While William Safire’s on vacation, his fill-in, researcher Aaron Britt, is bringing some rock ‘n fucking roll to the NY Times Magazine‘s “On Language” column:
Aside from its many cooing, snarling and pleading invitations to the boudoir, pop music has promised nothing more often than the optimistically vague: “Everything’s gonna be alright.” Alright, that state of grace offered far more frequently than the elevating pledge to take us higher, the base desire to get lower or the blithe promise to ferry us away to paradise, is a strange one. Why does alright sound just, well, all right?According to Wendalyn Nichols, editor of Copy Editor newsletter: “all right is still a two-word locution. We do have a higher tolerance for creative spellings in creative spheres, although ‘The Kids Are alright”‘ ? a 1965 hit for the Who ? “gave everyone permission to spell it wrong.”
Next week: the controversial etymology of “Hey Ya”!
Oh wait, he did that too:
Here is perhaps the most emphatic and focused use of the term in all of pop music. Andre 3000 demands his audience’s attention by repeating the word 14 times in the song’s breakdown. His rapid-fire staccato is a far cry from John Lennon’s plangent repetition that closes the Beatles’ “Revolution” (the B side of “Hey Jude”), but 35 years on and in a different genre altogether, alright is all right.
Someone please take away this dude’s iPod.
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whatever, it’s totally nerdy but i loved the “alright” column. an ipod is much better in aaron britt’s hands than in the hands of some of those hipster celbrities who put their ipods on shuffle to reveal their guilty pleasures to some online magazine or blog. you know what’s not interesting? eugene mirman’s opinion of jethro tull (not to pick on eugene mirman – my opinion of jethro tull isn’t that interesting either). of course, i’m speaking as someone with a crush on the editor of verbatim.
I loved that. Uber-nerdiness. Yes.
Music fetish + language fetish = AWESOME.
I agree with J! What we don’t have enough of anymore is serious scrutiny of pop music. I’m not talking Sasha Frere-Jones getting it hilarious wrong, Outside Scoop-style, once a month in the New Yorker, but a serious examination of pop and culture.
It’s interesting, too, that the leap is made between the recrafted (maximum) r & b of the Who and the nuevo insanity modern r & b of Outkast. It’s incredibly interesting to see those two very disparate bands paralleled.
And, like Nathan says, it’s better than riffs on Jethro Tull.
Yeah, it was a fun read, but did anyone else notice that his intro was a rip-off of Built to Spill?
Yeah it was actually a good read
http://www.musictimes.com.au
so…
is it alright? or all right?
coming clean
hi, its aaron britt, author of the alright on language column. good call on my intro echoing built to spill. i thought the band was too obscure to to reference, considering that many on language readers dont know taylor hicks from taylor hanson (not too different acutally!). but i love that built to spill song and wanted to include it somehow. quite perceptive souhaite, i wish you well.
ab
coming clean
hi, its aaron britt, author of the alright on language column. good call on my intro echoing built to spill. i thought the band was too obscure to to reference, considering that many on language readers dont know taylor hicks from taylor hanson (not too different acutally!). but i love that built to spill song and wanted to include it somehow. quite perceptive souhaite, i wish you well.
ab