HEY THERE, JUDGY GIRL

by Andy Nowicki

“Georgy Girl,” a 1967 hit from Australia’s legendary folk act The Seekers, is generally thought of as an innocuous little number, complete with delicately pretty harmonies and even a cute little “whistling solo.” 

Truth be told, however, a toxic heart lurks beneath all the seeming sweetness and light.

The subject of the song is a young woman named Georgy, who seems quite satisfied with her life. Indeed, the demeanor she displays is spirited, even “fancy-free.”  However, the “judgy” female narrator of “Georgy Girl” thinks she knows Georgy better, and suspects that all is not well behind the girl’s happy-seeming exterior.

"MY ANGEL IS A CENTERFOLD!!"

by Andy Nowicki

“Centerfold,” a Billboard number-one 1983 hit by J. Geils Band, is a unique pop anthem in which the speaker mourns the marring of a girl’s purity and the obliteration of her innocence. It is the only “radio song” in recent history—of which I am aware, at least—in which such thematic ground is covered. This is surprising, given the undeniable ubiquity of the circumstance of wrecked virtue in our wretched and degraded age.

Why are there not more songs like “Centerfold”? 

Perhaps it is believed to be insufferably old-fashioned to bemoan such a turn of events. Perhaps, that is, having the gall to  express sadness over a virgin transforming into a whore is now inevitably construed as a deplorable instance of retrograde “slut shaming,” and is thus avoided by all non-J. Geils-affiliated recording artists.

“BABY, YOU’RE NO FIREWORK”: POP MUSIC AND THE ALIENATED SOUL

This essay is included in Andy Nowicki’s Ruminations of a Low Status Male, Volume 1. The release of Volume 2 is imminent…

by Andy Nowicki

In the echoing cadences of popular music, the alienated soul finds both the temporary buzz of entrancement and the all-too-familiar drone of his own spiraling hollowness. Hungering and thirsting for a sense of connection, for the comforting if illusory sensation that he is in fact, not alone, he instead most often detects sure affirmation of his utter isolation. Yet the hope always remains as insistent as the hooks of the songs which at first inexplicably captivate and compel his jaded heart. He may just be a thoroughgoing hopeless romantic beneath it all, but that doesn’t stop him from perpetually detecting the bullshit of romance.

BRUTALIZING THE BETA: TAL BACHMAN'S "SHE'S SO HIGH"

This essay will be included in Low Status Male, an upcoming collection of both old and new writings by Andy Nowicki.

by Andy Nowicki

It has often been remarked that the real losers of the sexual revolution are the so-called “beta males.” After all, prior to the time when the marital covenant became so thoroughly denigrated and devalued as it is now, “betas” actually wielded a kind of clout.

Back when young women were still encouraged by the culture to marry decent men, instead of being pushed to pursue Eat Pray Love-esque escapades with sexy strangers, the better to “find themselves” and so earn their ticket of supposed feminine “authenticity,” it actually paid for guys to be good, solid providers with sweet natures and decent temperaments.

RECONSIDERING SUICIDE

This mook says not to kill yourself...

by Andy Nowicki

Reflecting on Dominique Venner’s recent suicide has caused me to consider the entire subject of self-slaughter anew. There are many different angles from which one might analyze and comment upon the matter of dying by one’s own hand—and I have weighed many of them before—but one which has gone largely unremarked is the concept of suicide as a pop-cultural phenomenon. At the risk of sounding insufferably po-mo, what is needed is a “meta”-analysis of the practice of quietus-making and bodkin-baring.

To begin a discussion of the macro, one starts with the micro, working one’s way outward, from the mysterious fibers of one’s own soul into the complex interweavings of the collective soul of the culture at large. As a nihilistic, agnostic, chronically morose Gen-X teenager marooned in the mid-80s, consumed with all-too-typical alienation and tiresomely frequent spasms of unsightly anomie from the onset of puberty’s bitter bloom and forever afterward, I can vividly recall the suicide hysteria that broke out in America just as I found myself stumbling, mumbling, and lumbering through adolescence.

PRE-FEMINIST FEMINISM: "JOHNNY GET ANGRY"

by Andy Nowicki

Back in 1962, when the Rat Pack still held Beatlemania in check and JFK’s pristine, thus-far unpunctured pre-Dealy Plaza skull still held stately sway over his precious presidential brains, comely girl crooner Joanie Sommers released a whimsical little track called “Johnny Get Angry.”

The song, composed by Hal David and Sherman Edwards, presents us with that perennially vexing relationship dilemma: what’s a young woman to do when her strapping beau refuses to get even a little possessive?

"SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL'S DYING!"

by Andy Nowicki

Love can die. Sometimes it dies hard, and with a vengeance. What happens to it afterwards? Does it proceed to its final judgment, then pass on to some eternal realm, be it Heaven or Hell? Or does it limp along in some pallid, spectral form like Caesar's ghost, oppressively ever-present even when it has seemingly vanished?

What of cases where love's collapse is expressly and tragically unilateral, expressly violating the consent of the formerly-loved? As Rick Springfield semi-famously observed, "Love hurts when only one's in love." Or as the J. Geils Band more succinctly put it, "Love stinks."

EVIL WOMAN

He would die for you.

by Andy Nowicki

When I composed my previous two analyses of the import of pop-song lyrics as expressions of Zeitgeist angst and/or establishment agitprop, my wife—who can be brutally frank when she wants to be—expressed a dubious attitude, not about my arguments, either with regard to REO Speedwagon’s repressed cuckold rage or Billy Joel’s grating condescension towards self-immolation-prone teens, but about my overall lack of topical relevance in devoting attention to either Speedwagon or Joel. Who, after all, knows about these songs in 2017, much less listens to them?

"I'LL BE THERE": THE WHITE KNIGHT ANTHEM ANALYZED

"If he ever hurts you, true love won't desert you!"

by Andy Nowicki

A while ago, I wrote about the species of pop song, known as the "Zowie, You're Awesome in the Sack!" number, in which a (male) lover's sexual prowess is remarked upon and celebrated with ardent, ingratiating, slightly unbecoming and overly-affected reverence by a sensually-wailing waif. 

In that article, I summarized the ways in which this type of tune--while seemingly male-praising--can in fact be doubly toxic to the cause of masculinity, as it simultaneously boosts certain less desirable elements of contemporary feminism ("Go ahead... Betray your loyal husband and fornicate with the sexy bad boy....You go, girl!") while also having the baleful effect of keeping men in a state of undignified sexual subjugation ("Zowie, she thinks I'm awesome in the sack! My sated hunger to be on the receiving end of flattery regarding my ostensible sexual prowess has now rendered me helpless to manipulation, by gosh!”) 

PODCAST 40: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF DAVID BOWIE

Novelist Ann Sterzinger joins Andy and Colin to commemorate the life of David Bowie. Topics under discussion include his music, acting, proto-trolling activites, and relevance for the Alt-Right, as well as why his death has had such a big impact decades after his most creative period.

ALTERNATIVE (WHITE)

Someone doesn't quite fit into Nazi Barbie's gang.

by Ryan Andrews

Unlike people, culture is never entirely black or white, but it does move around a lot between these theoretical poles. As the Obama administration has progressed (by happy coincidence), the aesthetic of youth pop culture has increasingly turned towards the “black.” Judging by the recent lifespan of these swings, we may be at “Peak Black;” but this is not an exact science. I do however think—and I base this opinion on historical precedent and what I think is commonsense—that these things go in cycles. Eventually, one or several of the various reactions against the “black aesthetic” will develop into a mass phenomenon—an alternative pop cultural aesthetic will emerge, and my hope is that the Alternative Right will play some role in creating it (as opposed to merely latching on to it).

WHEN JOHN MET MARK

Another kind of double fantasy.

by Andy Nowicki

Their brush with one another was the paradigmatic encounter between the Celebrity and the Nobody, the "have" and the "have-not" of the postmodern age, an era which hypocritically blasts endless PSAs about "equality," "democracy," and "self-esteem" while implicitly deriding non-celebrities as losers, wastes of space, and living beings unworthy of life.

The meeting outside of Manhattan's tony Dakota building between John Winston Ono Lennon and Mark David Chapman would result in the former's murder and the latter's lifelong incarceration. It would provoke numerous public expressions of grief from hundreds of thousands of people who felt their lives were somehow affected by the death of a man they'd never met.

"THEY CAN'T TAKE AWAY MY DIGNITY"

The greatest love of all...

by Andy Nowicki

After several painful years of committing what may be called slow-motion suicide, pop singer Whitney Houston has perished at the age of 48, another wretchedly pitiful casualty of celebrity self-induced crapulence. Her burial earlier this month was accompanied by the same sort of flamboyant pomp and colorful fanfare that attended the funeral of Michael Jackson three years ago, and many of the usual suspects were on hand to exploit the tragedy of an early death for the purposes of egregious self-promotion. (Whenever someone Black and famous dies, that tubby walrus-like buffoon Al “Tawana Told the Truth” Sharpton seems to take it as his cue to stick his mug into every TV camera in sight and pontificate in his inimitably greasy way about America’s innumerable social ills, until you wish some renegade reporter would have the decency to smack him over the head with his microphone and yell, “Prophesy to us, O ebony Savior… Who hath struck you?”)

I am not immune to the pathos surrounding Ms. Houston’s demise, and I will pray for her eternal soul. The truth is, though, that her music was crap.