Music For People Who Wear Turtlenecks
There are “movies,” and then there are “films.” But what’s the German word for the fact there is only one way to refer to music? As cinema has been intellectualized into a narrative art form on par with the novel, how has music continued to subsist as entertainment? Some musicians may be recognized as poets, but this fact doesn’t really move the needle in terms of cultural attitudes toward music as intellectual fodder.
Today’s musical roundup consists of songs and artists that can best be described as “for people who wear turtlenecks.” These songs, or the lyricists and musicians who wrote them, are marked by a literary and or academic approach (ah, yes, indubitably).
So, importantly, like many Tori Amos fans who would like to know exactly what a Cornflake girl is… what is a turtleneck wearer? This is your average person who could not be bothered to buy, wear, or listen to what is popular; they see through trends with a sense of style influenced by their personal champions. Perhaps they admire the Romantic Poets, the Beats, gonzo journalism, critical theorists, or the stoics. They love tweed or corduroy jackets, muted houndstooth, and herringbone fabrics, of course, black turtlenecks, tortoiseshell glasses, coffee OR tea but not both, and artisinal office goods.
Being a “turtleneck wearer” is not a permanent state of being; it’s an article of clothing that comes on and off, and some of these songs or the artists that created them may not always fit within this hyper-specific pseudo genre, but as we move in depth, I hope to convey the genuine phenomenon of this microcosm.
Very few things are actually uncool, in my opinion; things are mostly just unpopular, and anything has the potential to be cool if it’s loved. Collecting postage stamps, knowing the make and model of trains, or building miniatures can be richly fascinating if described by somebody deeply passionate about their hobby. This idea is not hard to believe today, where we see Reddit threads held together by minutia yet full of passionate contributors, cult Instagram pages dedicated to upselling vintage Japanese underground Zines, or completely obscure albums and merch reaching soaring prices on Discogs or eBay. The beauty of hyper specificity, expertise, honed skill, and restrained passion become self-evident through those who embody their interests.
If given a basic visualization technique, and asked to describe a rockstar, I would describe some sweaty, long-haired, leather-pants-wearing, bottle-draining combination of Axl Rose, Tommy Lee, David Lee Roth, and Rick Savage. None of these men or their respective bands make even my top 100 list of favorite bands or artists, but they cemented the pinnacle image of rock in what was maybe its penultimate reigning decade. These men have charisma, good looks, presence, and confidence, but if I were to picture them in high school, I could more readily see them telling a teacher to “shove it” than imagining they had straight A’s. This bad boy attitude has become synonymous with coolness, hipness, and the artist’s way in many cases. If that image represented the 80s, perhaps the ‘90s rockstar like Kurt Cobain, who was a feminist and wore dresses, stuck it to the man another way. He had big ideas about the world, the way it worked, and the ways it was unfair, and the pen may have been his sword, but he too is easier to imagine saying, “F*** it” than “stay in school kids.” The four horsemen of the Breakfast Club, rebels, basketcases, womanizers, and popular girls, have long reigned supreme in the Rock Hall of Fame, so what about the brains? Don’t worry, Anthony Michael Hall, there’s a place for your kind!
Of course, there are the musicians who are quite literally scholars themselves, like Brian May, the rocking astrophysicist with a Ph.D. in infrared astronomy. . . Coldplay’s Christ Martin is an alum of Exeter and UCL, and perhaps most surprising, Dexter Holland of the Offspring, was a Ph.D. candidate in molecular biology (cue the “You’re gonna go far, kid reference). Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine graduated from Harvard with a BA in Political Science, no surprise, and Rivers Cuomo of Weezer also received a BA from Harvard in English in 2008. One doesn’t exactly make these achievements without a thirst for knowledge and a passion for higher education. However, Rage Against the Machine, Queen, Coldplay, and especially The Offspring are not exactly famous for their catalogues promoting traditional education.
This presents a new dichotomy, one between the highly educated musicians who do not espouse the ideals they embody and the musicians who may or may not be highly educated yet seem to infuse their music with academic, literary, and poetic references that both exceeds humble beginnings or flies in the face of traditional “coolness.”
All of the original lineup of Vampire Weekend and Art Garfunkel hailed from Columbia, and their respective catalogs are replete with head-scratching moral quandaries, historical references, and callbacks to Britlit. The Smiths sang of Keats and Yates at the Cemetery Gates, and Patti Smith said as a young woman, she thought of Rimbaud as her boyfriend. Jarvis Cocker does a Marxist critique stronger than Ibsen in Common People and Cocaine Socialism and the Modern Lovers sing about the blatant paradox of Pablo Picasso as a historical figure.
However, it isn’t just the lofty heights these artists reach with their lyrics or arrangements that mark their works as steeped in earl grey and leather-bound folios; it’s also their fans. There are such things as Dylanologists, for god’s sake, despite the fact that Robert Zimmerman only spent one year in college. One builds an heir of seriousness around their body of work as an artist not by having a framed diploma but by fostering an aura of commitment to the art. Once this has been established, the “coolness” is undeniable. This applies to many disciplines; Women threw themselves at “rockstar” philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and playwright Arthur Miller, and even Albert Einstein was known to be quite the philanderer. And how does this factor?
There is something undeniably attractive about passion and authenticity. Vampire Weekend could never be the Strokes, and Blink-182 could never be Belle and Sebastian despite these two sets of groups coming up in the same years, respectively. While each of these bands enjoyed popularity and acclaim within their respective realms and fanbases, they also each stuck to their guns. Prepsters singing on Congolese kwassa kwassa beats found their audience, and so did grimey-in-a-hot-way rocking rich kids. There is no singular way to predict success in the music industry. There are certainly attempts, based on industry insider predictions, formulas for success built around data, or the infamous concept of industry “plants,” but if that was the only way the industry worked, how would we have outlier phenomenons like Weird Al or Gangnam Style?
Some businesspeople live by the maxim “never underestimate how dumb people are,” holding the worldview that the general public is shockingly stupid in ways ripe for being taken advantage of by the market. These people hold a cynical view of the general public as easily exploitable or gullible. An alternative perspective, that says "never underestimate how wise people are" acknowledges the discernment of the public, suggesting that people can recognize and avoid deceptive or fraudulent practices, essentially sniffing out snake oil. You can try and build something like Milli Vanilli, but you can’t act shocked when it all comes crashing down. There’s a time and a place for songs about sex, drugs, rock and roll, pushing product, and hitting clubs, and there is a time and place for songs about economic theory, historical events, and Russian literature.
To everything turn, turn, turn
There is a season turn, turn, turn,
And a time to every purpose under Heaven . . .
The Byrds borrowed these words beautifully from Ecclesiastes 3:1. Music is for everyone; it moves us, it gets us through, it “comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable”. It’s an expressive art that encompasses Yo-Yo Ma to Yo Gotti and ought not to compare them, only to hold them both in conversation. The experience of listening to music can be as powerful and healing or as mundane or grating as the situation dictates. When we appreciate music as we do visual art or literature, as a narrative tradition or an expressive medium, beyond being merely pleasant to experience or shake your hips to, we see the musician in their complex entirety and their craft in its wholeness.
