Klosterman - Chuck Klosterman on Pop: A Collection of Previously Published Essays

A Collection of Previously Published Essays

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Essays in this work were previously published in Fargo Rock City copyright 2001 by Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs copyright 2003, 2004 by Chuck Klosterman, Chuck Klosterman IV copyright 2006, 2007 by Chuck Klosterman, and Eating the Dinosaur copyright 2009 by Chuck Klosterman.

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First Scribner ebook edition September 2010

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Manufactured in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-4516-2477-9

Portions of this work originally appeared in The New York Times Magazine, SPIN magazine, and Esquire.

From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman IV

From Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

From Chuck Klosterman IV

From Eating the Dinosaur

Several months before nineteen unsmiling people from the Middle East woke up early on a Tuesday in order to commit suicide by flying planes into tall New York office buildings, I sent out a mass e-mail to several acquaintances that focused on the concept of patriotism. At the time, patriotism seemed like a quaint, baffling concept; it was almost like asking people to express their feelings on the art of blacksmithing. But sometimes I like to ask people what they think about blacksmithing, too.

So ANYWAY, here was the content of my e-mail: I gave everyone two potential options for a hypothetical blind date and asked them to pick who theyd prefer. The only things they knew about the first candidate was that he or she was attractive and successful. The only things they knew about the second candidate was that he or she was attractive, successful, and extremely patriotic. No other details were provided or could be ascertained.

Just about everyone immediately responded by selecting the first individual. They viewed patriotism as a downside. I wasnt too surprised; in fact, I was mostly just amused by how everyone seemed to think extremely patriotic people werent just undateable, but totally fucking insane. One of them wrote that the quality of patriotism was on par with regularly listening to Cat Stevens and loves Robin Williams movies. Comparisons were made to Ted Nugent and Patrick Henry. And one especially snide fellow sent back a mass message to the entire e-mail group, essentially claiming that any woman who loved America didnt deserve to date him, not because he hated his country but because patriotic people werent smart.

That last response outraged one of my friends, a thirty-one-year-old lawyer who had been the only individual in the entire group who claimed to prefer the extremely patriotic candidate to the alternative. He sent me one of the most sincerely aggravated epistles Ive ever received, and I still recall a segment of his electronic diatribe that was painfully accurate: You know how historians call people who came of age during World War II the greatest generation? No one will ever say that about us, he wrote. Well be the cool generation. Thats all were good at, and thats all you and your friends seem to aspire to.

Whats kind of ironic about this statement is that I think my lawyer friend was trying to make me reevaluate the state of my life, but it mostly just made me think about Billy Joel. Nobody would ever claim that Billy Joel is cool in the conventional sense, particularly if theyre the kind of person who actively worries about what coolness is supposed to mean. Billy Joel is also not cool in the kitschy, campy, hes so uncool hes cool sense, which also happens to be the most tired designation in popular culture. He has no intrinsic coolness, and he has no extrinsic coolness. If cool was a color, it would be blackand Billy Joel would be sort of burnt orange.

Yet Billy Joel is great. And hes not great because hes uncool, nor is he great because he doesnt worry about being cool (because I think he kind of does). No, hes great in the same way that your dead grandfather is great. Because unlike 99 percent of pop artists, there is absolutely no relationship between Joels greatness and Joels coolness (or lack thereof), just as theres no relationship between the greatness of serving in World War II and the coolness of serving in World War II. What he does as an artist wouldnt be better if he was significantly cooler, and its not worse because he isnt. And thats sort of amazing when one considers that hes supposedly a rock star.

For just about everybody else in the idiom of rock, being cool is pretty much the whole job description. Its difficult to think of rock artists who are great without being cool, since thats precisely why we need them to exist. There have been countless bands in rock historyT. Rex, Janes Addiction, the White Stripes, et al.who I will always classify as great, even though theyre really just spine-crushingly cool. What they are is more important than what they do. And this is not a criticism of coolness; by and large, the musical component of rock isnt nearly as important as the iconography and the posturing and the idea of what were supposed to be experiencing. If given the choice between hearing a great band and seeing a cool band, Ill take the latter every single time; this is why the Eagles suck. But its the constraints of that very relationship that give Billy Joel his subterranean fabulousity, and its why hes unassumingly superior to all his mainstream seventies peers who got far more credit (James Taylor, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, etc.). Joel is the only rock star Ive ever loved who I never wanted to be (not even when he was sleeping with Christie Brinkley). Every one of Joels important songsincluding the happy onesare ultimately about loneliness. And its not clever lonely (like Morrissey) or interesting lonely (like Radiohead); its lonely lonely, like the way it feels when youre being hugged by someone and it somehow makes you sadder.

Now, I know what youre thinking: What about that godawful current events song that seemed like a rip-off of R.E.M. (1989s We Didnt Start the Fire)? Whats lonely about that, you ask? Well, my response is simpleI dont count that song. I dont count anything that comes after his An Innocent Man album, and I barely count that one. And aesthetically, this is totally acceptable. Unless they die before the age of thirty-three, nobodys entire career matters, and we all unconsciously understand this. If youre trapped in a Beatles-Stones debate, its not like anybody tries to prove a point by comparing