Prompt: "A song where the meaning is frequently misunderstood"
Selected by Nate
"Detective Lieutenant"
Drug Church
Hygiene, 2022
I propose a moratorium on "meaning." A core problem of modern life is that it is too easy to know too much about each other, and that problem extends into pop music, into an ecosystem in which every lyric is printed and annotated, where reputable publications run features of artists "explaining" their albums and influences and ignoring that meaning and intention end at the goddamn water's edge and once it gets beamed into the guts of my phone, the only real "meaning" is the one that I make. I am Judge Holden when it comes to interpreting art, and so are you. No more goddamn scavenger hunts to determine which pop song is about which pop star's ex.
This song is not particularly misunderstood, but I do think it might put a batter in Joe's back. If I had to pick a song that I suspect he hates, it'd be this one. He'll tell me, either in blog post or email. I'll read either way.
This song is not particularly misunderstood, but I do think it might put a batter in Joe's back. If I had to pick a song that I suspect he hates, it'd be this one. He'll tell me, either in blog post or email. I'll read either way.
8 comments:
Nate's referring to an email exchange we had about this song in May 2022, after he referenced it in his Jack Harlow review, specifically the part where Jack Harlow features DaBaby. Here are the relevant parts of the exchange:
JOE: Hate the Drug Church song, hate what it's trying to say. Calling it a "cover up" is the tell. "Cover up" would imply a collective decision. This is nothing but a million individual people making a million individual decisions. If it were a cover up, the DaBaby wouldn't even be on the goddamn song. I personally make the decision to never consciously seek out or listen to the dude's rapping, because publicly espousing harmful homophobic bullshit is crossing my own personal line. I'll get upset that the vast majority of the listening public does not seem to believe it crossed the line far enough that they won't listen to him anymore, but I'll be upset at the reality of the situation, that this is the case. I'm not going to be mad at the individual. To feel how Drug Church feels is a cop out. If the dude from Drug Church really did murder two people, I'd probably go out of my way to not listen to Drug Church! And if other people could listen to Drug Church in that hypothetical and forget about the murder, that's their prerogative. It would definitely affect how I hear the music though. Affect it enough that it would encourage me to not listen to the music. Why would I want to listen to a murderer? And to imply that my decision is based on a "cover up" is fucking insane. To each their own. Cancel culture is a myth.
NATE: After all that, you end up in the same place that the Drug Church song does, "cancel culture is a myth."
I don't disagree with anything you've said, and I think the conversation is more nuanced than the "separate the art for the artist" party line that folks would throw out to avoid the moral struggle of supporting distasteful or criminal people. I might accuse of you too specific a reading of the phrase "cover up," but this is an email and who cares. It's all part of the equation into how someone spends their time. I don't think I've heard the case against avoiding art made by problematic people laid out in song as effectively as Drug Church does, and I do wonder what the net good of not listening to, say, Cheap Girls is. I used to take a harder line with this stuff, but I'm softening. Make America Great Again, etc etc.
JOE: The more I argue about this, the more I'm going to start sound like a hard-line moral Puritan or something, so to summarize:
Drug Church seems to be saying that you shouldn't let anyone take away the art that you love. I'm saying that it's impossible to love something when the artist crosses a particular asshole line. Drug Church is saying that I'm the problem. I'm saying that the artist who chooses to be this way is the problem.
The Drug Church album seems pretty good otherwise, and in some alternate universe we were grappling with these thoughts in a review for the Drug Church album you picked for Record Club. As it stands: fuck Jack Harlow forever.
I stand by this two years later and fully recovered from COVID. The main issue I take with this song's message is that it's trying to tell me that I shouldn't separate art from artist. I've been pretty clear that this is a personal choice, and that I wouldn't try to convince anyone to act any other way. If someone wants to listen to Ryan Adams, then so be it. I don't agree, but I'm not going to waste my breath trying to convince that person otherwise. But the rub is that if I'm granting other people space regarding this then I expect the same granted for me. And Drug Church is instead trying to tell me that if I don't listen to Kanye then I'm part of a "cover-up." Which is fucking bullshit.
For the record: this is (probably ironically) separate from how I feel about Drug Church's music, which is very good, and I wish it didn't have to be said that "band engaging in discussion about what cancel culture means" is very far from the line that would trigger that so-called "cancellation" from me.
This is my gift to Nate, who enjoys when he riles me up.
A few years later, I now think this song is about a guy who is both a detective, and also a lieutenant.
You're telling me that they're keeping DRUGS in a CHURCH?!
I would maybe argue that you taking the lyrics to the song as them telling you what to do is perhaps too confrontational (? Thats not the right word but whatever). I could read this as simply Drug Church talking about how they feel about things, maybe even them working through the idea themselves.
Assuming that part of the overarching joke here in this blog post is that this is supposed to be a song that is misinterpreted and Nate set me up so that I would come to the comments and continue to misinterpret it...
I still say that the lyrics "But I'm not part of that cover-up" are the tell. What else could they possibly mean but to say that I am part of the cover-up by choosing which art to disengage with based on the artist? "No one elected you to judge" is another lyric. I think Drug Church and I and also you would agree one the fact that this is all a personal choice and that no one can tell anyone else what to do or how to think in this regard ("There's only one side of the street you're responsible for / And it's yours"). But it sure seems like other parts of the song are mad at me for making the decision that I made, and THAT'S the part that gets me angry, the hypocrisy.
I could be just seeing what I want to see, though.
And then consider the fact that I've spilled so many words on this song and the possibility that this means it's a great song because of that.
Post a Comment