Getting into 2012 with Far East Movement’s Dirty Bass

I was just updating my running playlist and a good song to add is Live My Life by Far East Movement featuring Justin Bieber. Bieber, yes. It’s the first of his songs so far to hit my iPod. And it made me think that I should blog about Far East Movement (FM) because, well, wasn’t everyone doing that several years ago?

Asian-American culture blogger Angry Asian Man in California was blogging about them years before, you’d think they were buddies or something. I think I took one look at a photo of them and took a pass but then I heard Animal being used as the theme song for web series K-Town Cowboys. I had a faint suspicion when I was looking it up it would be FM and that was confirmed. I told NPY who knew about then because they got radio airplay with “Like a G6”. “It has really stupid lyrics,” is something like what NPY said but we’ll hop up and down really excited when we hear it playing in a party context because besides being a fly song, it’s recorded by our own people!! Later on, If I Was You (OMG) featuring Snoop Dogg and we thought that was a really dumb song.

This year, we come to Dirty Bass, released in time for summer on June 12. I got the whole album because I’m bound to like more than one song, right? Well, yeah.

Listening to the album made me feel like I had musically arrived in 2012. But it also somewhat depressed me. I do and don’t want to get it. What is an 808? what is a basshead? Finally, what is dirty bass? And it not just the terms that I can look up in Urban Dictionary. In the song Fly with U, does she mean literally flying with him or mean it figuratively and she’ll be at his side or metaphorically like being high?

I am obviously not the target audience and I don’t really want to be the target audience with the kind of influences music and media give the kids–it was hard enough back in my day! And my reaction to the Dirty Bass tracks–not what they expect, to be sure–was nostalgia for when I faithfully kept up with this kind of music. This music geared towards the clubbers compelling them think “tonight’s the night”, act now, life’s short, “this is the moment”, no regrets. It bugs me that music for kids still sounds like this and it just makes me laugh because I have been through it all. Still, it bugs me to no end that these songs glorify clubbing and those activities.

Here is the aggravating chorus from If I Die Tomorrow:

If I die tomorrow
Then that means that we had the night of our lives
If tomorrow never comes then tonight we lose control
Then we can lose control

Aside from the tired and obvious references to alcohol, I could see some of the other influences like Black Eyed Peas and some other sound I can’t pinpoint in Change Your Life. I like songs where they bring on a lyrical singer and they rap over it, which NPY decries so utterly typical of me. I grudgingly have to like the tracks Where the Wild Things Are, Flossy, If I Die Tomorrow, Ain’t Coming Down, and Little Bird. And Live My Life, the anthem song, of course.