"Songbook"

[fiefoe]

• (How song titles are indicative of quality:) How could there be a bad song called "Iron Man," or "War Pigs," or - my cup ranneth over - "Rat Salad?"
• (A nice hook:) Actually, that's a serious question: How does a mandolin solo illustrate or clarify the plight of Eskimos anyway?
• So much of what you consume when you get older is about accommodation.
• That's the real con of shock art: It makes out that it's democratic, but it's actually only for those who can afford it.
• In our early relationship with, and courtship of, a new song, there is a stage which is akin to a sort of emotional puzzlement.
• A three-minute pop song can only withhold its mysteries for so long.

Ani Difranco "You Had Time"
    'You are a china shop and I am a bull / You are very good food and I am full'
Ben Folds Five "Smoke", "Kate"
Rufus Wainwright "One Man Guy"
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It's somehow not surprising that Nick Hornby inspired much bile in some people.

• And Hornby himself has insinuated his neocon fogeyisms into both the Times and the New Yorker.
• They mean that criticism has become cameo—stunt casting.
• Hornby didn’t start the trend, but the lad-lit author gave his brethren their watershed moment when the New Yorker published his Kid A review, on Oct. 30, 2000. The novelist had parlayed the success of his High Fidelity into a gig as the magazine’s rock critic in what amounted to a brilliant promotional tie-in. He took the opportunity to middlebrow-beat readers to death.
• Hornby and his ilk—and their audience—were the first generation to grow up completely under the influence of rock music.

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