The Tale of Two Somebodies

To follow up on that last post. It occurs to me that today music seems to be much more sex-focused than love-focused. This might just be me getting older (am I even in a position to know what the music world looks like these days?). So I may be biased. It's hard not to be left with this sense though.

Like wider society, modern music seems to be sex and hook-up focused. A sense of true love is still in there somewhat, I guess, but it struggles to get out. So I think that depth of ambivalence I mentioned in the last post is more lacking.

Two more recent songs come to mind when I think about this. The first is the track, "Somebody Else," by The 1975. (The 1975 are female-facing band - that's female-facing, not female-fronted. This is a nice segue into my next post.) I heard this song about a year or so ago in a bus station of all places. It grabbed me a little bit, though I've never been a huge fan of the band. It's about having to imagine someone you have feelings for being with somebody else. And it does capture this feeling quite effectively. It's a good song, and like the songs mentioned in the last post, it manages to convey the sense of mixed feelings.

These feelings are no doubt particularly relatable to the youngsters of this current generation, who are growing up in a world where true love has been bludgeoned to death by materialism, and where people exist within dating apps and hook-up culture. (Though, conversely, a large number of young people aren't hooking up at all, and just have to live with the feelings, within this wider plastic culture.)

Somebody Else comes with this sense that it exists in a modern world where meaning has been stripped, and things (even intimate relationships) are throwaway commodities. However, the song does convey the very real feelings of a person experiencing this.

The second song is kind of a darker version of this. It's the song, "Somebody That I Used To Know," by Gotye. Full disclosure: I hate this song. It doesn't help that it's been played to death over this last decade, and you can't go anywhere without hearing it. Consequently, it doesn't need explaining. Everyone will have heard it. Just for the record though, it's about someone completely cutting someone off after a break up. I think it's probably been such a huge hit because so many people have had this exact experience in today's world. Again, where even people you were intimate with are discardable.

I think this song's so much darker though as it's kind of resigned to this modern materialistic worldview. There's no sense that the love once meant something, and that it still means something, if only in memory. It's complete obliteration. The annihilation of all attachment between the two people. Of course, the person writing the song wouldn't be writing it if it didn't mean anything, and I'm sure people will say, "Yes, that's the idea." The singer is saying, "You're just somebody that I used to know," but obviously that isn't truly the case. Still, the sense of resignation and coldness is pervasive. Even the music feels cold. (Perhaps I'm being really unfair here, lol. Maybe it just isn't my cup of tea musically.)

Whereas Somebody Else, even though it also speaks of a love "gone cold," still captures and expresses some care and emotion. It even mentions the word soul.

"You're intertwining your soul with somebody else."

With Somebody That I Used To Know the soul feels absent and unbelieved-in. It really speaks of a generation of people that are longing for meaning, in a world where they've been told everything is simply random and accidental.