I think I stopped paying attention to new music around the time Kid A came out, because I am really, really boring. (And also I want there to be some area of culture left for me to explore when I am old. So when I’m in a nursing home, the plan is to listen to about 90 years worth of popular music and get really into the history of modern dance/come to a new and deeper appreciation of Joan Acocella.) So it goes without saying that I, deeply uncool as I am, do not know who this Rye Rye person is, but Dodai seems to think she’s pretty awesome, and Dodai’s taste is solid. Also, these outfits are pretty. It was a very canny move on Prabal Gurung’s part to team up with Rye Rye, I guess? “Can’t stereotype my thing, yo” — that’s funny and apt. (And also, Google tells me, a reference to an M.I.A. song, which I don’t think I’ve heard.) You know what, I like this song so much I don’t even mind I sort of accidentally broke my unofficial, personal aural embargo. I’m going to stop writing this now and listen to it again.
Every year that I age, my musical knowledge gets more pathetic, because as it turns out people keep on making and recording new music, so there is geometrically more of it for me to be unaware of. The thing is, I am not cool. I have never been one of those people who just knows about the hot new song and/or artist. (Nor do I know about the hot old artist. I think I learned that Television is a good band maybe late last year.) I am instead one of those people who turns to her friend in a crowded bar in June of 2011 and says, “This song about feeling ‘so alive, so alive, so alive’ is pretty catchy!” and the friend nods slowly, and explains who Nicki Minaj is. (The explanation, frankly, I’m still not sure I understand, but again, that is my fault. I am not cool.)
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