After Kanye West released his new single “Only One” featuring Sir Paul McCartney yesterday, some of the rapper’s fans took to Twitter to publically admit they had never heard of the legendary Beatles rocker until this week.
Needless to say, the Internet exploded with hilariously appropriate reactions to the general stupidity of society. We can only hope some of the “Who Is Paul McCartney?” tweets are jokes. If they aren’t, it’s safe to say we are all doomed.
No, society is not doomed because people don’t know who Paul McCartney is. God, people my age, can we not be as fucking tiresome in our musical dotage as our Boomer predecessors? Can we not do this? Can we not act like anybody who doesn’t worship old-as-fuck music is somehow a terrible person?
Especially if we are going to be jerks about Ke$ha and Miley. I mean, the person who wrote this sort of thing and everybody who’s enthusiastically posting it everywhere are the same people who will ask in a crooked-pinkie-finger voice, “What’s a Lady Gaga?” like her name tastes bad, who will be perversely proud of not knowing who anybody on Top 40 today is. Who will bitch about the American Music Awards and think the last good songwriter died 50 years ago, because that gives them some kind of cred. As if you should be proud to be ignorant, and as if curiosity and the capacity for enjoyment of the new has some kind of acceptable expiration date.
(I am biased, in this, somewhat because my warmest feelings about the Beatles in general and McCartney specifically are apathy and exhaustion. I don’t care about Kanye’s music at all either, but I think if we directed a fraction of the hate we send his way at Dick Cheney, we would be better off as human beings and Americans. Also, my favorite thing on the radio is the 1940s station, and WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T KNOW WHO THE ANDREWS SISTERS ARE? God, Philistines.)
And you know, musical literacy is a good thing, the same way knowing major authors is a good thing, or having read books that have contributed to change in the world.
But mocking someone for their lack of knowledge when that lack of knowledge is generally just due to THEY HAVEN’T BEEN ON THIS EARTH LONG ENOUGH TO KNOW WHO EVERYBODY IS OR LISTEN TO EVERYTHING YET is not, shall we say, a good way to teach that literacy. You don’t expose someone to something by humiliating them for not knowing it already. You expose them to it by exposing them to it.
Paul McCartney, no doubt, did a song with Kanye West not only to bring Kanye West to his audience but to bring himself to Kanye’s, so by that measure, these Tweets show remarkable success. “I didn’t know this dude, and he sounds awesome” is something every older musician would probably like to hear said about himself by teenagers.
The carping is just jerking off, a way to show how morally superior you, person who already knows who Paul McCartney is, are to everyone who doesn’t. Which, you are comparing yourself favorably to people in terms of the musicians whose existence you are aware of.
That is the stellar achievement you are celebrating by writing this piece and posting it everywhere. Way to set the bar high.
A.