• Fascist Music
FASCISTMUSIC.com

FASCIST MUSIC

Capital Cities - "Safe and Sound"

11/8/2017

0 Comments

 
Generic corporate electrohipster band Capital Cities scored a minor hit in 2013 with "Safe and Sound." What do you really know about Capital Cities or "Safe and Sound?" I have an uncanny feeling that the apparent men representing themselves as Capital Cities are holograms, and the song is not so much music as a marketing pitch hatched from a fascist corporate overlord.

Rudimentary research indicates that Capital Cities is presented as a duo: one clean-faced guy with a high-and-tight haircut (popular among the youth) and one James Harden-looking guy. Are we to believe that these two ciphers played all the instruments? Where is everybody else? The video provides clues: These two keep blipping and bleeping into different personae, bodies, and even eras of time. It takes tremendous effort to believe that they are not holograms.

The song itself is perfectly designed to be in a car commercial or a dystopian loudspeaker. Everything is safe, sound, and taken care of. The lyrics are perfectly generic: "I could be your luck / In a tidal wave of mystery you'll still be standing next to me." Musically, it's genre-free. While catchy, it's sexless, so it doesn't fit as pop. EDM? The Capital Cities boys seem to be pushing dance in their video, but I don't buy it. And it has no pathos, or even emotion, so rock doesn't work. It's sales music. And wouldn't you know it, State Farm used the song in a commercial just this year. 

If you don't buy my explanation, let me ask you this: Why would human beings make this music? Don't get me wrong, I think the song is great and have probably listened to it 100 times. But it expresses nothing, in the eel-slickest, most amorphous style imaginable. Isn't music supposed to be a form of expression? What motivated High-and-Tight and James Harden to link up in Los Angeles, give themselves an aggressively fascist band name, sign to Capitol Records (really), and release corporate pitch music? There is no reasonable explanation, because that's not what happened. What happened was, a massive global conglomerate with offices in all the capital cities -- let's call it Capital Cities Corp., or CCC -- needed a "safety song" to reassure people when they buy bags o' glass or explosive tinderboxes on wheels. CCC input parameters into its music-simulating application to yield "Safe and Sound." Then, it generated two holograms to serve as the ostensible band, which data dictated should be a basic white guy and a hilarious wild card. "Safe and Sound" was released as a single, not for the sake of the holograms' careers (duh) or even to be promoted into a big hit, but rather for the song to become vaguely familiar prior to being used in commercials a few years later. Now, the commercials are here, and the true purpose of "Safe and Sound" is realized: To sell us plebs on our doom.
0 Comments

USA Freedom Kids

4/3/2017

0 Comments

 
This demented January 2016 performance by USA Freedom Kids was an immediate legend of fascist music. The fascist nature of this performance is total, from concept (let's get some little girls to extol Dear Leader) to presentation (American flag costumes!) to setting (some batshit rally in Pensacola) to lyrics ("Enemies of freedom / Face the music / Come on boys, take 'em down!") to music (blippy and hellish) to the mere existence of this band (Florida Svengali devises scheme for his daughter to perform and gain him $$). It should be obvious that this video occupies rare air even among its fascist brethren.

The best (worst?) part of this whole thing is that the object of their jingoistic praise is now the not-unfascist President of the United States. Perfect. I only regret that I have but one post to give USA Freedom Kids.
0 Comments

Train / Maroon 5

4/11/2015

0 Comments

 
Remarkably similar paths to fascism here. Both hit it moderately big around the turn of the century with a traditional pop/rock sound (Train accented theirs with country, Maroon 5 with funk) that was on its way to being played out. They re-upped on the formula on well-crafted sophomore efforts (Train's "Drops of Jupiter" and Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder" era) and earned respectable, but weaker, returns. They were still within the pop firmament, but you knew where it was going: a few more albums loved only by die-hards, a rapid fade from the charts, break-up, and oblivion. Hello, Third Eye Blind.

Except that these guys were wise to what was happening and made the same fateful decision: better fascism than irrelevance. They completely retooled to mimic the early-2010s fad sound of tinny electronic dance-pop, and they ended up with hits: Train had "Drive By" and "50 Ways to Say Goodbye," and Maroon 5 scored with "Payphone," "Daylight," and "Maps." Good for them. They got what they wanted: millions of downloads. They also got what they deserved: cultural irrelevance as canned McPop Stars, and endless resentment from fans of real music for releasing such shit into the world. I enjoy a good dance song as much as anyone, but these jabronis don't come from that world. They're rockers who sold out, and I guarantee they hate their music as much as everyone else. The denial of self in favor of exploitation of others for money and power is craven, effective, and classically fascist.
0 Comments

OneRepublic

5/1/2014

0 Comments

 
For OneRepublic, start with the name. "One Republic" is the antithesis of a libertarian, devolved democracy, a.k.a., fascism by definition. Fear of a single world government has mostly been the provenance of raving Tea Party truthers, but it's hard to deny the logic: If fascism is an inevitable product of concentration of power, then concentration of all power can (and eventually will) spawn the most forboding fascism of all. Plus, these assholes omit the space between their words, making their band name look like a 31st-century dystopian brand name.

Picture
OneRepublic furthers their fascistic case with music that can be best described as "aggressively mainstream." It's 90s alternative rock songs with an EDM-lite beat akin to jackbooted thugs kicking at your eardrums.  This kind of music is so mainstream that it's barely even made anymore, as most other artists tend to make token acknowledgments of the concept of originality. Not OneRepublic. They're the robot clones of contemporary pop/rock.
0 Comments

    What is fascist music?

    In Dave Marsh's 1979 review of Queen's Jazz, he wrote, "Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band." No other word so neatly expresses supremacy of the powerful and devaluation of the individual.

    Music expresses desires. When artists are young and poor, it is credible that they could have yawning chasms of desires that are not being fulfilled. As they age, particularly if they are successful, they are increasingly performing from a position of wealth and power. So to hear them demand love, money, respect, or fame is dissonant. These guys won. At the pinnacle of their power, they are still greedy for more, boxing out desperate young strivers in the process. That's fascism.

    I rather enjoy fascist music. It'll be the soundtrack to our lives when the machines take over, so we might as well develop an appreciation now.

    Archives

    August 2022
    March 2022
    May 2020
    November 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2016
    November 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014

    Categories

    All
    1970s
    1980s
    1990s
    2000s
    2010s
    Actual Fascism
    Bloat
    Check The Name
    Classic Rock
    Cruel Misappropriation
    Facelessness
    Images
    Misery
    Pop
    Rap
    Rock
    Seizure Of Power
    Selling Out
    Session Musicians
    The Ever Tightening Noose
    The Music Sucks
    Tragedy

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.