But actually (and this isn't just said out of spite) the new album is really terrible, indisputably so. What was once a uncompromising sound driven by its propensity to be ballsy and melodic has wallowed into pure arena rock trash. Think of a lovechild between U2 and the American South, with absolutely no sense of cause or substance, and you're beginning to flesh out the songs that make up KOL's latest effort, Only by the Night.
In fact, The Culture of Me conveys the right sentiment when they say:
"What's happened to our boys from the South, the saviors of so-called "southern-sleaze-rock", Kings Of Leon? The Followill clan have gotten all gussied up in a Metallica-sell-out-shout-inducing garb and haircuts [...] We've never been fully behind this band [...] and now we're totally fine leaving them alone"
The epitome of this obscene appropriation of KOL comes to me, case and point, from an observation today on Facebook. Someone's recent status update proclaimed: "(name) loved the kings of leon and her hot boyfriend". Leaving aside the ambiguous effect of the past tense and the second object of the sentence (probably not intended), the implication here seems to be that the person in question recently went to a KOL show and "loved" it. Well and good. But in fact KOL have never been a 'The' band; and hence the "The" that prefaces Kings of Leon here seems quite aloof and unknowing. Not to criticize at all: but what kind of a love employs itself in such an (arguably) irredeemable blunder?
Maybe I'm just being an unfair sour puss about this; but as someone who truly takes pride in cultivating a relationship with music, there is something inherently peril about (even) a minute detail as this.
So what is it all about? Why do music enthusiasts sour at mainstreamers, the bands that 'go' mainstream? For one: the feeling of insult when a band becomes a cultural commodity (I use Marx's language to stress what is, in fact, going on) is in part due to the dispersal of the private 'mine' into the public arena. In other words, mass culture appropriation strips me of what was once personal and privately mine, an article of my identity, by opening it and allowing others the liberties offered me. Notice, that it is definitely a question of rights: the insulted party complains, 'why should everyone be given equal right(s) to this?' ...'What right do you (the other) have?, to interact with what is mine?'
And so it is likely that mass appropriation comes to seem like treason from a certain point of view. Is that right? A plot against the sovereignty of a certain someone? In a certain way, yes, I think. But in another way this justification seems unsatisfying. It is true that the sovereign in question believes him/herself sovereign only because they have hitherto had the 'right', the 'rite of passage' to the fruits of the thing itself. But when these titles are questioned by others who declare sovereignty as well (is not every claim about art a kind of claim to sovereignty?--to 'being in charge' by 'knowing something'--about something?) the question of politics arises.
On the other hand, I don't care much that someone else could listen to KOL's back catalogue. It might give them the background to reevaluate, even agree with me. What I want, ultimately, is to be told or given reward for the original quality of my judgment; or for the band itself to be represented in a fashion that (in my view) does not conflict with its artistic candor. To sum, if artistic appropriation into the marketplace is often a sorry enterprise, riddled with disingenuiousness and laze, then musical elitism is a fortiori a selfish one. The question really is: when is selfishness a virtue?
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