Superphil
06.01.2002, 10:37
heute hat es auf www.audiogalaxy.com (http://www.audiogalaxy.com/articles?&a=190&&) einen bericht, über songs über superman:
The latest sappy contemporary ballad to be marketed as an anthem vaguely connected with the World Trade Center collapse is "Superman (It's Not Easy)," by one-man-band Five For Fighting. In addition to being a reprehensibly sleazy attempt to make a few bucks off of tragedy, "Superman (It's Not Easy)" is also, arguably, the worst song about Superman ever written, a song whose conceptual idiocy abandons the gentle ironies of the classic Superman song-form (such as the Kinks' "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman," the Flaming Lips' "Waitin' for a Superman" or even Laurie Anderson's nightmarish "O Superman" - a much more appropriate anthem for these times) in favor of bald-faced death-of-irony wussiness.
Because, whether or not Five For Fighting's John Ondrasik was aware of it, songs about Superman can be traced back to first appearances in the 78 records of the 40's, just a few years after the caped crusader's musclebound figure made its first appearance in yellowed newsprint. In fact, pop music's gradually morphing attitudes towards superman have tended to mirror those of society itself, as superman has gone from a figure of childlike wonder to one of muted adult pathos.
But enough theorizing. If you've read this far (and I assume there are at least three of you), it was probably in hopes of reading some vicious put-downs of popular contemporary bands. So I won't disappoint you: just about every one of the Superman-themed songs penned by today's "alternative" bands (what is that classification supposed to mean in 2002 anyway?) sucks goat balls. In alphabetical order: screw Bush, screw Goldfinger, screw Good Charlotte, screw Killing Heidi, screw the Dave Matthews Band, screw Alanis Morissette, screw Our Lady Peace, screw Sister Hazel, screw the Stone Temple Pilots, and especially screw Three Doors Down - whose "Kryptonite" even gets the facts wrong and has Superman boasting of his "superhuman kryptonite" (although note that Ondrasik commits a similar sin when he portrays Superman "digging for kryptonite"). And hey, while I'm endearing myself to readers everywhere, screw Eric Clapton, whose "Superman Inside" is differentiated from all the Superman odes of the alt-rock bands nipping at his heels only by the advanced wrinkles on those withered old heels. Next to all these songs, the Superman tunes of first generation alt-cornballs like the Crash Test Dummies, the Spin Doctors, and Counting Crows sound almost classy.
Great songs about Superman do exist though, and they come in all types, from hip-hop to country to metal. And, depending on their genre or their proclivities, different artists see, in Superman, different things. The spit-curled one's super-strength and super-stamina, for example, has been a point of boasting comparison for artists like bluesman-turned-funkman Johnny "Guitar" Watson, whose 1976 "Superman Lover" was later sampled by Redman and Chico Debarge for their similarly boasting "Soopaman Luva" series. Meanwhile, Michael Stipe exclaimed "I am Superman, and I can do anything" in REM's cover of the Clique's "Superman." But if the Superman of the REM tune still couldn't impress his Lois Lane, maybe it was because Lane had already hooked up with Big Bank Hank of the Sugarhill Gang, who, in the seminal 1979 classic "Rapper's Delight," told her:
"He's a fairy, I do suppose,
flyin' through the air in pantyhose.
He may be very sexy or even cute,
but he looks like a sucker in a blue and red suit."
I said, "You need a man who's got finesse
And his whole name across his chest...…
He can't satisfy you with his little worm,
but I can bust you out with my super sperm!"
Next to this kind of outsize boasting, Donovan's fey chirping that "Superman or Green Lantern ain't got a-nothin' on me!" makes him look every bit the knobbly-kneed 98-pound weakling that Ray Davies described in the Kinks' "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman:" "I looked in the mirror at my pigeon chest / I had to put on my clothes because it made me depressed."
Just as some musicians have felt the need to take Superman down a few notches (take, for example, Bad Religion's "Superman," Firewater's "So Long, Superman," and Gil Scott-Heron's statement of the obvious in "Ain't No Such Thing as Superman"), other more literal-minded ones have raised him up as a kind of quasi-messiah (which seems inappropriate given the plainly Semitic qualities of this Jewish-made hero who rose to popularity during World War II). The most catchy and, for all its cheesiness, poignant example of this is the Crash Test Dummies' "Superman's Song," which skirts around the crushing difficulties of Superman's perennial charge. Subsequent songs, meanwhile, have fallen headlong into the exploration of those difficulties, and these days most Superman songs paint him as the failed hero, tragically not strong enough to defend us against the real evils of the modern world. This is the angle taken by most alt-rock Superman songs, the position of the Flaming Lips' excellent "Waitin' for a Superman" - which tells of an obstacle "too heavy for Superman to lift" - and the well from which Ondrasik draws, though not without spilling most of the water on the way up. Ondrasik merely regurgitates all these tropes without - unlike Watson, REM, the Sugarhill Gang, the Kinks, or even (choke) the Crash Test Dummies - adding anything new, touching, or even fun. Such are the times in which we live, though. The modern commercial dominance of a whining, derivative milquetoast such as Ondrasik proves definitively that, where American culture once stood tall like Superman, it now slouches pidgeonchested. We are living in a diminished age, an age of Jimmy Olsen.
-Will Robinson Sheff
The latest sappy contemporary ballad to be marketed as an anthem vaguely connected with the World Trade Center collapse is "Superman (It's Not Easy)," by one-man-band Five For Fighting. In addition to being a reprehensibly sleazy attempt to make a few bucks off of tragedy, "Superman (It's Not Easy)" is also, arguably, the worst song about Superman ever written, a song whose conceptual idiocy abandons the gentle ironies of the classic Superman song-form (such as the Kinks' "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman," the Flaming Lips' "Waitin' for a Superman" or even Laurie Anderson's nightmarish "O Superman" - a much more appropriate anthem for these times) in favor of bald-faced death-of-irony wussiness.
Because, whether or not Five For Fighting's John Ondrasik was aware of it, songs about Superman can be traced back to first appearances in the 78 records of the 40's, just a few years after the caped crusader's musclebound figure made its first appearance in yellowed newsprint. In fact, pop music's gradually morphing attitudes towards superman have tended to mirror those of society itself, as superman has gone from a figure of childlike wonder to one of muted adult pathos.
But enough theorizing. If you've read this far (and I assume there are at least three of you), it was probably in hopes of reading some vicious put-downs of popular contemporary bands. So I won't disappoint you: just about every one of the Superman-themed songs penned by today's "alternative" bands (what is that classification supposed to mean in 2002 anyway?) sucks goat balls. In alphabetical order: screw Bush, screw Goldfinger, screw Good Charlotte, screw Killing Heidi, screw the Dave Matthews Band, screw Alanis Morissette, screw Our Lady Peace, screw Sister Hazel, screw the Stone Temple Pilots, and especially screw Three Doors Down - whose "Kryptonite" even gets the facts wrong and has Superman boasting of his "superhuman kryptonite" (although note that Ondrasik commits a similar sin when he portrays Superman "digging for kryptonite"). And hey, while I'm endearing myself to readers everywhere, screw Eric Clapton, whose "Superman Inside" is differentiated from all the Superman odes of the alt-rock bands nipping at his heels only by the advanced wrinkles on those withered old heels. Next to all these songs, the Superman tunes of first generation alt-cornballs like the Crash Test Dummies, the Spin Doctors, and Counting Crows sound almost classy.
Great songs about Superman do exist though, and they come in all types, from hip-hop to country to metal. And, depending on their genre or their proclivities, different artists see, in Superman, different things. The spit-curled one's super-strength and super-stamina, for example, has been a point of boasting comparison for artists like bluesman-turned-funkman Johnny "Guitar" Watson, whose 1976 "Superman Lover" was later sampled by Redman and Chico Debarge for their similarly boasting "Soopaman Luva" series. Meanwhile, Michael Stipe exclaimed "I am Superman, and I can do anything" in REM's cover of the Clique's "Superman." But if the Superman of the REM tune still couldn't impress his Lois Lane, maybe it was because Lane had already hooked up with Big Bank Hank of the Sugarhill Gang, who, in the seminal 1979 classic "Rapper's Delight," told her:
"He's a fairy, I do suppose,
flyin' through the air in pantyhose.
He may be very sexy or even cute,
but he looks like a sucker in a blue and red suit."
I said, "You need a man who's got finesse
And his whole name across his chest...…
He can't satisfy you with his little worm,
but I can bust you out with my super sperm!"
Next to this kind of outsize boasting, Donovan's fey chirping that "Superman or Green Lantern ain't got a-nothin' on me!" makes him look every bit the knobbly-kneed 98-pound weakling that Ray Davies described in the Kinks' "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman:" "I looked in the mirror at my pigeon chest / I had to put on my clothes because it made me depressed."
Just as some musicians have felt the need to take Superman down a few notches (take, for example, Bad Religion's "Superman," Firewater's "So Long, Superman," and Gil Scott-Heron's statement of the obvious in "Ain't No Such Thing as Superman"), other more literal-minded ones have raised him up as a kind of quasi-messiah (which seems inappropriate given the plainly Semitic qualities of this Jewish-made hero who rose to popularity during World War II). The most catchy and, for all its cheesiness, poignant example of this is the Crash Test Dummies' "Superman's Song," which skirts around the crushing difficulties of Superman's perennial charge. Subsequent songs, meanwhile, have fallen headlong into the exploration of those difficulties, and these days most Superman songs paint him as the failed hero, tragically not strong enough to defend us against the real evils of the modern world. This is the angle taken by most alt-rock Superman songs, the position of the Flaming Lips' excellent "Waitin' for a Superman" - which tells of an obstacle "too heavy for Superman to lift" - and the well from which Ondrasik draws, though not without spilling most of the water on the way up. Ondrasik merely regurgitates all these tropes without - unlike Watson, REM, the Sugarhill Gang, the Kinks, or even (choke) the Crash Test Dummies - adding anything new, touching, or even fun. Such are the times in which we live, though. The modern commercial dominance of a whining, derivative milquetoast such as Ondrasik proves definitively that, where American culture once stood tall like Superman, it now slouches pidgeonchested. We are living in a diminished age, an age of Jimmy Olsen.
-Will Robinson Sheff