Janis Ian's Voice is Gone
'Be cool or be cast out': how today's digital trends kill the music inside us all
“Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity…”
— “At Seventeen,” Between the Lines, 1975, Janis Ian
Every time I run into another trendy hit dumbing us all down in pixel bits (reminding me of the cutthroat irrelevancy of getting old), I turn to the real gutsy music of my youth — in a kind of twisted act of defiance…and reassurance: a little Guns N’ Roses, maybe “Paradise City,” Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,” the long arch of Karen Carpenter’s “Superstar.”
Not that any of it matters anymore, coming from me, on the edge of 17 59.
A story posted by a musician acquaintance down in good ole Nashville today reminded me again of the ridiculousness of the current, up and coming generations who think they have their shit together and single-handedly invented the next, great toy.
They’re idiots, of course, obsessively caught up in the rapture of their fleeting youth, illusory invincibility, and sometimes, dime store beauty. If they’re lucky, they’ll have long enough to figure it out, in between picking dingleberries out of their adult diapers…
Hey dumbasses, we’re all on the same sinking boat, and fuck me, some of us had the life rafts all along.
“It seems that Janis Ian is almost ready to hang up her microphone after a career that has spanned more than 50 years. She’s already announced that her last studio album, ‘The Light at the End of the Line,’ will be her last solo studio recording. And her current tour, called ‘Celebrating Our Years Together,’ for which she’ll stop at El Cajon’s The Magnolia theater, will also be her last North American tour in 2022.” — “Legendary singer-songwriter Janis Ian says goodbye at The Magnolia tour stop” by Jennifer Ianni, March 3, 2022, San Diego Union-Tribune
Singer-songwriter Dylan Taylor (genre mutt) just dropped a new single, “All American Anxiety,” in answer to the Palestine/Israel turmoil going on right now. The single may or may not be related to her upcoming album, which I did a little write-up about (but can’t release yet).
It’s a moving, driving heart on her sleeve, with unanswered questions, pleas, and neatly corrugated lyrics summing up the complex situations in mental and emotional twos and threes. Her usual, original, Janis-Ian-worthy masterpiece.
Not that you care, scat-porn doobies…
Taylor is an original voice in these digital, chatGPT times, where the masses always seem to be chasing one copycat trend after another under the guise of cool. The only difference between then and now is, you guys have better, slicker, faster, more tech-advanced tools for circle jerking off.
Unfortunately, like every Janis Ian (who lives in Nashville too) before her — and since — Taylor literally and figuratively can’t catch a goddamned break, because everyone who matters only cares about the vibe, and the more chill, the better (see above screen capture).
Think of your friends slack-jawed and sucking each other off in the basement, stoned out of their minds. Nobody in that room wants to feel much of anything but the “slow-burning” rise of their own cum-stacks, and maybe even that’s too much effort.
Taylor doesn’t give a shit. She plays what she feels, somehow mirroring, reacting to, and force-feeding that with what she’s thinking — a rare, rare feat — under a lyrical symposium of stormy rhythmic guitar and tiger’s milk hoof beats.
I’m thinking of the winding “momentum” in the bridge of Guns N’ Roses’ brilliant rock ballad, “Patience” and the driving force behind “Welcome to the Jungle’s” rock concerto.
But we can’t have an original voice in this half-assed cosplay, can we?
Fuck Tik Tok and all their noise.
“Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out…”
— “Subdivisions,” Rush
Intense Momentum Everywhere
Quick glance at my playlist when Tik Tok chill is all they wanna hear…
BING! POW! Got it.