There's a chain around your mind
--Sheryl Crow
the first line of "Out of Our Heads"
Here's the link to the video. Embedding has been disabled for the video in all formats, so feel free to open the video in another window for maximum reading pleasure.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WMBnUuiLR7U
And minimal listening pleasure. A song so bad it can almost make you decide you're in favor of the war. It has to be heard to truly be believed. The music is harmless enough. The verse is four chords on acoustic guitar set to a beat that's vaguely funky in a mid-90's white person kind of way (think Eagle Eye Cherry or Dave Matthews). The chorus then shifts into a more straightforward singalong a la "Give Peace a Chance"--which this song clearly wants to be--only with a more insistent beat. And the production at every turn is as clean and polished as some asshole's SUV sitting in line at the Chick-Fil-A drive thru at Beechwood when Athens is still in a drought.
Lyrics? Fuck yeah there's lyrics. When you're writing a protest song, one might say that the most important part of the song is its lyrics. Given a myriad of choices, Sheryl Crow goes for the easiest and most time-tested way of getting her message across: Trouble in the verse. Hope in the chorus. So let's start with what's wrong in the world, according to Sheryl Crow.
Oh, and be sure to keep it vague as possible. So nobody gets hurt.
Losing babies to genocide / Oh where's the meaning in that plight / Can't you see that we've really bought into / Every word they proclaimed and every lie, oh
You know the problem in this world today? Too many people supporting genocide. And not just genocide of adults, but something even worse--baby genocide. I'll answer your question, Sheryl Crow. There is NO meaning in that plight.
Interseting to note that Sheryl uses more pronouns without telling us what they're substitutes for than a gay person at bible camp telling us about their 'partner'. And just who is the 'we' that bought into the words 'they' proclaimed? Sheryl and her band? Sheryl and all Americans? Or did she just decide that using 'you' was too preachy, too finger-pointy, and would make it seem like she was blaming people for buying into a war started under false pretenses? See, Sheryl, I can use rhetorical questions too!
Thing is, if you believe people really did buy into every word and every lie, then, um, they kind of are to blame. And I think including yourself in that group by saying 'we,' so you won't hurt their feelings, kind of sugarcoats it. Especially when you didn't buy into every word and every lie. That's called disingenuous. It's also called manipulative. It's also called thinking the people you're talking to aren't as smart as you are. Which is fine if you think that, but you might as well come out and say it.
I'm going to cherry-pick the lyrics, but only in the interests of time & space because believe me they are all bad in the same vague, pseudo-poetical, pseudo-loving way. Sheryl Crow has put out a song that makes "We Are the World" feel like Public Enemy. In fact, let's cleanse our palette with a little PE right fucking now.
Public Enemy - Son of a Bush
Man, that felt good. So good it can almost make me forgive "Flavor of Love". It certainly gets its point across more clearly than this next verse from "Out of our Heads".
Through the dawn of darkness blindly / You have blood upon your hands / All the world will treat you kindly / But only the heart can understand, oh understand
As they like to say on the internet, WTF? Okay, last verse.
Every man is his own prophet / Oh every prophet just a man / I say all the women stand up, say yes to themselves / Teach your children best you can / Let every man bow to the best in himself / We're not killing any more / We're the wisest ones, everybody listen / 'Cause you can't fight this feeling any more, oh anymore
The problem with a song this vague, aside from the fact that it can't make up its mind between advocating either: 1) self-reliance at the expense of group thought or 2) putting the needs of the world ahead of one's own desires, is that people believing they were the wisest and that every man is his own prophet is a huge part of what got us into this mess in the first place. And any sensible analysis of our current fuckups has to take into account that the people who got us there really thought they were doing something good. Even if their logic was faulty, they still had noble intentions. This idea is important, because the chorus to this song, the part that Ms. Crow wants to get stuck in our heads, the section that every other part of this song is preparing us for, her great message, goes like this.
If we could only get out of our heads / Out of our heads /And into our hearts
So the problem is. . . we think too much? That we should just follow our hearts? Trust our gut instincts? This is the answer?
Aside from the cheap shot that I didn't realize being too much in our heads was the cause of baby genocide, isn't someone following their gut instincts in place of all tangible evidence, believing in their hearts instead of logic, kind of what got us into this problem in the first place?
The video is every bit as unfocused and clusterfucked as the song it represents. It features Sheryl and her band 'performing' the song on a stage. Set in black & white, there's no audience in the hall but plenty of smiles on the band's faces. Interspersed with the performance footage are clips of protests through the years, all of them protests in America of course, and people throughout history flashing the peace sign.
These peace flashers range from historical figures like Bobby Kennedy and Boris Yeltsin to Kobe Bryant and Fergie. Every Beatle is represented except George Harrison. The list features one war criminal--former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who in addition to unnecessarily prolonging the Vietnam War for an additional six years (and his own political gain), also illegally bombed Vietnam's neighbor Cambodia, creating two million refugees which in turn helped lead to the rise of the Khmer Rouge, who once in power genocided nearly three million people, including lots of (gulp) babies. And the list also features a president so crooked he was convicted of several felonies and would have gone to prison had he not been pardoned. No, not George W. Bush--though he's in the video flashing the peace sign as well. We're talking about Richard Nixon.
See! the video wants us to say, everyone believes in peace! Even the people who start the wars in the first place!
Let's end with the list of all the peace flashers I was able to recognize in the video. The punctuation's random because I had to type fast.
jimmy carter
bobby kennedy
fergie
Michael moore
Donald trump
slash
allen ginsberg
harry truman
jimi Hendrix
wyclef
cindy Sherman
paul McCartney
ringo starr
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of iran
yassir Arafat
george w. bush
patti smith
bono
jerry Garcia
al sharpton
martin sheen
jerry Garcia
john & yoko
carlos santna
boris yeltsin
elvis
stevie wonder
Richard Nixon
Winston Churchill
Henry Kissenger
Vladimir putin
kobe Bryant
jane fonda
And do you know what all these people have in common?
Not a single peace flasher had webbed fingers.
Let's hear it for evolution!
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