Support real music, avoid mistakes

Throwaway pop songs like "Diva" will make our kids cringe.

By Lindsay Eanet

Published May 4, 2009

In all my years of consuming and appreciating pop music -- fancying myself as a mini-female version of Rob Gordon -- I have realized a number of things. But I want to focus specifically on an epiphany I had lately, listening to a certain increasingly popular single.

The realization is this: A bad pop song is like a one-night stand. It seems an innocuous, even great idea after you've been dancing and drinking heavily, but you wake up sober, revisit it as your head pounds and suddenly you realize you made a horrible, horrible mistake that you will regret for the rest of my relationship.

The song that forced this realization was a little ditty by Beyonce Knowles, aka Foxxy Cleopatra, aka Sasha Fierce. The song is called "Diva" and, though it might sound good while hammered at Tonic, it is completely devoid of any musical merit whatsoever. It has neither the charm and catchiness of "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)," nor the showcase of Beyonce's incredible vocal range as in "If I Were A Boy." No, this song falls flat all around with a half-hearted beat, monotone vocals and Knowles' repeated mantra, "A diva is a female version of a hustla, of a of a hustla."

The phrase itself is a bit nonsensical, a madlib of hip-hop buzzwords thrown together to make a hook. But what does it all even mean? And if what Beyonce says is true, is there a way to prove this? If we are given the postulate that line segment Beyonce is congruent to line segment Diva, can we prove by the transitive property that a diva is, in fact, a female version of a hustla?

The whole thing got me thinking about what sort of cultural legacy the artists of this generation will leave. Will our children and grandchildren know the genius of innovators like Radiohead or Animal Collective or Talib Kweli or will they be left with tracks like "Diva," cringing as we switch to the "classic pop and R&B" station while driving them to soccer practice? Will we be able to defend ourselves when they ask us how we managed to listen to this crap when we were young?

Some generations get lucky. Our grandparents got jazz and brilliant songwriters like George Gershwin. With the '60s and '70s came rock at perhaps its peak and the advent of punk, courtesy of The Clash and Iggy Pop.

It's the thought of ending up like the 1980s that concerns me. While there's plenty of quality jams from the era (Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper), the '80s tends to lend itself more to MC Hammer and one-hit wonders like "Tainted Love." But the larger legacy of '80s pop music, even the good stuff like The Smiths, reeks of self-indulgence and excess, still seen in the remains of the artists today. In the '80s, Public Enemy were a revolutionary, earth-shattering hip-hop group. In 2009, most fans' collective knowledge of Public Enemy likely stops at Flavor Flav and his reality TV antics. With Flav, the legacy loses its meaning.

But more and more artists -- the good ones -- are beginning to find new ways to ensure their legacy for future generations. The Flaming Lips sealed theirs when "Do You Realize??" became Oklahoma's official state rock song last week. But they couldn't have done it without the support of their fans, who voted in droves. So let this be a reminder that even as times are tough, support the artists that show off the best qualities of our generation, be they hip-hop, R&B, rock or Norwegian black metal, so our kids don't end up having the same unanswered questions about the relationship between "diva" and "a female version of a hustla."