentials playlist, I discovered the previously-unknown-to-me song “The Phoenix,” which is a banger:
…and while I was listening, I thought, huh, the opening riff sounds a lot like another thing I know, and then it hit me.
The section from roughly 0:20-0:33 in the video below, from Fall Out Boy’s “The Phoenix”…
…sounds a lot like K-Pop group Brown Eyed Girls’ “Sixth Sense,” in the bit from 0:42-0:58:
Brown Eyed Girls’ song came out in 2011, and Fall Out Boy’s in 2013; the string riff isn’t exactly the same, and I’m not trying to claim musical plagiarism here or anything, but it’s just super interesting—I don’t know if this is one of those things where there’s a direct link (I know producers and writers have historically shopped demos to both K-Pop and American pop artists) or if the producers for the two songs independently came up with a similar idea. I’m not invested enough to do a deep dive on this.
Anyway, it reminded me of a couple of other random connections I’ve noticed in songs/videos across countries.
In another K-Pop/American pop coincidence, I recently heard “Naughty” by Red Velvet - Irene & Seulgi, and noticed that the melody heard here from 1:05-1:08:
…is pretty much identical to Camila Cabello’s “Cry For Me” from 0:24-0:29 here:
Which is just one of those funny little similarities! I don’t think there’s any plagiarism going on here fwiw, I think it’s just one of those things where there are only so many combinations of notes in a tonal harmonic system.
Next, as some of you who have been with me for a while know, I’ve recently become obsessed with Eurovision. In the 2021 contest one of my favorite entrants was San Marino’s “Adrenalina” by Senhit, which—hilarously!—features Flo Rida. (Why was Flo Rida part of San Marino’s Eurovision entry? I have no idea, but it was great.)
A thing that always bugged me about Flo Rida’s bit on the track was that it reminded me of something, but for the longest time I couldn’t figure out what. It’s the part that starts “she know to do my body like hot coals” from 2:07-2:17 here:
Then one day it finally hit me; it’s rhythmically super similar to his verse in Lady Gaga’s “Starstruck,” from 1:33-1:51 here:
Again, not super exact, and for all I know this is just how Flo Rida typically structures his flows (I am not that familiar with his oeuvre), but I am tickled by the idea that when he got the call to be in San Marino’s song, he just shrugged and went with a rhythmic pattern he’d already done before.
Aaaanyway all of that reminded me of when Dua Lipa came out with her video for “IDGAF” a few years ago, and pretty much every single aspect of it reminded me super strongly of Stromae’s “Tous Les Mêmes,” which is one of my all time favorite pop songs. There are so many similarities I could do a scholarly deep dive (the two videos playing with concepts of androgyny, the two-color dichotomy aesthetic, some of the specific dance moves, the doubled self which is depicted by having two Dua Lipas in her video but a female double for Stromae in his, the theme of romantic/sexual incompatibility), but you get a sense of it watching the 1:20-1:40 bit of this video:
…and 1:11-1:33 and 2:19-2:54 here:
(You do get a much stronger sense of the similarities watching both videos in their entirety, fyi.)
The cool thing is I am very pleased to report that the connection is not one I made up; it turns out that Stromae was artistic director for Dua Lipa’s video.
Thank you for going on this journey with me; I hope you found it pointlessly interesting. (I have no idea if I would have been like this if I hadn’t gone to music school—in any case, remembering elements and making connections across works is something I have been trained to do, and my brain does not know when the heck to shut off.)
What I Watched
Along with pretty much the rest of the internet, I really enjoyed Knives Out and was excited—but also a little worried—about Glass Onion. Would Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc character, with his unidentifiable Southern drawl, become annoying? Would Rian Johnson’s attempt to create yet another society-satirizing mystery collapse under the weight of its own attempts at cleverness? Would the movie ruin the neat tied-upness of the first, which was a perfect standalone?
My verdict when I saw Glass Onion last weekend: this movie freaking rules.
I will not spoil any of the movie for you, but it is just so, so delightful, and so clever, and studded with so many smart little details that I’ve been breathlessly unpacking it with other people who’ve seen it. It also skewers the myth of the billionaire genius so gleefully, which hits very specifically right now.
I recommend this spoiler-free interview with Rian Johnson, who between these movies and my second-favorite Star Wars movie…might be one of my favorite writer/directors now?? (I also learned from this interview that Rian Johnson is friends with Alex Ross, which is such a mind-blowing crossover to me.) 📽