Published by Zabimaru on 18 Oct 2008
A Musician Vindicating Herself
Some time ago I wrote about Kate McAlpine’s Large Hadron Rap, and mentioned how unusual I think it is to see any intellectual music.
A comment on that post mentioned Alanis Morissette, giving her as an example of an intelligent singer. Now, I’m not saying that’s necessarily wrong; she might be very intelligent. I honestly don’t know much about her, so I have no idea. But I don’t think that her music seems all that intellectual.
The song that, of course, comes to mind is the popular Ironic. It’s an entire song dedicated to misusing the word “ironic” by stating that a bunch of situations are ironic when they are merely unfortunate or coincidental.
A lot of comedians have already ripped that song to shreds, so I won’t reiterate their points too much. Here’s one of them that you can listen to instead:
And I usually find popular songs just as stupid as that Alanis Morissette song. Sometimes it goes beyond stupid though, like with Katie Melua’s Nine Million Bicycles.
In it she sings “We are twelve billion light years from the edge / That’s a guess / No one can ever say it’s true / But I know that I will always be with you” and that’s just a very bad thing to sing.
Not because twelve billion isn’t a very accurate figure; I will accept that since twelve is the monosyllabic number closest to 13.7. But what really does bother me is that she says that it’s a guess.
I love science and I it bothers me that many seem to have a very bad grasp of what science really is. Creationists, homeopathic “doctors” and other quack “scientists” thrive on making people believe that science is just some vague guesswork presented as truth. I don’t think we need singers who add to that belief by claiming that astronomers “guess” that we are a certain distance from the edge of the universe.
But Melua really came through and vindicated herself. When physicist Simon Singh wrote a piece in The Guardian criticizing the song, and giving an idea for alternative, more correct lyrics, she reacted wonderfully.
I would guess that very many entertainers would just scoff at his criticism, thinking that he is a boring old man talking about things that no one cares about. But not Katie Melua; she apologized and admitted her error and actually recorded a version with the “corrected” lyrics. Now, that version will never be a commercial success, but I love it. And watch this next video if you want to hear it too.
Now that’s the kind of musician that we need more of. That she did this says a lot about her.