An Open Letter to Musicians Who Write Songs About Corporate Life, Money, and Wealth.
Dear Musicians:
Please stop pretending to understand economics, real jobs, or what a cubicle is like.
Allow me to explain: I’m a musician too. I completely understand where you are coming from. Your socialist views, your bohemian Taoist life choices, your vegan diets. Being an artist full time requires a weird dedication to your craft that sets you apart from other musical hobbyists. Sometimes you have an idea at 3:00 in the morning, and you simply must wake up and record it. Sometimes you practice a new chord you “invented” until your fingers bleed, just because you don’t have callouses in those exact fingering positions. Sometimes you are forced to turn down a teenaged groupie because your only groupies are teenaged, and you realize they are only into you because you rent a bachelor apartment and own a leather jacket that you claim to wear ironically due to your veganism. Then you write a song for the teenaged groupie anyway, which you perform to her on your would-be-ironic second hand chesterfield which you retrieved in your buddy’s truck from Value Village, or possibly the Salvation Army Goodwill store. You work at night, and you can’t get up early because of it. Can’t even make it out to busk at lunch, can you?
The issue I have is that you seem to think we are all wage-slave, soul selling, alcoholic, pill popping, depression medicated door to door salesmen who would rape a teenaged groupie to make a sale (how would that help meet sales quotas?). Your further presumption that we are intentionally and gleefully destroying the planet, drinking oil and stabbing homeless people to death for kicks is trying one, at best.
This may shock you: We have jobs to pay our mortgages and raise our families, and eat food. We sometimes don’t enjoy our jobs, but it is not because we are dark, soulless automatons. Rather, we sometimes don’t enjoy our jobs because we have lovely incandescent souls, just like you, you goddamn hippie, and working in an office can be a touch oppressive. Quite often, we aren’t cutting each other’s throats to get ahead, or stabbing each other in the backs. The cavalier, cutthroat, backstabbing, merciless environment you are imagining is actually found almost exclusively on pirate ships. There are very few jobs in piracy, and most day to day folks wouldn’t be too keen on the ethical concerns. In fact, I’ve left jobs over far less significant ethical concerns than manslaughter, but I was always worried about the mortgage when I did it.
Instead of hurting people, the earth, or teenage groupies who just don’t know any better than to fall for the first douche with an acoustic guitar, we quite often, and more simply, want to eat our lunch in the lunchroom, and get home to whoever is important, and listen to some tunes about heartbreak or nothing-in-particular without you criticizing us.
Like I said, I’m a musician, and I’ll admit to commenting on corporate life (albeit in the context of a musical, in which this was sung by a character), but what I tried to do is make work sound like reality- Like maybe my job wasn’t what defined me, and instead it was a way to support the people I care about. In fact, here is a link to my myspace page, and the lyrics in question. This is from the second verse of “Always Be Together”:
http://www.myspace.com/robmitchelson
Pencil pushing job,
caffeinated slob
on a hamster wheel.
It’s a money thing
corporate suffering
you know how I feel
God only knows how the hell I will get through
When all that I want in this world is to see you.
There. Pencil pushing job is not a criticism of the human working, simply of the banality of the work. Even musicians understand being a caffeinated slob, and don’t tell me you can afford fair trade coffee anyway. Hamster wheel? Yeah, it feels purposeless to fill out spreadsheet after spreadsheet sometimes, but you’ll note I haven’t commented on my antidepressant intake, or secret bondage fetish in these lyrics, since neither are demonstrable with evidence. It’s a money thing? YES IT IS. I need money to pay for my blog. Admin_Rock and TBinns need money to feed their adorable offspring. Newsflash, musicians, other creative folks sometimes work for money too. Some days it sucks monster balls to be at work, but this doesn’t mean that I have abandoned all morality to do it. In fact, the only way I can afford to “shop local” at the farmer’s market is because I am making some extra money. My discretionary income allows me to purchase energy efficient lightbulbs, and insulate my house better.
Anyway, the next time you are mooching a cigarette or a beer off of your friend who is an IT guy, try not to shit all over him when he is concerned about what a huge hit his RSPs took. He was saving that money for the people he loves.
Sincerely,
RobbieRobTown
