I realized I don't even know why I still have this post up so I decided to delete it. It's like 3 1/2 years old and...I'm not really sure why I was so critical of Emmy the Great in the first place? I think it's really easy to criticize a musician or other pop culture figure for stuff that you do yourself and I think every quote of hers that I thought was pretentious was something my friends or I would say.
Also, about a year after I first made it Emmy the Great contacted me to tell me her thoughts about religion and she was much nicer than I deserved given how needlessly critical of her my post was.
This is a song of hers that I think is wonderful (one of many):
The original thrust of this post was that "Easter Parade" by Emmy the Great is inferior to "Failure" by Laura Marling as a song about not being religious. The first song (IIRC) is just about someone watching her family celebrate Easter and thinking that they're wrong and I felt that the song had no point aside from just expressing a controversial thought. The second song is a more complex, playful exploration of someone losing her faith.
I still feel the same way about the two songs but I'm not sure why I wrote such a screed or felt so aggressive toward the first song, maybe I was more insecure about being Christian than I am now. Anyway I'm sorry. I don't know anything more about Laura Marling or Emmy the Great than anyone else who can read the Internet; I don't know anything about Laura Marling as a person; and all I know about Emmy the Great is that she's an unusually open and forgiving person.
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Hi, this is about me. I'd like to reply. Do you have an email?
ReplyDeleteps mine is emmythegreat at gmail.com
ReplyDelete^emmy the great youre awesome and i love you.
ReplyDeletethis nigga is straight trippin!!!!
keep making good music
hope to see you play someday in the states
This has to be the worst thing I've ever read. Like the internet needed another bleedin' whinefest where the insecure subjects the world to their jealousy of those more talented and attractive.
ReplyDeletePraising Laura Marling while condemning Emmy The Great is like loving Coldplay but hating Radiohead. Both have good lyrics, but Emmy's have viciousness and humour that Marling lacks, and every Marling song has the same tempo and bland delivery as the one before it. Closet racism and preference for the safe are why she's more popular.
Coldplay doesn't have great lyrics but okay. AND Emmy the Great and Laura Marling don't sound similar except for both being girls and being categorized as folk. They have really different voices, write songs differently, and play guitar differently.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Emmy the Great contacted me about this post about a year ago and she was super sweet, which definitely made me regret slagging on her for being a "hipster" especially because it's probably hard when you're being interviewed about stuff like your favorite TV show to not sound like a hipster. Having listened to her more I love a lot of her songs but I still don't think Easter Parade has good lyrics. It's easy to write an indie song saying you are anti-Christianity and have people like it and I don't think she really takes the song further than that basic statement.
"all I can get out of it is that Emmy the Great isn't Christian and doesn't believe in an afterlife. That's it--no spin, just a statement of opinion. We don't get any impression of how she came to believe this, who she's saying it to, or how she feels about what she believes. We live in a boring world if people think this is deep."
ReplyDeleteWhy on earth would you listen to the lyrics in a song and assume that the lyrics are the sum total of the writer's thoughts on the subject? Bizarre!
"even though I mostly think you are a tiresome hipster"
Are christians supposed to avoid being judgemental?
I didn't care what her personal thoughts on the subject were but I didn't think it was good songwriting.
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