How is it {that a} catchy melody, strong groove or infectious hook could make you wish to dance to even the darkest and most nihilistic ideas? Prince’s ‘1999’ is an actual banger that simply occurs to be set getting ready to nuclear armageddon. “Everybody has a bomb / We may all die any day,” he sings. However, he nonetheless dances his life away with the assistance of some funky guitar licks.
Trendy English’s “I Soften With You” is likely one of the best-known new wave hits of the ’80s, a lot in order that it as soon as appeared in a Burger King industrial. Nonetheless, in keeping with singer Robbie Grey, the track is definitely a couple of couple having intercourse in the midst of a nuclear conflict.
Do you discover a sample? Unsurprisingly, the ’80s have been filled with songs influenced by nuclear concern.
Any such nihilism might comprise echoes of a eager for a world and an existence that truly means one thing, for a universe that isn’t grand and arbitrary.
Nihilistic impulses are nothing new in pop music, to not point out extra as well as genres corresponding to gothic, industrial and the assorted offshoots of heavy metallic. Who can neglect Robert Smith wailing, “It does not matter if all of us die” within the opening moments of The Remedy’s Pornography or Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode whispering ‘Loss of life is all over the place’ Black celebration? However I spotted this once more by way of two latest singles that exist at reverse ends of the musical spectrum.
Someday in late 2023, Instagram’s algorithms selected to flood my feed with excerpts from Juliet Ivy’s “We’re All Consuming Every Different.” Launched at Ivy’s playpen EP, it might be probably the most joyful ode to nihilism I’ve ever heard.
The track is undeniably catchy due to its dreamy textures and Ivy’s breathy vocals, however it’s additionally laced with sentiments like “We validate our fantasies to really feel like we’re particular inside” and “We do not know the right way to settle for that we to be particular’. only a product of alternative.” After which there’s the refrain, which Ivy sings with pure pleasure and wild abandon:
However we’re all going to die
Dissolve into daffodils and dandelions
The bees use our flowers for no matter they need
Make the honey that our grandchildren will put of their morning tea
It’s the enterprise of life
A lot of Ivy’s lyrics are towards the Christian view. But her track is just not with out some reality. When she sings, “We paint our faces with mind / fake we’re not curious,” she underlines our fashionable tendency to rationalize the wild world round us to make it safer and extra manageable. And whereas the Christian should unequivocally reject Ivy’s declare that we’re all simply merchandise of random likelihood, who’re “much less like gods and extra like vegetation / who cannot cease arising with the explanation why we reside,” she touches on a delicate string: additionally. Specifically, our determined wrestle to seek out some semblance of that means in our lives, an impulse that usually leads us to seek out solace in intercourse, relationships, cash, careers and materials possessions – all good issues, however hardly able to any to offer an actual sense of that means. that means or goal. (It isn’t with out cause that Qohelet tells us in Ecclesiastes that God “has put eternity within the coronary heart of man.”)
As for the track’s refrain—which will get catchier the extra I hear it—I discover it humbling as soon as I break by way of the nihilism. Whether or not this was Ivy’s intention or not, her flowery (no pun meant) lyrics remind us that I don’t reside a singular, atomistic, autonomous existence. I’m not disconnected from the world, however relatively topic to its cycles, to entropy and decay, as are all my fellow creatures – no less than on this aspect of eternity. In the future I’ll die and my physique will decompose. And whereas I could not turn into the honey for my grandchildren’s morning tea, I hope I might be linked to them lengthy after I am gone.
Whereas Juliet Ivy experiences a way of liberation and even euphoria in embracing the meaninglessness of life, Beth Gibbons takes a extra somber perspective. Gibbons is greatest often called the lead singer of Portishead, one of many main lights of the ’90s trip-hop scene due to their haunting mix of hip-hop, jazz, digital music and cinematic soundscapes. And naturally by Gibbon’s personal world-weary voice, which continually sounds as whether it is on the snapping point and may imbue any textual content with an ocean of emotion with little greater than a whisper.
Portishead has launched simply three studio albums previously thirty years, all masterpieces, however Gibbons is about to launch her first correct solo album: Lives outgrown, later this 12 months. (2002 Out of season was really a collaboration with Rustin Man, aka Paul Webb of Discuss Discuss.) A decade within the making, Lives outgrown options ten songs impressed by Gibbons’ experiences with rising older, motherhood, menopause and saying goodbye to pals and family members who’ve handed away.
These experiences manifest within the album’s pastoral lead single, “Floating on a Second,” wherein Gibbons realizes and finally embraces the fragility of existence. She sings about “being a passenger on no unusual journey” and “touring on a journey the place the dwelling / They’ve by no means been.” As for the track’s refrain, it isn’t practically as exuberant as “We’re All Consuming Every Different,” however it nonetheless expresses an analogous imaginative and prescient:
I float additional for a second
I do not know the way lengthy
No person is aware of
Nobody can keep
All of it goes to nowhere
All the pieces goes, make no mistake
Because the track fades away, Gibbons leaves the listener with one ultimate thought that’s half lament and half acceptance: “It isn’t that I do not wish to return… It is only a reminder that every one we’ve got is right here and now. “
Like Ivy’s track, Gibbons’ “Floating on a Second” will be uncomfortable for the Christian. In any case, her assertion that ‘all we’ve got is right here and now’ appears to contradict any perception in everlasting life. However that interpretation could also be too simplistic. As soon as once more, Gibbons’ track appears to convey a reality, albeit a partial one.
As a result of we consider in heaven, Christians are sometimes confronted with the temptation to belittle this world: as the nice Larry Norman famously stated in 1972 Solely visiting this planet, “This world ain’t my dwelling / I will simply get by way of it.” However should you do, you danger rejecting the valuable earthly existence that God gave us as a part of his good creation, an existence wherein – due to our everlasting nature – each second counts.
These phrases, usually attributed to Nineteenth-century Quaker missionary Stephen Grellet, have been at the back of my thoughts as I listened to Gibbons’ single: “I will solely cross this world as soon as.” No matter good I can do or any kindness I can present to any man, let me do it now. Let me not delay or neglect it, for I’ll go this manner no extra.”
There may be nothing nihilistic in these phrases, however relatively a warning to acknowledge the significance of our lives on this world and act accordingly. Not as a result of this world is all there’s to us, however fairly the alternative – and it’s towards that backdrop of eternity that our lives finally have any that means or significance.
Maybe as a result of I am virtually fifty myself, Gibbons’ somber track resonates with me on a a lot deeper stage than Ivy’s upbeat pop. I really feel my very own physique (and metabolism) slowing down; I really feel extra ache and listen to extra cracking and popping than final 12 months, even round this time. And my spouse and I are acutely conscious that we’re getting into the stage of life the place we see time catching up with our dad and mom and their era. The dissonance of Ivy’s track, however, due to its seamless mix of nihilistic absurdism and irrepressibly upbeat tone, can solely be sustained—and solely sounds applicable—should you nonetheless have your entire life, with all its goals and potentialities. , for you.
Nihilistic impulses in music, whether or not from Prince and Trendy English or Juliet Ivy and Beth Gibbons, do not upset or scare me. Nor do they symbolize harmful challenges to my religion. I discover them relatively useful and even enlightening. And I dare say: inspiring. And never simply because the songs themselves are nice. Any such nihilism might comprise echoes of a eager for a world and an existence that truly means one thing, for a universe that isn’t grand and arbitrary. And that’s precisely the sort of existence – and universe – we’ve got been given.
