Pumped Up Diss

The 2010s have been a disastrous decade for America.  It was a decade that began with Citizens United and ending with citizens divided, while the decline of political, social and cultural standards has been unavoidable and unpalatable.  Nowhere is that more evident than in popular music.

Popular music has been a pretty good barometer of our politics and society.  Look at the overwhelmingly white country music fans in the heartland who like Trump and like trucks.  They listen to country to get as far away as possible from hip-hop/R&B, which is favored by an overwhelmingly diverse, non-white-majority group of people who lean Democratic.  Both sides mock each other for their musical tastes as well as their political leanings, yet the fakeness of today's country music and the lack of musical ability in hip-hop and rap only shows how American cultural interests have become shallow and stupid over the past decade. 

Meanwhile, rock and roll is pretty much down to a few indie bands selling a couple of thousand records in a year while Taylor Swift sells that many in a week.  (Taylor Swift was recently given an award at the American Music Awards for Artist of the Decade - which is sort of like saying that Forest Hill is the nicest neighborhood in Newark - what are the alternatives?)  The story is the same - corporate conglomeration of radio stations, record companies not wanting to take chances on something new, rock being the domain of demographically irrelevant white males.  But some of the bands deserve blame for why rock is barely surviving and may get the coup de grâce very soon, simply because they're so lame.  And no band is probably more responsible for rock's trivialization in the 2010s than Foster the People.

You remember Foster the People.  They came out of nowhere with their single "Pimped Up Kicks" in 2010, and its catchy tune caught the ears of rock fans thinking that, at last, here was a rock band that would finally rescue the form at a time when rap and hip-hop were taking over.  Indeed, the song was seen as an affront to everything rock fans hated about hip-hop.

Uh, it wasn't.  "Pumped Up Kicks" must now be viewed in retrospect as the song that all but destroyed rock and roll, because it in fact surrendered to the values of rap, and since it was such a commercial success, it did so in a big way.

Let me ask you.  What do you hate most about rap and hip-hop?  The electronic beats that pass for musical arrangements?  The computerized vocal sounds?  The lyrics glorifying guns, and violence in general?  The trendiness?  Listen to "Pumped Up Kicks" again, and you'll get it - it's a rock and roll song with the same characteristics that distinguish hip-hop!  Which is why the song is a piece of crap - and why its success made it impossible for rock and roll to challenge hip-hop in this now-ending decade.  Because anyone who says they don't like hip-hop for having all of the characteristics of Foster the People's song has yet like "Pumped Up Kicks" is a flaming hypocrite.

Yeah, I used to like "Pumped Up Kicks," and I even featured the promotional video on my Music Video Of the Week page once, but needless to say, I disavow the song now.  And also, suffice to say, repeated listening of the record only made me realize it was the worst thing to happen to rock and roll since Kurt Cobain died.  The song is an artistic failure.  I was wrong.

Forster the People are still around and, to my surprise, are still making and selling records!  But they're hardly the force they were at the beginning of the decade, and the damage they did to rock and roll with "Pumped Up Kicks" will likely outlast them.  Rock and roll may come back, but rockers are not going to defeat the enemy by rapping its own song.