Music from the Point of View of an Unbeliever

I don't believe in music as a culture. I haven't willingly listened to the radio since I had a legitimate Sony Walkman, and even then I listened to more Prairie Home Companion than JT and the NSync crew. I hope this botched reference lets you know just how little I know about popular music. Sure, I've seen Wrecking Ball and the Nicholas Cage-face version of Wrecking Ball and the Kardynal/Chatroulette version of Wrecking Ball, but I haven't the foggiest idea what these kids are on about with their Thickes and their Minajes. (In order to formulate that reference, I had to Google "black female singer with crazy hair").

However.
Stephen Barry seems to be worried about my societal awareness and wants me to share in the music culture he swims. To this end (and with good intentions, I'm sure), he sends me a list of the top forty songs of the year. Last year, I slogged through in about ten months. This year, I'm going to attempt a betterment. Before, I merely listened, or listened and jotted some notes so I would have a feedback. Now, I'm going to develop a methodology that I will follow.
Ride the Crazy Train after the break.

Step mindset: I am going to free myself of as many distractions as I can. I have cleared my desk, closed my door, drawn up my chair, and put my phone on silent (much to my girlfriend's chagrin).
Step audio: I have dug my favorite/most expensive headphones from their hiding place. They supposedly will give me the best sound quality, which is something audiophiles love and the first leg of the tripod that is this experiment.
Step visual: I will, in as many cases as possible, be watching the music videos because I am entirely unaccustomed to listening for listening's sake and that's the kind of coward I am. I can't just jump into something foreign without wetting my toes/wearing protective armor.
Step cognitive: I set up a second monitor so I could read the lyrics before and use reference after each song without interrupting my workflow. Honestly, I couldn't hold the songs in my head from start to finish during the last list. Kid Cudi, bless his off-tune singing, mixed so violently with Drake and Lamar that I'm beginning to doubt I listened to three separate songs. So this will be the way I build framework.
Step psych-myself-up: I'm writing it all down so I have something to show for my massive time investment, and as a sort of gift back to Stephen for the influence he has shown me. I hope he doesn't stop. I probably need this music more than I know.
Step consideration: No mere rating system would encompass the depth and breadth of musical styles encompassed in the top 40. Since I can't judge Lana Del Rey versus Drake by any metric I know, I'll use a simpler method. Would I buy this song?

On to the music! But first, a word from the compositor:

Couple things that might get lost in translation or overlooked:
Earl Sweatshirt's "Chum": When he talks about being away and just being back, he's making reference to when his mother sent him to a boarding school for troubled youth after hearing his first album (lots of disturbing and depressing fantasies including rape, suicide, drugs, murder, etc.)
K. Michelle's "VSOP" I'm really not a fan of this chick as an artist. She came from a reality show that remains nameless, and she is the epitome of ratchet. However, she actually can sing quite well, and if she would stop writing her own songs, she might actually have a solid career. I only brought this piece up to mention that you can't appreciate the genius of the prouction until you hear the original record that was sampled in it.
That's pretty much it...enjoy!
barryorchestra

 #40 - Emkay
Bonobo. The lyrics to this are ephemeral at best, so I'm assuming it's an atmospheric piece. I can't actually hear the lyrics I read in this song. It sounds like "What am goin' do?" Not "Emkay go you." It sounds like a Pogo remix. It's nice. It soothes. It's wonderful? But I don't know if it's anything I would take to my friends and say "Listen to this song!" It's more something that you play when you want to feel just exactly that shade of blue-green that is melancholy tinged with hope for a better afternoon.

#39 - Home Again
Elton John. Already, I like the line "The world had seven wonders once upon a time
It’s sure enough the favored nations aided their decline," but it doesn't have much to do with the rest of the song. It seems to be a standard nostalgia trip into memory. The song is big and beautiful, and it evokes the feeling of a man who has regrets about leaving people and things behind, but this is the twenty-first century. Those feelings are so nineteenth century it hurts. When will the romantics die? Never. Also, the music video had some confusing imagery. Why the coin of Edward VII? The man grows progressively younger and the countryside more beautiful and barren. Then we see that the earth hangs low overhead and he's on his own planet? Anyway, I saw the great lakes. I wouldn't buy this.

#38 - Chum
Earl Sweatshirt. The line "Too black for the white kids, and too white for the blacks" shows exactly the sort of racial tension this country feels constantly. And this rap is coming from a place where too many kids find themselves: outcast, a member of a massive number of similar crushed spirits, unable to find each other except by song. And the song is a long list of references, from somebody else's knee cartilage to his own youth, so deep there are layers. For some reason it's important enough to him that his shirt says "golf" that he put it in the hook/chorus, and I don't get the reference. But the video stands on its own: a mishmash of worried and depressing imagery, the image of which I won't shake soon. Earl looks like he hates that this song was popular enough to get its own video and he's tired of singing about his troubles and just wants change. The overlay of a visceral, simple, human cartoon smiley face on a German Shepard shook me. The frogs are an element that runs throughout and is never explained. All in all, disturbing. I wouldn't buy this.

#37 - Take a Fall For Me
James Blake. The song is (roughly) about high and low, emotional connection and desire, love and loss. And it's pretty much coleslaw, as incomprehensible as the songs I find attractive. But it's worth a listen. I found a home-brew video of a man dancing with feeling, so that's what I'm watching as I listen. And it's great. It reminds me of the actual video for Lonely Boy. The music to Take a Fall for Me feels like a burst of emotion is held back by the continual discharge of the singing, which feels like Blake is trying to tell a woman why he's not going to sleep with her. He truly loves, but he can't commit because they're mismatched (?) and so he would prefer to love her without her. I guess. The video I watched actually featured the sun dropping below the horizon, so it felt like the whole song was on an extreme time limit, which only added a layer to the song. I wouldn't buy this.

#36 - Her Favorite Song
Mayer Hawthorne. I've never been a girl, but this so convincingly sells this/some/a woman's attitude toward life as I understand it that I am surprised Hawthorne is a man, and one who looks so ridiculous, to boot. The lyrics are simple and don't get in the way of the song, but instead make it a song worth listening to for more than just the sound. All that being said, it wasn't a great song. For all its being about a woman, it's about hot women, and not just from the way he sings. It's in the video; the women are all hot. Too hot to be relatable to actual women who put their headphones on and rock out. This is slightly redeemed by all the men being dogs. When I was looking for the video, I heard just the bassist's beginning riff and I was really looking forward to it. But it turned out not to be a bass-bumping, tub-thumping massive-sounding anthem of let loose and rip sound out, but instead a sexy smooth slide down pantyhose lane. That's alright, I guess, but I would have much preferred a sound like Eric Hutchinson's Rock and Roll as a just let go and feel good song. Also, Mayer Hawthorne looks like Michael Buble. Just sayin'. I wouldn't buy this.

#35 - Hey Love
Quadron. This reads like the story of a kid who is trying to fill the hole in his life with the girl in the song. Honestly, if he's so reliant on her for the meaning of his life, he's going to be disappointed, and she's going to get fed up and leave. But what it actually is is a slightly underproduced song by the Adele imitator Stephen mentioned to me. Here are the reasons I think she'll never pass Adele: for one, she's not glamorous enough. With a voice like that, you have to really go for the big art-deco American prosperity old-school charm to sell it. Second, this song sounds like they didn't give it the love it deserves. Her voice is showcased, but the song doesn't fill me up. There's just not enough gut-blasting heart-wrenching passion about the accompaniment. She needs that if she's going to rock. And third, her face didn't show passion (I know she was dancing and concentrating), and passion sells. Why else would Nirvana have gotten so big? I don't know. I liked the song but I wouldn't buy it.

#34 - WTF
Big KRIT. "Yeah, I'm baller as such." So the lyrics of this song have me in mind of Dylan Moran's attitude towards rap versus the blues. I mean, one came from the other, but lots of rap is about how "we started from the bottom now we here" thanks Drake. It's about having. About how the singer has hoes and rims. KRIT is singing about a totally different attitude toward life; about how the narrator is trying to get to the attainment part of life and screwing it up. Really, the song is about the same attitude presented by Icarus or any other Greek hero, steeped in hubris and sorrow. Well, hindsight is 20/20. The sound of the song is sparse to allow the lyrics to talk, but the beat's uninteresting and I don't have the same aspirations/mistakes as the narrator of the song, so it doesn't hit me as such. I wouldn't buy this.

#33 - Come a Little Closer
Cage the Elephant. The first Cage the Elephant song I ever heard was on a game, and since then, I've only listened to 3/4 of an album. They're good and sharp and aggressive, but I just can't get into them. The lyrics have me in mind of Crossing the Bar by Tennyson, if only because it's about death and water and going somewhere you aren't. Anyway, the water did it for me.  The video itself is surrealist and colorful and hurt my eyes more than I can say. Now I think I need a drink of water and a break, because seriously what is with British bands and not caring at all about the eyes of their viewers? Otherwise, the song is the first in the list to really hit that huge sound that has come to show the buildup and release of powerful emotion, at least ever since Stairway to Heaven. I would need to listen to the rest of the album before I bought this.

#32 - Sweater Weather
The Neighbourhood. This song sounds a bit more like a stable relationship. Though the author does put a lot of stress on his apparel, I think he sounds like a reasonable chap. Also, high-waisted shorts? What decade are you living in, the early twentyteens? What a dated reference (in forty years). As bad as Elvis' fashion. Ok, so because I don't have any idea who the Neighborhood is, and because I read the lyrics first (the narrator is a man), I was thrown by the female vocalist. Anyway, this is probably the best music video so far for delivering the idea of the song. It's not worshiping the woman or the boys who love her, though all told the humans in the video are attractive. It's worshiping the aesthetic. It's in love with the idea of being young and obsessed with somebody else, and the endless driving/wandering scenes and the complete desaturation and the only momentary glimpses of beauty before it's back out in the palms and sun really sell the message. However, the best moment comes at the inversion--and I do mean that--when the whole song slows down and really begins to luxuriate in the chorus and the music video flips upside down. I would buy this.

#31 - Wildfire
John Mayer. "We can't leave each other/We can dance with the dead." Well, whoever writes lyrics for Mayer, they certainly know how to capture the ideals of the Romantics (and their satirists) to a fault. Still, the song really catches something important about being young, immortal, and free to do whatever you want: summer is the best time of the year to be in love. Spring is alright but summer is really where you get to feel comfortable and lazy. Fall is still my favorite season. The video is not the point of the song, nor does it reinforce it (it looks like a video made by the producers because there's an opportunity for ad revenue being wasted on Youtube), but it lets me see John Mayer, which is a mistake. The performance, the artistry, the sound--it's all lackluster. It's safe. And literally a full sixty seconds from the end of the song, I groaned and said "what is this not over?" The video could have been literally four minutes of the sun going down over a hilltop, brilliant hues creeping into the sky, kids playing with a dog in the yard, and a couple just sitting on the porch drinking ice water on a swinging chair and it would have been beautiful, cheap, and completely on-message. Instead, I get to see Mayer try his darndest to be James Dean or Bruce Springsteen and fail. It's not that he's bad; he's horrible. I wouldn't buy this.

#30 - V.S.O.P
K. Michelle. I listened to That's How Long, which she sampled. It's dumb and cheesy and heartfelt. It sounds like the theme to every movie and television show from the eighties. That is to say: they have turned some of the corniest stuff of the eighties into some of the corniest stuff of the teens. Congratulations, complete turnaround. The lyrics are insipid, as you would expect of a popular song not written by Bob Dylan, and her outfits are egregious, as you would expect of a woman selling her sexuality. All that said, her singing is really good. She's full and loud and lovely, and she has the accent to sell to her target demographic. The video shows me her writing comes from the point of view of privilege and that explains "I swear he buy me anythang I want/That's why I'm so quick to/Put that music on for him." Say what you want about country music, but they have nailed the point of view of the common man. She sings well, but her song is too far from me. V.S.O.P probably stands for Very Special Opulent Person. I would not buy this.

#29 - Boys Don't Cry
Natalia Kills. It's a song of vamp and whine, of pop and sex. It sounds fun, too, but it's not of the sort of song that really grabs me. This song is competing with Lana Del Rey, and everything it does, she does better. Really, the only thing this song does to its apex is youth. Just the whole concept of youth--of not having done things before, not knowing your limits, of living to the full and taking pain over regret, of disliking the past rather than not knowing it. But she's whiny and it kills it for me. I wouldn't buy this.

#28 - Treasure
Bruno Mars. This song reads an awful lot like the Beatles' song Girl. And the attitude of the video is old school, too--very reminiscent of Michael Jackson. The attitude towards women is a little healthier than the average "I'mma hit that till the morning light because this girl is a beautiful piece of meat," but still fails to see women as equals. That said, I can totally relate to the message of the song. And Mars and the squad look so incredibly happy to be singing, how could you not like them? Delight loves the beat, so much that "It could be a terrible song, but I really like it." If I had a specific need for the song, for an event? I would buy this.

#27 - Working Man
Imagine Dragons. Who are they singing to? It's a song about good old American consumerism and wish fulfillment, but they say "when everything is falling/I'm gonna do the things you do." Who do? You do? Voodoo. I can't parse the message, but I like the song. And then the break comes . . . and what? And then the song is back. It has the same huge resonant feel as much of their oeuvre and I like that, but it's not as impassioned. That's good, and bad. It's good that they have depth and not every song is a massive explosion (which they're great at and I love) but bad because I saw them on the list and hoped for that. I don't mean to undermine the song with this, however, because even with all this context, they're a great group who have a lot of fun with their music and this song shows the same jeux de vivre and yet has a more direct attempt to speak to the feelings of despair and overcommitment to living on top of the world (I'm on top of the world [hey]) generated by our current society. So it's probably a better song than their others, and if not, it's at least a better attempt. Still, I wouldn't buy this.

#26 - Roar
Katy Perry. Coincidentally, I watched the music video this morning before I decided to top40 it up. And it made me emotional in a weird way I'll attempt to explain. First, Delight loves Katy Perry after watching the biographical film of her concerts in the year when her marriage dissolved. I always thought she was a bit on the flighty pop side, but Firework has put the lie to that. And now, the way she has dealt with womanizing scumbad murder-hair Russel Brand leaving her has really given me a dose of respect. So when I saw how happy she was just to be making music and making a fool of herself and generally singing really really well and being a knock-out vocalist and hot without letting it be her only characteristic, well, I cried. Just a little. Tiny tears seeping from the corners of my eyes that I only realized were there when I finished watching the dumb thing. So I'm just going to watch this video and enjoy it again, and when Delight and I build a music library together, I'm going to buy this song.
 - It made me cry again. What the heck. I love Katy Perry. And the tiger's nametag is Kitty Purry? Perfect.

#25 - Royals
Lorde. Now, pretentious name and ignorant youth aside, I think Lorde has a lot to say. I appreciate that the song is so low-key, because she is a good singer and it would completely run counter to the point of the song to hire professionals to act in it or to try to juxtapose the content by putting her on a throne or in a fancy house. She's from New Zealand. Those are her friends. The song is about how she'll never attain anything greater and her impotent anger and fear at being locked in a box. That she has massive attainment and is living a life millions of people want is a minor side note, probably. We'll see if wealth changes her as much as it has other people. And Royals is mad catchy. I have had it stuck in my head at times, and I've heard it three times. I'm just glad I don't listen to the radio, because I'm afraid it would get really old. I watched the UK/International version for the first time after watching the US version twice, and I gotta tell you, there's a huge shift in emphasis away from Lorde towards the mundanity of her existence. I think it's better? But I also think she's beautiful, so she's more pleasant to look at than a wall/bus stop/bleeding teenager. All my praise aside, it doesn't light my pants on fire, and I'm not that rich. I wouldn't buy it.

#24 - My Kind of Love
Emeli Sande. The lyrics . . . are wonderful. I mean, if they weren't sung, they would be really shallow compared to some love poems I've read, but they're lyrics, and the singing really adds to poetry (as we all know). Just . . . real love, here. Stand up next to you in the bad and the good love. Give of myself when I know that I should love. Afraid or alone or all on your own love. This is really good. And the music video has a really cool conceit too--that words are harmful and you should watch what you say. The sound is big and crashing, the vocalist is passionate and sounds beautiful, the video is great--this is a great song. I particularly love that the video isn't just about romantic relationships, but about love in general. Though I won't buy this song, I love it. I just don't have a fiscal relationship with it.

#23 - Same Love
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. What to say about Macklemore? Right place at the right time? Or does he have his finger on the pulse of the nation? Whatever it is, he's a darling. I always wonder: do people save their really good material for stuff like this, or do the best songs just happen organically? Like, did The Edge just come up with a sick tune and then Bono said "well, better write something heartbreaking to go over top of this" or what? How do enormous hits that also make a social statement happen? Are they inherently better songs? Anyhow, it's fashionable to be pro-lgbt (I don't like lgbtq) these days, and honestly, I think it's probably better to have less hate in the world, so I'm all for it. I just hope they're not trying to profiteer off the trend. I still have troubling opinions about homosexuality--it doesn't seem like I could ever hate someone for their thoughts. Mine are as bad. But I still feel like I can't be alright with something that is both genetically futile and religiously inconceivable. I mean, it's socially acceptable to drink, even to excess, but I shouldn't because it wouldn't be right. All this aside, sexuality is so important to humanity and even straight people with no fetishes are so embarrassed about it that to mock someone for their sexuality is like opening up the armor and putting the sword in. No amount of excuses can forgive hurting someone so completely. An important song. I wouldn't buy it.

#22 - Work
Iggy Azalea. The words sound hurt and angry and like she's lashing out at the industry for the crap they put her through, at the people who think she was given what she worked for, at the girls who sleep around just to have nice things. It's the viscera of capitalism laid bare to tread on, and you can bet it sells well. That's what's so darned ironic. It's why people hate Lana Del Rey for being made--a success story sells, and a disingenuous one feels like treachery. I'm just glad I read the lyrics first, because there's no way I would have understood what she was saying otherwise. Azalea's from Australia, but she's nailed the ebonics (apparently necessary to being a rapper? Though Watsky would show otherwise). It's a passionate cry, but do people really care? Everybody wants to be rich, but nobody wants to know what it takes to get there. There's no glamour in that. There's no glitz. And despite how important she is to females and rappers and female rappers, I wouldn't buy this.

#21 - Survival
Eminem. I like the idea of Eminem as a changed man, but I have never liked his songs. We'll see. Some of his conceits are . . . weird. To say the least. If you see me bow out, I'm not bowing. I'm stabbing myself and getting unhealthfully excited about that and then defecating on the microphone. Good for me! At least he has a healthy ego and can't be brought down by the comments others make about him. But seriously, how many Eminem haters does he encounter daily? How much bile is actually produced? As far as people receiving hate or being dissed by their peers, I think Obama has it way worse. Heck, Bachman and Palin are almost universally hated and they lost. How do you think they feel? Why is it that we hear so much more about how Taylor Swift cried about the people who hate her and so much less about how Hillary Clinton's life is hell because she's constantly reminded of her husband's philandering and her own failure to achieve the presidency? Why do we give two craps about the people who succeed and then are mocked by people nobody's ever heard of? Eminem, if you're reading the YouTube comments on your videos and trying to fight that off, you need to stop. I know it's attractive to be the underdog, but you've made it man. Nobody's trying to take you down anymore. Just be less angry and write something about your kids. How are they? They doing well in school? Oh, you wanted to buy her a Benz for Christmas? Well, too bad. I wouldn't buy this.

#20 - Blurred Lines
Robin Thicke. I'm not watching the xxx video. If you think I haven't heard this, you're crazy. Even I have heard this song. I have seen Miley grind on his junk. Also, I have read the lyrics and they're not that rape-y. Some people will see rape in everything, and it's probable that Thicke is rape-y,  but the song itself isn't what people make it out to be. In fact, it's not even that good. Just catchy as all get out. Like, really catchy. The lyrics are terrible. Weird Al even took the piss out of it in his spare time. So I'll listen to it, but I don't think it's a good message, and I don't like the video (they phoned it in), and I don't think the women could possibly be comfortable wearing that clear plastic, and I wouldn't buy this. Did you know they tried to sell the song to JT? That would have been something.

#19 - Adaptation
The Weeknd. Hmmm. Loss. What a lovely way to live your life, constantly wallowing in regret over a possibility. Wait, no. That sounds horrible. Anyway, the Weeknd is all about that regret. The song, however valid the words, made no impression on me. The words were too vague and nothing really stood out, nor beat, nor language, nor vocals, nor attitude. It was just a song that had something to say, swung, and missed. I suppose it's on the level of Within You Without You, but at least that was weird enough to say "that one weird Asian Beatles song." I've done this for hours with very few breaks and I think I'm about at my limit for now. This song didn't entice me. I want cereal and a laugh. I think I might watch Roar again. I don't know. I wouldn't buy this.

#18 - I Am Who Am
Mac Miller. After a long hiatus and watching Roar for the third time today, I came back to read I Am Who Am, an oddly-titled song purportedly about God and actually about Mac Miller and making money. The second verse goes to hash and I can't make any meaning out of it even though I've read it three times. I think he had a conceit the first verse and he utterly lost it during the second, but it needed to be song-length, so he kept spitting rhymes. At least, that's what it feels like to me. The video is beautiful, but it doesn't unlock the meaning of the text . . . unless, as he claims, he really is schizophrenic and the padded room looks like four walls of one-way mirrors and sometimes he becomes a young girl? Anyway, her dress in the water puts me in mind of milt. What I can say is that I'm proud of Miller for being a young, upcoming rapper (difficult) and for keeping his flow (he has beautiful rhythm). Still, this song does nothing short of nothing. He needs to sort his conceits and attempt to tidy his meanings, or else he'll never win me over. I wouldn't buy this.

#17 - Hold On, We're Going Home
Drake. It's the next day now, and I listened to Roar really loud in the car on the way to the store last night. Drake has written a doozy of a vamp, so let's count. There are four lines in the verse, two of which are the same, and the verse is repeated. There are four lines in the "pre-hook," which is essentially just the hook but the person writing lyrics can't fathom a song element longer than four lines, two of which are the same, and it is repeated twice. There are four lines in the hook proper, three lines of which are identical, and the whole is repeated twice. And, to wrap it up, there are four lines in the bridge, two of which are identical, and the bridge is repeated. The line that happens the most often is "Just hold on; we're going home," and the line that is the most inane is "I want your hot love and emotion endlessly."

• Hold On, We're Going Home
• 3:47 minute length
• Eleven unique lines (27% of forty total)
• Four unique stanzas (40% of ten total)
• Fifty seven unique words (20% of 286 total)

The entire text is on a middle-school reading level, which is to say that a middle schooler would not struggle with the text, not that it would be taught to them. I did not do all this math. But I did look it up because I was wondering. Now for some comparisons. Similar number of lines?

• My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun
• ~ 1 minute length
• Fourteen unique lines (100% of fourteen total)
• Three unique quatrains and one unique couplet (100% of both, respectively)
• Eighty two unique words (67% of 123 total)

Now, this might not be fair because Shakespeare was writing at cross purposes and much of his artistry was not the performance of the piece. Still, Shakespeare didn't get a college degree either. Let's try something more in Drake's wheelhouse. A song with a similar number of total words?

• The Times, They Are A-Changin'
• ~ 3:40 minute length
• Fifty one unique lines (93% of fifty five total)
• Five unique stanzas (100% of total)
• 131 unique words (52% of 250 total)

Now, this might not be fair because Dylan was writing a lyrical ballad, which tells a story, and stories progress, so one line repeated five times would merely be the point he was trying to stress. To be fair, Dylan did have a college education at the time (though he dropped out after his first year). I'll scrape the barrel to find something worthy of Drake's song, a song nobody accuses of quality.

• Blurred Lines
• 4:22 minute length
• Sixty four unique lines (53% of 121 total)
• Seven unique stanzas/groupings (54% of thirteen total)
• 192 unique words (32% of 604 total)

Pharell's verse helps a lot. If I take it out, the number of unique words plummets to 131, and considering that his section is only 134 words, the sixty one lost unique words are half the words he spits. But having dissected the text alone without listening to the music in any way, I'm afraid that now I'll really like Hold On, We're Going Home. Luckily, I just listened to it, and it was made of the same meagre materials as we've all come to suspect. This is the first song that I've really not understood its place on the top forty. It's smooth and it sounds nice, but it has so little substance (and what there is is confusing and disappointing) that I think it doesn't deserve the cut. I guess it does spark an interesting discussion on how much of a song's strength comes from lyrics and how much comes from performance (Here's looking at you, Daft Punk). I would have preferred We Started from the Bottom, even though it's not as aesthetically pleasing. I wouldn't buy this.

#16 - Origin of Love

MIKA. The first chorus/hook of this song is hilarious. "Love is a drug and you are my cigarette

Love is addiction and you are my Nicorette." Love is a drug and you're my mildly addictive, completely legal depressant. Love is addiction and you're the chemical compound that's slowly weaning me off of it. But that's not what MIKA is trying to say, so we'll just overlook it and listen to his gorgeous vocals. Now that we're done with that, let's examine what the narrator was trying to say. The words have a beautiful, fatalistic expression of love that finds complete fulfillment in the object. This is no different than Hey Love by Quadron, except that it's catchier and more beautiful. Why is it that the beauty of foolish love is less reprehensible? My real trouble is when the narrator throws my worldview under the bus. The song has an obvious religious tilt--as if the section of Latin didn't push that point (it's beautiful and understated, but it's there). I don't believe that Adam and Eve were motivated by love, either for each other or for God, but instead by that exquisite greed which calls itself love and actually is not selfless at all. More troubling is the view of my deity: "God didn't think they deserved it/He taught them hate taught them pride." Why, that's as bad as Blake's "A Poison Tree." Sure, you could see God as the instigator of the terrible things that happen in the world, but I don't believe God can do evil. He can do everything that he can, except what he can't. And I'll explain myself later, if you want. Suffice it to say that the lyrics are beautiful and moving and noteworthy and reprehensible. The video is much the same. It has some nudity, spoiler, but not much. Have you seen it? It's beautiful and passionate and aged and universal and specific and . . . is it in Madrid? [Edit: I watched the video again to find out. Santiago, Chile.] I don't know. But what I want to know is what is actually keeping the lovers apart. She underwent a surgery, which I can only imagine is an elective surgery based on the movie's setting in the developed world. Was she having vision problems? She seemed to have a localized paralyzing agent? Anyway, whatever effects she was under are completely erased by the end, and she's quite fit based on her ability to run the miles to where her man is. So what's keeping them apart other than the narrative of the story? But the story is endearing and the people are beautiful and there's a dog, so I love it anyway. It's so well constructed to be just enough to not distract from the music, which doesn't distract from the film. And the music is soaring and gorgeous and MIKA and wonderful and just a little bit tragic. How could I not love this? . . . I would buy this. 

HI STEPHEN! This is DELIGHT. Guten Tag! :)

#15 - Headlights

Eminem. The words are raw. This is why Eminem is considered one of the premier lyricists of our time. This song lets us into his life, and though he sounds angry still, it's way calmer. He's more nostalgic, more full of regret. It makes the song more worthwhile than some of his other stuff. Like, this shows more emotions than just fear and lashing out. It's more about his ability to forgive and regret. Those are humbler emotions. I like them more. This song makes me like Eminem more (though I still don't like his style.) As for the themes of fatherhood that Eminem addresses--this is what America is about now. Fathers are a consistently absent figure in many kids' lives, and it's a huge tragedy. It's worse than it appears at first, because not having a father makes it harder to be a father, so like this entire generation of young men is growing up and fathering their own kids without any practical experience with what that looks like. I mean, they have the movies and their friends' dads and whichever father figures in their life, but they don't have the true feel of what it is like to be a son. How are these guys going to make their own kids feel what doesn't exist? It's a terrible cycle that Eminem has broken in his own life. He would flip mattresses and climb down chimneys to come for his kids, but so many kids don't have that. His very personal song to his mother becomes a social message about parenthood and Eminem's own parenthood. It's the best Eminem I've ever heard. I wouldn't buy this.

#14 - Wake Me Up

Avicii. 36% unique words of a total 247. Do I feel like this is an accurate metric of a song? No. But this song is simple. There's no denying that. It's far simpler than its spiritual predecessors of the Romantic era, but of course they have the same underlying message: "why can't I just stay exactly like I am right now? Find stasis for me, I'm dying over here." But, of course Avicii is a postmodern author and has added some complex "I hate where I am but I would prefer to be here than anywhere else because everything is as terrible as where I am." But the video gives some added (?) perspective to the song. The video and song start folksy (the vocalist is exceedingly twangy). There are two girls who live in small-town all-white judgmental America. When the older sister rides off on a horse to the big city, she finds another person with the same mentality (represented by a tattoo, which was a good visual metaphor) and follows them to a place she feels accepted. She goes back for the young girl and takes her to a place where they belong. It's supposedly a message about haters gonna hate, but if you watch the video with your reality glasses on, it's technically about how aesthetically beautiful people are marginalized and forced to congregate to feel any sense of community, and how much fun they have being attractive and young at Avicii concerts. Also, the dramatic shift to dance themes even with the still-twangy vocalist is really good. I like the sound of this song. Is this what Mos Def is doing these days? He was in the video. [Edit: turns out it's Aloe Blacc, but at least I tried.] It's a tough sell. I'll listen to it again and tell you if I would buy it. I would buy it. On a side note, I saw two black people in all-white America, oops.

#13 - My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark

Fall Out Boy. "Dark" appears eighteen times to balance out the eighteen appearances of "light." However, "up" appears fifty-four times, so make what you will of that. The lyrics don't appear to hold the meaning of the song, more than a vague sense of entitlement, anger, and regret. The music video doesn't hold much more meaning than "A group of black people burned Fall Out Boy's stuff/selves." So I'm having difficulty parsing it. The first song I ever heard of Fall Out Boy was actually Dance Dance, which has meaning enough and is also catchy. So why is this song just about sounding good and being angry? Is it aspiring to be no more than a workout song? Because right now that's what it is. I'm going to go look up some more about the video so I can find out who the dude is who sets fire to their equipment. And I have and wow my knowledge is limited. 2Chainz? How did I miss that? Wikipedia says that the video is first in a continuing story. Perhaps the next would paint a clearer picture, but at least that excuses this video not having any real meaning. 2Chainz isn't competing with them for market share and he doesn't sing in the song. The song isn't about anything more than setting the world on fire and playing rock music. Can a song just be aesthetically pleasing and be worthwhile for that sole purpose? I don't think so. I wouldn't buy this.

#12 - Can't You See It We Who 'Bout That Life

Miley Cyrus. I know that's not the title. But it's totally the line. You can't make me write the title. Don't you know things don't run we? This song does terrible stuff to my psyche. Turnt up or down is not the question, really. The question is how many homegirls can we get into this video to supplement the twerk? And really, though Miley is appropriating other cultures' jargon and imagery at a voracious rate, it's her mouth. She can say what she want to. Except not. Because there is a point at which owning other people's culture is hurtful, and not just to Miley's grammar. The more you take from another person's identity and the more often you use it for your own use, the more you dissipate their culture. I'll give an example. In the 1920s in Black Harlem, a huge number of poets, musicians, and other artists all started recognizing their frustrations and developing them into beautiful works that shaped the culture of the United States' black community for the next hundred years. Their group was so powerful and insular that outsiders recognized them as a cohesive movement and adopted James Wheldon Johnson's term: "Harlem Renaissance." Wikipedia will tell you that "The progress—both symbolic and real—during this period, became a point of reference from which the African-American community gained a spirit of self-determination that provided a growing sense of both Black urbanity and Black militancy, as well as a foundation for the community to build upon for the Civil Rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s." Now, the Harlem Renaissance informs R&B and Rock and poetry and the political discourse of the country and the GLBT equality movement, but no one would say they are a member of the Harlem Renaissance anymore. It is dissipated. Every time a new person finds this culture and buys into it--every time someone new claims it as inspiration or identity--it dissipates, and it's a tragedy and a victory. When computers were new, and the Commodore 64 was the height of technology, personal computing was this incredible feat . The men and women who could write new and interesting programs gathered in cadres to discuss their culture and to geek out. But as more and more people joined them, loving computers became the norm, and now we all carry magical pocket rectangles that can give us the knowledge of infinity within seconds. As more and more people found value in computers and as they became affordable and popular, the movement dissipated and widened until essentially only the very poor in the developing world can say that they are outside the movement. Every person that bought a computer has dissipated the movement, and it has lost some of its unknown power and excitement and gained instead permanency.
Dissipation is far more important than anything Miley has to say. Every time she slurs the words "twerk" or "haters," she represents the slow and inevitable dissipation of the terms and the culture that spawned them, but increases the chance that they will have an impact on society (whether positive or negative) and that they will be remembered by humanity in generations to come. Dissipation. It's inevitable and acceptable, but for a person to dissipate is still a breach of the privacy and honor of the originators.

I just had a huge discussion (argument) with Delight and annoyed her to no end with my insistence (and other annoying things) that "twerk" is part of a worthwhile culture, but I think this discussion is worth having because it teaches me something about people and dissipation and society and myself. Delight and I watched the video and Delight said, forlorn, "She can't get up because of her huge shoes." So some good came of this. And even though it moved me much closer to understanding my thinking on dissipation and the worthiness of cultural insulation, I wouldn't buy this.

#11 - Let's Get High
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. I read the wrong lyrics and had a very high opinion of this song before I read the correct lyrics and realized that it is still about escapism, though a much healthier form than recreational drug use. This song doesn't seem to really sell love so much as kindness. C.S. Lewis points out that it is not love to allow your dog to pee on the carpet. It is kindness: just let everyone alone--so long as they don't hurt anyone and they're happy, that's fine. The world values kindness. But it is love to discipline your dog when they do wrong because you make the dog a better animal and you make them more lovable. It is much more loving to struggle and fight against the ways in which other people are unloving and to help them to become better people than to leave them alone. It's not love to gloss over the wrongdoings of others. You can love someone and still work with them to overcome their faults. But Let's Get High sells kindness. I suppose there is some redemption in the message. Though it is too shallow to be true, it is still important that some people start just leaving other people alone. They can work on actual love later, but for the interim, there's no harm in them stopping their hate and fear-mongering. And it's a catchy tune with a fun beat, so undoubtedly it's an excellent pick-me-up for people feeling down. But I wouldn't buy this.

#10 - New Slaves
Kanye West. This is either a powerful song or completely pointless. I, not being omniscient, cannot say for sure. The text is about Kanye's frustration with his culture's obsession with possessions (not a purposeful rhyme) and the implications of the manufacturing being owned mainly by old money white guys. The narrator is dissatisfied with being rich because in order to buy anything he wants, he has to give the money to people he doesn't respect. In fact, the narrator is slings the accusation that this entire system is set up on purpose to continue the ages-old system of oppression for which the United States is so infamous. We try to point to worse cases of slavery in the world, but they don't exist. We're the pinnacle. And now, this song says that we haven't changed at all. Now, I don't know if that's true. Perhaps there is some cadre of extremely powerful white guys who crank up the prices on things black people like just so they can drain those people of their money. Maybe they do market research specifically to find what they can use to ensure that their fat, pasty kind will always be the top of the social order. Maybe. But it seems that the simpler answer is merely market pressures. If the people buying your product will pay more for it, charge more for it. It's simple arithmetic. If a product sells well to a demographic, don't waste your time advertising it to other demographics. Get that group habituated to its use so you don't have to struggle with innovation or augmentation. Just find a place to thrive and sell as much Cristal as you can. Anyhow, Kanye strikes me as a truly unremarkable artist and an unsurpassing social commentator. His music is rarely as important as his statements. I wouldn't buy this. Also, if Royals and New Slave both reference Maybach, why is there no "In Popular Culture" section on the Wikipedia page?

#9 - Blood Diamonds
The Game. Now here's a perspective on materialism I haven't seen before. And it's exactly the sort of thing that is effective and important and I don't know if the Game is the first one to notice the connection or if he just made it famous, but taking two things and pointing out the similarities is an excellent way to make an argument. Blood diamonds are famous in Africa for being the source of mass bloodshed and systematic repression, but we have bloodshed and repression in the United States, too. What are our blood diamonds? Shoes and cars, apparently. And the Game is tired of this crap. He has an excellent ability to fit rhythm and rhyme, but that seems to have less to do with success than other factors that I can't recognize. The underlying beat was varied enough, the woman wailing foreign words was competent enough, the rhythm was steady enough, and the song was good enough. I can't relate, though. I wouldn't buy this.

#8 - The Party & The After Party
The Weeknd. This song is a candidate for the "Unexpected Depth" of the year award. It started like a straight hustle. Just get her in bed, let's have fun having sex, isn't life good and dandy. But the narrator isn't talking to her the whole time. He's worried and he shares that with us. There's a reference to suicide and a reluctance to face reality and his parents, a worry that the woman is also unstable and a sexual dissatisfaction with other partners . . . this narrator is troubled. The sex is just to fill the hole the pain has dug, and the sex isn't enough to distract him for more than the chorus. But after 32 songs and no prospect of a music video for this seven minute epic, I'm more than a little recalcitrant to actually jump in and listen. I guess there's no choice, as I set myself a challenge and it's madness to stop with so few left to go and Lana Del Rey waiting for me. And yet, seven minutes of sexy-time music with a crooning Weeknd isn't the hellish nightmare I imagined. He varies the underlying theme just often enough that I don't wish I were dead. The stylistic change at the spiritual shift in the song is a really nice effect, too. The song drops out and leaves him singing with the sparsest guitar support. I don't really understand why rolling over hurts him so much, but maybe he rolled onto a knife. Whatever. The other completely foreign reference is to his new girl as Rudolph. Because she leads him to children's houses with the light from her nose? Essentially, I have done my duty by listening to this song once. I'm done. I wouldn't buy this.

#7 - Happy
Pharell Williams. We've heard a bit of Pharell earlier in the top40 when he sang on the fame train of Blurred Lines. We'll see what he can do without a bit of Thicke/T.I. He has a positive message for the kiddies. Happiness is your own game and nobody can bring you down if you don't want. It's just a song about happiness with lyrics that don't make sense. Did you know that the music video is actually 25 pieces? One for every hour of the day and then one for MTV? Did you know that the guy from Lonely Boy is in this? Proof positive in those two links. Also, there's Jimmy Kimmel and Steve Carell and a bunch of other famous people I'm probably missing. The video is great, the song is great, the emotion it's expressing is great, the choir section is great, and the feeling I got from watching it is great. I have nothing against simple songs expressing a positive emotion and this was an excellent change of pace from Blood Diamonds into New Slaves into Let's Get High into We Can't Stop. Maybe I like it just because it's not those songs, but only time can tell. I would buy this.

#6 - Atlantis
Ellie Goulding. Forty seven unique words, 21% of 223. Only one in five words is new. "Go" occurs thirty six times. The narrator is intensely concerned about where did you go? The text is dominated by it. It's filled with the idea that someone has left, but I get the idea that the narrator barely knew them. "This is new/Feels unused/I've never met anyone like you." But then as fast as that, the love is gone and "I'm exhausted with loving" and "I'll forget you not" and an eternity of "Where did you go?" The song is heartfelt, though quite reminiscent of Coldplay. The vocals are beautiful, if over-produced (I prefer my vocalists to actually sing the notes they're singing, T-Payne. Sorry if my dislike of the trend you're credited with beginning upsets you. And I must say, Goulding has enough auto-tune to really do me in. Why so much? She seems to be able to sing. Is it stylistic? And why the incessant repetition of "Where did you go?" Trying to make an anthem? The song isn't big enough and your voice is too angry and thin. No, this song is good but not great. The lyrics are flat. My website tells me that they're easily understood by a less-than-fourth-grade reader. The music is decent. It doesn't break any new ground and it doesn't challenge my perceptions. The vocals are adequate. The frequent use of auto-tune and the shouted "go" don't endear me. I wouldn't buy this.

#5 - If I Was God
Natalia Kills. You mean you wish you were God, Kills. But then, grammar has never been the most important element of lyric poetry. The song has an interesting conceit. The narrator feels like she's been lying all along and wants to come clean. However, if she tells the truth, her lover will leave her. So, this is a fantasy about what she would be able to do if she had infinite power. But that's where the song gets confused. What would she do if she were God? She would fix love, war, lies, and money. Those are not her relationship, which is what she's basically worried about. So what has happened is that she realizes that the image she projects is far more powerful than her reality. But what would she do if she were that much more powerful? Much more than just fix her relationship. She's in a hard place and she wants to fix it, but if she did, she would want to fix so much more. And the bridge is her slow reconciliation to the idea of actually leaving. As for the song--it's really good. It feels enormous and crashing. The vocals are enormous and haunting, and Kills gives it a flash and sizzle. It's a good song, and it speaks to fears people commonly have in relationships and about the state of the world. I wouldn't buy this.

#4 - Mirrors
Justin Timberlake. The lyrics to this song are lovely, and beautiful, and touching. But they are so difficult to parse. The idea of a mirror is that it reflects back with great accuracy what exists. People can look at themselves quite carefully and see (almost) what everyone else sees. But the narrator is singing to someone else. I thought "oh, maybe it's his healthy self-image! But no, they're not actually two parts of the same entity. He says "aren't you somethin', an original." So it's someone else who is also very much him. I thought "ah, then it's his relatives. Their genetics are passed down into him and he finds identity in them." But no, it's a girl and he has a relationship with her like a man with a woman because ""Girl you're my reflection" and "I can't wait to get you home." So it's a love song, then, but not one that makes it very clear what's going on. Essentially, I think it's a simple song purporting to be deep. The truth is that she and he are already two parts of a whole and he thinks of her as an extension of his body. But that's not exactly mirror and the "pocketful of soul" and other random imagery just serve to confuse. It's a love song. It's a good one, don't get me wrong, but it's nothing more than that. It's no more than Usher's DJ Got Us Falling In Love. And as for the music video--I can't quite follow it because it doesn't tell a direct story (this being 2013, such stories are so 1950s). I believe the woman and man met in a bar and she got pregnant and he proposed and they lived their lives out. I think. But they both look so different in the second stage that I'm not sure it's the same people. I think it's supposed to be, but they're played by different actors/have different makeup/clothing, or something. Anyway, it's confusing, but it shores up the "I love you" message of the song. And then Timberlake dances with some weird-looking women wearing spanx and wigs and "you are you are the love of my life" drones in the background. I don't know what to make of that, but it feels like a different music video. I love the sound and the feel of the song. I just don't know what it does for me. It's very good. It will be remembered for a long time. I just don't know if it's anything more than feeling like you're one person in a relationship. That's not bad, it's just that that simple message is obfuscated by all the extraneous imagery, and it takes what would be a pure song and confuses it.

#3 - Kill and Run
Sia. This song looks like a sad story that only the singer is a part of. She's watching a man sleep. She seems to love him. But she's going to kill him and leave? It's not really obvious. The only thing I can think is that she's going to shoot him metaphorically and is actually going to break his heart by leaving him or what have you. But the meaning isn't why it's on this list. It's gorgeous. Oh, boy is it gorgeous. It feels like it wouldn't be out of place in a massive house full of silent aristocrats, their faces upturned, soaking in the music. It feels like the sort of song that you should hear when you're standing on a mountain top, contemplating death and life. Who cares what the meaning is when it's so full and beautiful. Listen to it whenever, but always try to have some class when you do. I think the rash of songs that value beauty over content is forgivable only when they accomplish the true levels of beauty, and this one delivered. It's as wonderful as Adele and Lana and yet I've never heard of the artist before. I guess I should watch Gatsby sometime. I would buy this.

#2 - Sing About Me, I'm Dying of Thirst
Kendrick Lamar. Verse one seems to be about a guy on the streets who lives a violent life. Verse two is about a woman who lives off her sex. Verse three is about Lamar himself. The chorus is about immortality through song. That's my summary just from reading. So when I listen to it, I'm seeing it's actually a message more direct. It's a letter to himself. It's about the futility of his own songwriting, in a way. Verse three is from his perspective, I think, but even listening to the song hasn't made it clear. That's sing about me. Then there's a more passionate second half--dying of thirst. It's less controlled, more impending flow. The verses may be from Lamar's perspective, but at this point it feels more like he's singing on behalf of being stuck, as Coleridge put it, "as idle as a painted ship/upon a painted ocean:" dying of thirst. But the verses are oddly specific for so broad a topic. They detail the fear and hurt and hopelessness of a very specific situation without being, broadly speaking, the story of anyone whose story we heard in Sing About Me. The singing is hymnotic--the singer fills the syncopated emptiness with a vocalization. The singing washes over me, at least, when it leaves no space to process the words. I have to read along or become so lost I might as well give up. And once I'm lost, I lose the thread of both singer and meaning. It's an odd conundrum, to not be able to identify the speaker of the poem, but it's written so that I might not know at this point. The song has become, by being vague, more like a piece of modern art, that tells us more about the observer than the observed. And the play at the end looks more like a lampoon of modern religion than anything else. So, taking all of this onboard, what does this song say about the observed (specifically, me?). I can tell you that I have been avoiding this song for nearly a month. What's the reason for that? I read the whole thing and wouldn't even open the folder where the song was. I like to believe that it's because I was afraid I wouldn't have anything good enough to say about it. It's a powerful song, but look at me, foundering in the words, unable to find the meaning to pin it down. Is it because I can't relate?
If the topics of the song are dying of thirst, I'm overhydrated and I need to start sharing the hydration.
I've grown up a christian in mid-Missouri. I've had some bad times (nothing that can follow me) but I got past them within the span of the short lifetime I've had. I have made mistakes, but I haven't seen anyone die, implode, destroy themselves, or really feel the perpetual hopelessness of the song. The closest examples of hopelessness I can muster are never as completely crumbled to dust as the subjects of the song. So how can I react? What knowledge of them do I have? I think the song is supposed to provide me with the impetus for a reaction, whether I leave angry or in tears. I think the song is trying to prompt in me a return to the past, just for a mere seven minutes, to wallow in the fear and hurt and to despair the future. I think the song is desperate to get my attention, and I find myself running from it because I don't believe I can give it nearly the notice it needs. I guess I'm saying I wouldn't buy this, but it's an inadequate representation of the song.
It's a song, right? Just a song? Well, I'm terrified I don't have nearly enough to say. Maybe I'll revisit it. I have nearly everything else from the 40 at this point.

#1 - Summertime Sadness
Lana Del Rey. Let's talk about vamp. I only learned what it was because Pandora told me I like it and then I had to ask. Stephen was incredulous. "You don't know what vamp is?" He had to search for words, and when he explained it, Lana was his example. And you know what? I apologetically like vamping in songs. I don't know if it's because I'm just a thin, narrow sliver of a consciousness, or if it's because there's something beautiful in the purity of the message, or if I like the music far more than the words (I say, after having written so many thousands that perhaps it is likely that no-one but the dedicated would finish this enormous monstrosity, and certainly no human is going to dedicate the time to click every link to find out what I'm on about). But, as a singer, writer, and child, I like much better the songs that vamp until they fall down. Boy, does Lana deliver. (I'm avoiding the convention of referring to her as "Del Rey," in part because it sounds stupid and in part because I'm sure a constructed character won't mind if I use her first name as her only signifier.)
So Summertime Sadness is vampy, so what? It's also beautiful. There's something unreservedly fatalistic about Lana Del Rey, and if there's anything I have learned from the popularity of works like Titanic and Twilight, it's that humanity is a fatalist. As a group, we all expect death. We all seem to welcome it. By my count, twelve of the top forty are either directly about death, or about not caring about how you live, and those are just the ones I can remember a month after listening to them. By my recollection, even the most ancient of literature was almost entirely about dying, and especially the romantics were obsessed with death. Art in general capitalizes on death. And Lana Del Rey, if you don't mind my saying so, is the modern Keats or Byron--tragically beautiful, constantly dying, seductive, wonderful, and utterly doomed. I wonder--if she lives to be more than forty--will history completely forget her? If she dies tragically immediately following her second album, will history never forget? What a question.
The music video is about two women in love, which is not so odd a topic in this day and age, but made weirder by Lana's actual love affair with death. Who cares, I guess, who you fall for when in a few short days you'll be gone? I will now watch the music video, meaning I have already written three paragraphs about Summertime Sadness without interacting with it today. After watching it, I can report that it is indeed about death, the celebration of being young, and makes no sense. Also, it is difficult to see, the colors are intense where they shouldn't be and washed-out where they should. It has a frenetic twist, and it's difficult to extract an exact reason why anybody in the video should want particularly to kill themselves (the clothes lead me to believe it's modern and the setting is pretty clearly California, so why someone with lesbotic tendencies would feel suicidal post-pubescence and after finding someone who clearly loves them is depressing at best, and demented at worst, and since being a relatively accepted member of a minority group isn't necessarily a good reason for suicide, I think I choose to believe that it is summertime that has made her sad). I suppose I would buy this. In other words, I'm done with the top forty and I'm done with this song, and I want to listen to Happy again, because it's a good song and I love it.

Now for a Drake-style breakdown of my own writing.

• Music from the Point of View of an Unbeliever
• 45 pages of Times, 12pt, doublespaced, 1in margin length
• 924 unique lines (100% of total--to the best of my knowledge I never repeated myself)
• 139 unique paragraphs (100% of total)
• 2,430 unique words (21% of 11,457 total)

I also find it of note that 2,494 of my words were difficult, a proportion not even worth mentioning in Drake's drivel, a number which accounts for 22% of my total work. This contributed to the work having a 9-10th grade reading level, which is not bad for something written specifically for general Internet use.

I'm sorry I don't yet have a comparison. If I ever resurrect my laptop, I'll go digging for my longer papers. Right now, I don't have any basis of comparison, though I can tell you that JFK's graduate thesis from Harvard was only 172 similarly-spaced pages.