Hard News: Friday Music: Weird Auckland
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it observes that the ostentation of major label hip hop and other Top 40 pop isn’t terribly relevant to suburban teens in New Zealand, I can report that she and her friends aren’t really worth arguing with.
But Tom Beard pointed out something interesting. Which is that William DeVaughan’s 1974 hit ‘Be Thankful for What You Got’ embodies an almost identical sentiment to ‘Royals’:
I feel that this ‘senitment’ is perhaps open to further interpretation, beyond the material references, I’m mixed about whether they allign that closely. DeVaughan’s hit seems ostensibly to be about empowerment and being proud, regardless of one’s wealth, with the refrain:
You may not have a car at all
But remember brothers and sisters
You can still stand tallWhile bearing a superficial resemblance (note there’s no ‘I’ anywhere in DeVaughan’s lyric) Royals contrasts Lorde’s humble origins against the ostentation of the US music industry as a preamble to her aspiration to become a pop queen, in the chorus:
Obviously the author’s stated intention can’t be ignored:
It’s not so much a declaration of dislike for the stuff I namedrop, more calling ‘bullshit’ on it all. I thought it was time someone in popular music was saying what everyone my age was thinking: we don’t even have licenses, let alone Maybachs. I enjoy listening to music with really lavish, opulent stuff talked about, but purely on a shallow level; ”Royals” was me trying to get real.
But it’s difficult to overlook the fact that ‘bullshit’ is being called here by namedropping, with a degree of familiarity, the very products the lyricist is reacting against the namedropping of i.e I had to Google to find out what these products are.
Furthermore that the relevance of US Top 40 pop to suburban teens in New Zealand is difficult to dispute given the manner in which the respective countries’ charts mirror one another, relevant by virtue of charting and vice versa. And furthermore in Ella’s own words from that Vevo clip:
"I love rap music because it just makes me feel way cooler than I really am. I’ve always really liked Kanye and I met him on Jools Holland.
“He was wearing a grill on his lower teeth and I had this barely suppressed desire to rub the grill. I didn’t rub the grill."
The relevancy may merely be shallow, it may only make one feel way cooler, but that is 99% of pop music in a nutshell, arguably. As for Kanye, he’s been dropping those names for a decade:
This is not an image
This is God given
This is hard liven
Mixed wit crystal sipping
It’s the most consistentNever Let me down, 2004
Via his involvement on Maybach Music 2 with Rick Ross (2009), and later with Jay-Z:
I hit the club, ordered some Grey Goose
Switched it for Ciroc to give Puff’s stock a boostPrimetime, 2011
The sincerity of Royal’s critique of the namedropping ‘bullshit’ and our varying considerations of her perception of its relevance to a demographic are all the more problematic in light of the decision to cover West’s ‘Hold my liquor’ in a performance for 5000 Aucklanders, altering a number of the lyrics while sticking with:
Bitch I’m back out my coma, waking up on your sofa
When I park my Range Rover, slightly scratch your Corolla
Okay, I smashed your Corolla,Whether or not she procurred a driving licence in the interim seems less likely than the simple explanation that Ella is a complex individual prone to standard inconsistencies and desires:
What can you do with a million? Everything I want either costs $50 or $200 billion.
Yes the song does employ a critique of the rampant materialism of pop culture, but the thrust, that melodic climax that the verse builds up to three times over during the course of the song remains:
So that’s an alternate reading, personally I don’t and have never, as far as I recall, had any great urge to drive a Cadallic or any other kind of motor vehicle, but that sounds like a reasonable and realisable inclination to have, and doubly so given that this vehicle (Royals), expressing Ella’s own aspiration to reach the top, has in turn enabled her decree to manifest:
ooh ooh oh ooh
We’re better than we’ve every dreamed
And I’m in love with being queen -
"chris", in reply to
Sorry, bit of a spiel...I needed a break from Stronghold Kingdoms.
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Sacha, in reply to
‘bullshit’ is being called here by namedropping, with a degree of familiarity, the very products the lyricist is reacting against
Welcome to the postmodern world young people have known since birth.
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"chris", in reply to
Cripes. I’m not sure either of us are quite old enough to have missed that cut Sacha.
Another point I neglected to consider before posting above, was the striking contrast between Vaughan's:
You can still stand tall
and Yelich-O’Connor’s
And I’m not proud of my address
Regardless of the peripheral tangential blathering in the above post, when making a definitive reading, especially of a musical lyric, I’m no intentionalist.
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