THEY SOLEMNLY COVENE TO MAKE THE SCENE [485]

I have only recently become aware of “Loungecore” as a term, because the musical genres of “lounge music” and “easy listening” already exist. “Loungecore” is used interchangeably with “easy listening”, but lounge music predates it, lasting through the 1950s and 60s, with easy listening following into the 1970s.

The suffix “-core”, banding together items with a similar aesthetic, appears here to band together common elements between genres as pop culture history elongates and flattens out, rather than grouping emerging connections before a name suggests itself.

However, I first encountered “Loungecore” in the late 1990s, as the title of a compilation CD of instrumental music by Mexican composer Juan García Esquivel. His style influenced the adjacent genres of “Space Age” and “exotica”, emphasising the music’s intention of taking you to a tranquil place – his piece “Mini Skirt” was being used as the theme tune for the BBC documentary series “Louis Theroux’s Weird Weekends” at the time, just as Andy Williams’ “Music to Watch Girls By” was advertising the Fiat Punto supermini. 

Esquivel’s lounge music had interesting arrangements and choices of instruments, more intricate rhythms, and the recordings made full use of the then-new stereo technology. The combined effect, along with various vocalised exclamations of “zoom” and “wow!”, reminded me of Spike Jones and His City Slickers. 

Therefore, my reaction to this music was to sit up and listen, not lie back – it was so unlike pop music, it made itself curious and interesting in was unintended when it first appeared, and fitting with the combination of “lounge” and “hardcore” for I took the CD compilation’s title to mean.

I am not clear why there was a revival of lounge music and easy listening in the 1990s – it may have been general nostalgia and critical re-evaluation of the previous generation, which will have been planted in the 1960s, accompanied by replays of TV series like “Thunderbirds”, “The Avengers” and the original “Doctor Who” series. I am guessing that the success of the compilation album “Carpenters Gold” when released in 2000 was a result of nostalgia sliding along to the 1970s, and into easy listening, and endless plays of the Starland Vocal Band’s languid song “Afternoon Delight”.

Even the use of the words “easy” and “lounge” symbolise my difficulty with listening to these genres as intended. The lush instrumentation inherent in a song from bandleaders like Esquivel, Ray Conniff, Mantovani or James Last only leads me to pay attention to why it sounds the way it does. Like the programming inherent in Muzak and the “beautiful music” radio format that ran in the United States from the 1950s to the 80s, there are reasons behind the music sounding the way it does, or being arranged it does, and it is usually to be appropriated for a specific use, or to deliberately sound “easier” to listen. This is either because I need music to stimulate me, or I find it hard to relax.

The most prominent example of lounge music appearing in the UK charts, as far as I remember, was a result of the deliberately ironic use of the style. The Mike Flowers Pops, an existing covers band in an easy listening style, was engaged to cover the Oasis song “Wonderwall” for Kevin Greening, a BBC Radio 1 DJ whose weekend breakfast show was recounting songs released during. After it was replayed by weekday breakfast presenter Chris Evans as his “record” of the week, demand prompted an official release. The outcome was hilarious: Flowers had as big as hit with “Wonderwall” as Oasis had, with both versions reaching number 2 in the UK singles chart, and both receiving “silver” status for selling over 200,000 copies. The Mike Flowers Pops had two further top 40 hits, with covers recorded under their own steam, before the novelty caused by the irony died down.

IT’S THE GOOD ADVICE THAT YOU JUST DIDN’T TAKE [484]

January 1987

Perception changes everything, so long as you move first. To that end, I propose that Sod’s Law be abolished in 2025, as far as I can manage.

To illustrate, on the one day last week that I needed to start work earlier, my bus didn’t appear, making me late. This was because the bus company decided to start the bus I was expecting, which was in the wrong place, at a later point on its route, so it would still reach its destination on time. I don’t like being made late for anything, and seeing the map on the bus company’s app that tracks the location of each bus played everything out in real time.

This is a perfect example of Murphy’s Law, as coined in 1948-49 by Edward Murphy Jr, an American engineer on experimental aircraft: “If there are two or more ways to do something and one of those results in a catastrophe, then someone will do it that way.” The further consequences of the decision also apply under Murphy’s Law: the bus I did catch had to pick up all the people that were also missed, slowing the bus down, while standing passengers made physically entering and leaving the bus more difficult, slowing things further. Seemingly more people also paid for their journey using cash over using their phone to hop on and off, and so on and so on.

The Oxford Dictionary may describe Sod’s Law as being the British name for Murphy’s Law - and there is no titular "sod" to speak of - but rather than my bus journey going wrong because anything can go wrong, the way it was exacerbated matches my understanding of Sod’s Law - if it goes wrong, it will happen at the worst possible time, and in the worst possible way.

As much as both Sod’s Law and Murphy’s Law can be delineated as laws of both probability and of expectation bias, I realised my perception was also being stretched by experience. After taking the same route hundreds of times, encountering all possible variations of that journey, I simply give myself the right amount of time to make that journey so I don’t have to expect, anticipate or consider anything at all - I will simply get to work on time, every time, and early enough to mean that I didn’t need to adjust my plans to start work earlier.

And yet, as my journey spiralled, I started bargaining with myself that, at least if nothing further happened, then at least I stood a chance of avoiding arriving late for work. I admitted defeat when I could see there was no way of avoiding the inevitable, and once I finally arrived at work, tired and sweating from the adrenaline of walking the last section of my journey as fast as I could, I turned on my computer and started work… three minutes late.

This is why I want to “abolish” Sod’s Law, at least for myself: not wanting to be late is one thing, and being unable to avoid that can still happen, but passively accommodating the possibility of the worst possible outcome turned out to be the same as fearing it. If something can go wrong, it will, but you can’t then hold yourself at fault for failing to adequately prepare - that creates a situation with no possible end point.

Adopting Murphy’s Law couldn’t come at a better time - in a couple of weeks’ time, the bus drivers will be on strike.

WITH THE SOUND ON THE GROUND [483]

Gatekeepers don’t remove gates until the opportunity for profit arises from selling off the gate.

The decision by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, announced on Tuesday 7th January, to remove much of the rules and moderation policies regarding content on Facebook, Instagram and Threads, speaks both of an attempt to see off anticipated regulatory problems with an incoming US presidency that scorns any perceived impediment on “free speech”, and of a decision to save the cost of running the old system by letting end users police themselves through a “community notes” system, already used at Twitter/X for similar reasons.

Social media is a digital simulacrum of a town square that creates a Speaker’s Corner for each entrant, the unspoken price of admission being the intentional harvesting of the data created from any utterance or exchange for profit. I concluded this after having gone through Meta’s settings on both Facebook and Instagram to deny their ability to do anything with data created from my having used their services, or with data they have received from other websites that may have also interacted with me. Meta already cannot use my data to train artificial intelligence engines, because I had already been asked this, and I already said no – why let lazy people use my work to take a shortcut?

I couldn’t care less about any perception of Meta becoming anti-LGBTQ+ regarding what they are now allowing people to say, as people who feel the need to say certain things in the name of debate usually don’t have any trouble saying those things. Worst of all is having someone so identifiable in charge of a public “space”, like Zuckerberg. Perhaps decentralised social media, like Bluesky or Mastodon, is the nearest you can get to a real-life public space.

That’s one thing about rules: we wouldn’t think we’d need them unless we needed them, would we? Society has rules, and the Internet stopped being a “Wild West” when we integrated it into our normal lives. Social media will either need to rejoin society, or be subsumed by it – I have covered this subject too many times to say otherwise.

I wrote this in June 2020: “There will come a time when social media will end – sites will either be legislated out of existence, or people will get bored and wander off. Either extremism and fake news will be dealt with, or people will just have to learn how to speak to each other properly – which they have increasingly been doing via by video conferencing services, like Zoom, FaceTime and Microsoft Teams, instead of social media. This is much healthier than measuring your influence and wealth by how many followers you have. If you really need to let people know what you think about something, get a blog, or ask Google to resurrect GeoCities.”

I also wrote this in January 2022: “If everyone uses social media, we are essentially all in the media business and, therefore, we all should receive media training to fully understand the uses and effects of media, so that we can use it most effectively and mindfully. I think this would press home the importance of acting professionally in the public space created by a media that requires us to act intimately in order to receive the content required to run it. Organisations specialising in media training offer communication skills, interview technique, provide experience in dealing with PR and media relations, and provide “key message development” for the messages you want to get across.”

From May 2017: “In his essay ‘Politics and the English Language,’ published three years before ‘Nineteen Eight-Four,’ [George] Orwell admonished the overuse of flourishes and technical language in English writing, as if any step away from clarity will cloud your intentions straight away. However, when the same essay provides six rules for writers, Orwell was wise enough to use the last rule to say it is better to break the other five ‘than say something outright barbarous.’ These days, the point that makes is more like using social media to immediately say what you feel, without thinking what you are about to post – in other words, Big Brother bellyfeel Twitter.”

COME SAIL AWAY WITH ME [482]

Is it truly possible to “get away from it all”? Not by just going on holiday, but by disconnecting from routine, resisting the need to “check in” at anything other than an airport.

 

I am routinely guilty of checking what I will be coming back to after a week off from work, but I cannot bring myself to delete the app we use from my phone - we are not required to use it other than in the office, but the illusion of “advantage” means it remains on my home screen.

 

The allure of an ocean cruise constitutes the nearest I can physically remove myself from the networks that run everyday life, without the ability to travel into outer space. 

 

Transatlantic travel would be even more effective, removing all intermediary ports of call, and any opportunity for your phone to connect to a cellular network - Cunard’s Queen Mary 2, the only liner currently offering such a journey, is an opulent destination unto itself, and a more than adequate distraction. I clearly need a break if I am thinking about it this deeply.

 

Of course, you would then be subject to the temporary network created by the liner, something once solely constructed and run by a ship’s crew, now supplemented by the online purser’s office of a digital planner service available to passengers using the ship’s on-board wi-fi, booking meals and activities to distribute people around the ship. Cunard’s planner, “My Voyage”, is a web-based outlier in an industry that encourages the downloading of an extra app to access all services, but even while a printed daily programme is still provided to guest rooms, and most services on Cunard ships do not require booking, there is the implication that accessing a network will be easier and more convenient for the smooth running of the liner, and of your trip.

 

Or you could “stay in touch with friends and family with one of our on board internet packages, and discover our top tips for using your phone while at sea”. If you choose to add it to your voyage, Cunard charges $20-28 per day to access Elon Musk’s low-earth-orbit satellite network Starlink, charging the higher amount if you want video streaming in addition to what is titled the “Essential Internet Plan”, which is web browsing, e-mail and social media, like you never left port. 

 

Having paid £7.75 per day for five days to continue using my mobile phone in New York in 2023 strikes me as a different proposition because I was on dry land during that time. I could have used a printed map and guide, but it was crucial that I could react at the same speed as the city in which I was located. At sea, it is more possible to set your own pace, and to put a distance between yourself and that which demands attention now but could wait until later. 

 

Buying the sort of internet access you could find on land means you may as well have taken your holiday on land, because it means you are willing not to take a proper break - you remain on standby, in the middle of the ocean. I need to explore whether the lives we lead – the life I lead – is able to give us a proper break from them.