I had a high-minded friend in school who claimed that the irrefutable proof of pop music’s inferiority to other, more palatable forms of art was its thematic limits. In other, less breathy-sounding words, a pop song can only be about so many things, which makes it, and the form itself, utterly useless.

             I spent two months listening to this miserable bastard (pony tail + only listens to classical + obsessed with Noam Chomsky = miserable bastard) huff about every song I ever played, hummed, or talked about. “It’s all so BORING,” he would mutter contemptuously. We all heard the argument endless times, to the point where we could probably recite it listlessly while watching television. And the argument always went something like this:

Classical music, like literature, can have so many themes. It can be about hope, redemption, seasons changing, the fall of Communism, anything. Pop songs, at least the ones that you worship as being the foundation of what we’re subjected to today, can only really be about the following things:

“One, I love a girl and she does not love me. Two, I love a girl and, surprisingly, she does love me. Three, I love a girl and she has stopped loving me. Four, let’s dance.”

             Now, for obvious reasons, this is all tripe, tripe that grad students and lit majors whimper to themselves while the real world is out living life and getting bruised. But I have to wonder what my old friend MB would’ve said about “It’s Not,” by Aimee Mann. It explores a theme I’m not sure many artists are chomping at the bit to tackle. And the theme goes something like this:

I am rapidly approaching middle age, and I hate the fact that I am still scared to make any positive choices in my life. I am perpetually stuck in this weird sort of bear trap that keeps me from moving forward. You may want me to change, but I assure you I will not.

             Try humming that.

             No one plays wounded quite as brilliantly as Aimee Mann. “It’s Not” is the last song from Lost in Space, a beautiful bunch of miserable songs that, as the title implies, are about isolation, loneliness, and uncertainty. Not since The Queen is Dead has there ever been a more depressing album that sounds so flighty, so sincere, that you’re forced to wonder if the singer is having a laugh at your expense. How else could you explain the gorgeous hook of “It’s Not,” lightly sighed by our Narrator as she breathlessly runs down a laundry list of failures, both big and small? Inertia has never sounded so inviting.

             Put this song on a mixtape right now. Make sure it’s the last song, because that’s the only way it will really sink in, and trust me on that, because I know. By my count, “It’s Not” has been heard by every single damn friend or acquaintance who were lucky enough to get a (mostly unwanted) compilation CD from me. In short, it should play at the end credits of every movie ever made, even if the movie ends happily, ESPECIALLY if the movie ends happily, because there should be a law against stories that tie up all their ends in a neat bow. Life’s messy, and every one of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves mouthing out the same damn question to ourselves: what the hell am I still doing here?

Things You Should Take Note Of:

[00:42] Mann takes her first pass at that river of a title hook;  The string section immediately follows suit, as if startled by how GOOD this all sounds.

[01:42] And here comes the rhythm section. As a side note, it’s become a real pet peeve of mine when perfectly lovely songs are ruined by lousy, “hip” production tricks, such as weird sonar blips right when the song is getting good or some weird off-rhythm drum flourish that throws the whole song into weird, cowboy territory. Can I just give my eternal gratitude to the producer and the rhythm section for just knowing when to come in, and how to do it? A nice little drum fill, and we’re off. That’s all we need, okay?

[01:43] Those are harp strings being plucked. Harp strings being plucked. You will never be that classy.