Börsenblatt, Berlin Elections and the Billboard

Today I woke up a little in advance of when I had to be ready to go to the bookshop, and since then have arrived agreeably early, received a package of promotional bookmarks from someone pedalling by on his bicycle, leafed through the Börsenblatt (the weekly — I think — publication of the German booksellers' guild), and seen one pair of people enter the shop to look around. The weather is variable and chilly, owing to the west wind. The news hasn't been too compelling, though since a slow day is generally good news for everyone it's not a complaint; and later I will undoubtedly look at more slideshows from New York Fashion Week.

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In three days the Berlin city elections will be held and though I have a vague idea of voting for the Linke party in at least one category, I am completely uninformed. On no solid grounds I'm assuming that the Green Party on this level is not particularly alluring, because of petty, snooping, egotistic self-righteousness and for instance the mentality that cyclists are a morally superior lot who deserve to have shelters for their vehicles in case of rain, etc. Most of the charm is being able to vote for a really lefty party that is better on some issues — like civil rights — than any other, in a context where I don't look nuts and communist for doing so. Besides, as long as I don't vote for the FDP everything is fine (which is pretty much the electoral motto in my family and its immediate connections). Speaking of which, also on no solid grounds, I think that the Newer, Younger, Shinier Wave in the FDP — on the federal level, so it must be admitted that it's irrelevant to the city elections — makes even Guido Westerwelle look like a noble character and well-rounded statesman.

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Last night I tried to foray into the world of popular contemporary music again. Two of the main realizations were that (evidently having a heart of stone) I still don't understand the profound significance of Tupac Shakur or why he is treated as a martyr (though being shot full of five bullets as he was in 1994, if I recall the relevant Wikipedia elucidations correctly, must have been an unpleasant experience), and that to be honest I liked "Baby" as sung by Justin Bieber. Not because it is a great song and not because the singing by Ludacris wasn't far more interesting than the rest of it, but because one can hear clear and apparently unadulterated singing at length instead of the customary manipulated mix of nothing in particular (*cough* to use a self-conscious example, Black-Eyed Peas "Imma be" *cough*). Kelly Clarkson has a similar likeable simplicity, which is also why I was glad when she won American Idol years ago.

In spur of the moment judgments, Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" sounds far better than her "Born This Way," admirable though the message of the latter is; the song by Taylor Swift which I heard was pretty immature, twee stuff. Then I found out that one of the songs fellow students used to play during my studying in Vancouver was apparently "Yeah!" by Usher. Besides I listened to Dolly Parton; to be honest, I like her so much that she could sing terribly and I wouldn't criticize it, and in any case there was no danger of it. Unrelatedly, hearing Susan Boyle was also a possibility, but the same kind of horror with which my uncle Pu regards classical music competitions, I apply to competitions where the best of the crop are people like Paul Potts — whose "Nessun dorma" I did hear and found, though earnestly sung, not very profound and completely out of touch with the operatic tradition — and where the fuss surrounding them is more important than the music itself. (Though, to go on a further tangent, such distracting fuss is also offered up in the most prestigious continental opera houses, when the stage direction goes out on the town and produces what is pejoratively termed "Euro trash opera" in the States.)

Lastly I heard Adele, who is offered up as the grand contemporary exemplar of good singing and profundity; that is probably true, but I don't approve of adopting a singing tradition which has direct roots in slavery and segregation and a sense of homelessness when it expresses nothing more profound than middle-class pensiveness or romantic woes. Amy Winehouse sang in the same tradition, but she gave it an individual, sharp edge (to be honest, I find her singing hard to listen to at length because of this edge) which made it halfway her own. With Adele it is still the excellent imitation of something that older people who were born into the generation can, and do, do better. (I haven't heard Duffy, so couldn't compare her style.) At any rate "Rolling in the Deep" is a good song, and an improvement on "Chasing Pavements," though since I listened to a mixture of live performances and recordings it is hard to tell whether unreliable sound quality, etc., biased the impression.

One obstacle to this entire foraying procedure is that I am really bad at catching lyrics, so there could have been something Shakespearean in the way of songwriting and I would have missed it. What I wonder, too, is how much listening to opera singing once in a while qualifies me to understand which songs are full of thought, effort and inspiration, and ably sung, and which ones aren't. It was much easier figuring out which songs are generally well liked when I was still at school, though that was a totalitarian music appreciation environment and if people preferred edgier or older music than Ricky Martin or Britney Spears they had to keep it well hidden for fear of Being Strange.