May
15th
Fri
15th
Witnessing Bob Dylan’s participation in Pepsi’s cloying, Super Bowl-launched ad campaign (”every generation refreshes the world”) alongside Will was like finding a beloved elderly family member working as a carnival geek. Beneath a soundtrack of a remixed “Forever Young” a sixties-era Dylan passes the baton (in the form of a pair of wayfarer sunglasses) off to Will. If this was a true representation of the state of popular music, the g-forces induced by such a sudden drop in iconic quality would cause the culture to pass out. Don’t panic–it isn’t. The raw material of humanity hasn’t been left out overnight to spoil, and there are as many talented young people as ever, in and out of hip hop. Just don’t tell Mr. Dylan. Like his early eighties “conversion” to evangelical Christianity, the less said of this embarrassing interlude the better. Let’s give the president a pass too. Let him think that Puff Daddy and The Black Eyed Peas are relevant, that Wanda Sykes is funny. There are too many meaningful delusions of which he will have to be disabused, by argument and circumstance, over the next four years, to worry about the trivial.
