Music Banter

This is about a musician. A pop musician, albeit a rather strange one His name is John O, and he looks like a pipe-cleaner model of Billy Corgan caught fooling around in Grace Jones’ make-up cabinet. He’s also written the best pop song you’ll hear all year.

I’ve had this man’s song ‘Wait and See’ in my head for days. My immediate reaction to hearing it is to click ‘play’ again. Now it’s your turn. This is brilliant, slightly old-school alt-pop which recalls all kinds of old songs, but which manages to transcend its influences, rather than be weighed down by them. Musically, this song’s got a lot of the Smashing Pumpkins’ ’1979′ in its DNA, and John O even cheekily puts in a line about hanging out ‘with the freaks and ghouls.’ Somehow, he can get away with it.

This song is just amazing. It really is. this man’s music and his lyrics are so good, so direct, they just utterly blow me away. Seriously, check this out:

‘falling into something different/how should I know/whether I should
trust my instincts/ further than I can throw?’

In other words, his life’s confusing as hell, he doesn’t know what he feels, and he’s wise enough to know that he doesn’t have a clue about what’s coming next. Now that is so wonderfully observed, catching the dilemma of adolescence and the sense that you’re catapaulting into a future where you may well be an entirely different person before you even know it, and that all sorts of things which are really important to you are going to be lost along the way. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone, but he knows he will. This song is a warning to a lover, telling them to get away from him whilst they can, to carry on with their life; ‘for your heart’s sake/don’t you wait around for me to decide what I want to grow up to be/I’ll just let you down.’ It’s so tortured, twisted and human that I just want to hug him and thank him for reminding me that everyone feels like this.

Plus it’s got an absolutely kick-ass video, so ridiculous that it’s deeply deeply cool. John O strides out of his house past some Pumpkins (LOOK, I GET IT, OK! JEEZ! YOU LIKE THE SMASHING PUMPKINS!) wearing a halloween mask, and then strides through a Leafy Canadian suburb with a bunch of goths behind him, doing a wonky, awkward dance that reminds me of the kind of thing my sister and her friends used to make up when they were seven. The best thing about this is that it’s delivered stoney-faced, as if they’re doing Swan Lake at the Sydney Opera House. I particularly like the hostile expressions on the faces of the two on the right. Of course, as it goes on, you see them start to smirk. It’s awkward, strange, clumsy and utterly brilliant. In other words, he’s captured exactly what it feels like to be an adolescent.

I don’t really rate most of the other songs on his Myspace, and I don’t know if he’ll develop into anything, but I really don’t care. I’m in love with this one song. It’s the best piece of pop I’ve heard in a very long time, and pop is about crystallised, perfect moments that life forever. Diamond Rings, for this one moment in time, I salute you.