Starostin as of late as become a smug moralizing puritan, parroting all the "woke" talking points like there's no tomorrow. What a bore. He used to be a clever guy with a great sense of humour.
I'd love to read his current point of view on Aftermath and Some Girls, to see if he dares to trash his beloved Rolling Stones the same way he does with Dion and Tom Jones.
You obviously have a pretty wide-reaching definition of "smug moralizing puritans", kind sir. And if I'm trashing anything by Dion or Tom Jones, it's for the exact same reasons I'd trash it twenty years ago when the word "woke" didn't even exist in its modern sense.
Aren't puritans and woke people two different groups? In my understanding puritans are those who can't shut up about traditional values and how the modern youth is corrupted throug sex-ed. Meanwhile the wokes get offended if someone doesn't appreciate sex work as much as any other work or goes to such lengths to prove that they aren't transphobic that even claim that "Walk on the Wild Side" is "problematic".
I think the definitions are fluid. The puritans of yesteryear are not necessarily the same as the puritans of today. Likewise, the "wokes" of today are certainly not the same "wokes" as there were, e.g., during The Great Awakening in the 1730s.
Using the word "fluid" automatically labels you among the "wokes of today", as there's a slippery slope from accepting that definitions are fluid to admitting the same about genders :)
Well, if today's world finds itself split in half between "wokes" and "Platonists", I'd rather be in the former category than the latter. My linguistic upbringing - and experience - does teach me, though, that word meanings change over time. As do musical tastes, for that matter. Whether genders do the same, I'm not entirely sure.
"It does feel hilarious — and quite a bit hypocritical — to have ‘Runaround Sue’, condemning the proverbial slut, and ‘The Wanderer’, praising the proverbial man-whore, on the same record". I felt the same way for years until I took a more "meta" approach and distinguished the singer from the character. Yes, both songs were written by the same guys and sung by the same voice, but I realized he's playing two contradictory characters, both trafficking in same business of fast loving and living, from two different perspectuves.
That said, on the surface, the Wanderer is a jerk but nowhere near as gleefully indifferent to his lover's abandonment as Glen Campbell's Gentle on My Mind. That hobo's a world class a**hole.
As far the Runaround dude, I never really caught the begrudging admiration you seem to pick up on in his tale of woe. Kind of reminds me of McCartney's admiration of the brash wannabe starlet in Drive My Car. Stay away from that girl...she's a boss bitch!
The Wanderer is a jerk from older, simpler times. The sadistic jerk thing, with mentally torturing his women when dumping them, probably starts with Dylan (and Gentle on My Mind owes a lot to songs like Don't Think Twice or, actually, Mama You've Been On My Mind).
But yes, of course it's all character play. Ironically, Dion himself is one of the most stable celebrities out there - happily married to the same lady for over 60 years.
Starostin as of late as become a smug moralizing puritan, parroting all the "woke" talking points like there's no tomorrow. What a bore. He used to be a clever guy with a great sense of humour.
I'd love to read his current point of view on Aftermath and Some Girls, to see if he dares to trash his beloved Rolling Stones the same way he does with Dion and Tom Jones.
You obviously have a pretty wide-reaching definition of "smug moralizing puritans", kind sir. And if I'm trashing anything by Dion or Tom Jones, it's for the exact same reasons I'd trash it twenty years ago when the word "woke" didn't even exist in its modern sense.
Aren't puritans and woke people two different groups? In my understanding puritans are those who can't shut up about traditional values and how the modern youth is corrupted throug sex-ed. Meanwhile the wokes get offended if someone doesn't appreciate sex work as much as any other work or goes to such lengths to prove that they aren't transphobic that even claim that "Walk on the Wild Side" is "problematic".
I think the definitions are fluid. The puritans of yesteryear are not necessarily the same as the puritans of today. Likewise, the "wokes" of today are certainly not the same "wokes" as there were, e.g., during The Great Awakening in the 1730s.
Using the word "fluid" automatically labels you among the "wokes of today", as there's a slippery slope from accepting that definitions are fluid to admitting the same about genders :)
Well, if today's world finds itself split in half between "wokes" and "Platonists", I'd rather be in the former category than the latter. My linguistic upbringing - and experience - does teach me, though, that word meanings change over time. As do musical tastes, for that matter. Whether genders do the same, I'm not entirely sure.
"It does feel hilarious — and quite a bit hypocritical — to have ‘Runaround Sue’, condemning the proverbial slut, and ‘The Wanderer’, praising the proverbial man-whore, on the same record". I felt the same way for years until I took a more "meta" approach and distinguished the singer from the character. Yes, both songs were written by the same guys and sung by the same voice, but I realized he's playing two contradictory characters, both trafficking in same business of fast loving and living, from two different perspectuves.
That said, on the surface, the Wanderer is a jerk but nowhere near as gleefully indifferent to his lover's abandonment as Glen Campbell's Gentle on My Mind. That hobo's a world class a**hole.
As far the Runaround dude, I never really caught the begrudging admiration you seem to pick up on in his tale of woe. Kind of reminds me of McCartney's admiration of the brash wannabe starlet in Drive My Car. Stay away from that girl...she's a boss bitch!
The Wanderer is a jerk from older, simpler times. The sadistic jerk thing, with mentally torturing his women when dumping them, probably starts with Dylan (and Gentle on My Mind owes a lot to songs like Don't Think Twice or, actually, Mama You've Been On My Mind).
But yes, of course it's all character play. Ironically, Dion himself is one of the most stable celebrities out there - happily married to the same lady for over 60 years.