“America”

Bree Sharp had her fifteen minutes when she wrote a song called “David Duchovny” at the height of The X-Files popularity in 1999.  The album, A Cheap and Evil Girl, was pretty good.  Good enough that I have five songs from it on my itunes, anyway.

“America” is one of those songs.  It is not patriotic.  Or I guess that it is very patriotic in the sense that Sharp is exercising her First Amendment rights to critique American consumerism and our obsession with all that is shallow.  The girl in the song claims that she “sold my privacy so that I would always be pretty.”  It’s all about how television has lulled everyone into a sense of complacency, “pay no more attention to the things that you stand for. . .just to make sure that you don’t get lost, here’s the media.”  In 1999, the Internet had not yet become the cultural behemoth that sucks everyone’s free time up like a vacuum cleaner.  Sharp is clearly a child of the VCR age, but that’s okay.  Because, sadly, the message of her song has not become irrelevant.  In fact, between TV and the Internet, between smart phones and video billboards, we’ve become even more attached to electronic media.  More people get their information from Internet news sites, and they can tailor their browsing to include only information they agree with.  It’s helped to increase the divisiveness of politics and decrease the amount of objective reporting.  There’s also been a sharp rise in “reality” television, making people like the Kardashians famous (that may be the wrong spelling; I don’t care).  The sheer amount of electronic crud being shoveled out every day is overwhelming.

Maybe listening to Bree Sharp’s “America” will only add to the overload.  Or maybe it’ll make you think twice before you turn on a screen.  Maybe you might open a book instead.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/america/id375191613?i=375191659&uo=4