The Message This Decade Is Trying to Send Us

What’s Missing From Our World and Age, and Where it Comes From

Image Credit: Pixabay

I’ve been thinking a lot. About what I want to talk about in 2023. What I think I want to…hold on. This is going to be hard to put into words, so let me begin with a story.

I was in the studio last week. The week before, one of my favorite singers in the world, who I’m privileged to work with, had laid down down some jaw-dropping vocals on a song of mine. The engineer and I looked at each other as she sang, and our mouths literally hit the floor. Sublime. So back I want, to mix the song, with help from the same engineer.

Now, this is where things get tricky. As a music producer, it’s hard to find a singer who…gets you. You can find singers who’ll hit the notes perfectly, and yet…it’s all wrong. The feeling’s missing. The intonation’s wrong, the expression isn’t there, the…emotion’s not there. I’d given this song to another singer — it’s disco, the great love of my life apart from my wife, dog, and of course you, my friends — and she’d sent back vocals that made my disco groove…somehow…sound…like a fisherman’s shanty. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but imagine a shanty over a disco beat and you can imagine the chuckles that ensued when I played…this…for people.

So there I was. Studio. Killer vocals. I’d laid down guitars, basslines, drums, the whole nine yards. It’s disco, right? Congas, bongos, soaring strings, pew-pews. And this engineer just wasn’t getting it. Everytime I’d say, hey, let’s make itslam, he’d…do the opposite. I’d say, let’s make those congas bounce, let’s make those wah-wah guitars cut, let’s make the bassline drive…he’d…grimace…and frown…and scratch his head…and do the opposite. After a while, I gave up. I let him do his thing. He didn’t deliver a bad mix. It just wasn’t…full of the right feeling.

I wondered. Why was this? What had gone wrong, exactly? Like I said, this is where things get tricky. You have to, as musicians say, “vibe” with the people you work with. That means something like: get each other on an emotional level. What are we trying to do with this…piece of art? Song, film, book? What is it’s point? The point of my music, like all disco, is really, really simple. Big, Goopy, Intense Love. Pure Love. True Love. The real thing. I mean…that’s what it was literally about. It’s why the dancefloor was invented, but I’ll come back to that, and I don’t just mean “getting it on.”

So. This guy. We didn’t get each other. And I realized why. He’s what me and the kid sis and the wife refer to as a sad guy. You know the type. Just…morose. For the usual reasons. They can’t get the girl. It’s usually a girl, because being a sad guy of this kind is more a straight thing than a gay one. And being unable to get the girl, well, a whole lot of them fall down the rabbit hole of misogyny, which goes through the wastelands of inceldom, and ends up at full on fascism. I’m not saying this guy was like that — he wasn’t. At all. He was a nice dude. I like him. But he didn’t understand the mission. Which was to make people feel that moment. Big Love. When it hits you, makes your heart go electric, turns your heart to thunder, sets your body on fire.

That moment. It’s what my music is all about. It’s what all disco is about. That feeling hits you…and you can’t resist it. You have to get up off your ass and dance. Not because you want to seduce the next person, though hats off if you do, you get your thing on, but because the feeling has hit you and you need to share it, be part of it, express it, enact it.

Big love.

Now, this is going to make absolutely no sense to some people. That’s OK. I think I know the kind of person: they’ve read too many books, and haven’t spent enough time on dance floors. They think about the world analytically, instead of experiencing it emotionally. Perfectly alright, though I’d say there’s a balance to be struck there, and if you haven’t experienced the feeling I’m talking about…then you’re missing out.