i’m having a pretty bad day which may explain why some of the music i’ve bought recently is grating on my nerves more than usual.

I’m listening to Au Revoir Simone and they’re singing about being under cherry trees with apparently the love of their life, and cryptically teasing people who are ‘always waiting’, and wording things to be somehow unreal and heightened, giving the listener the sense that Au Revoir Simone are superior, above it all, live a cooler life, appreciate the smaller things that the rest of us are too numb to notice… isn’t it a bit insulting to the listener? “I’m cooler than you, listen to me sing about it for 50 minutes”.

I have friends like this too, who go on about cooking or crafting or whatever their passion is and leave you with veiled criticisms for not appreciating the world the way they do, or not being as good at it as they are, it’s usually the more yuppie of my friends who do this… as though they’re trying to live their lives out of a magazine… Normal people can love what they do without making you feel crap about it.

I’ve also seen friends, perfectly normal sweet people, develop these pretensions when being interviewed, trying to sound ‘distant and floaty’, claiming they’ve attained some goal that the rest of us could never reach (huge career success, terribly thin body, total absence of materialism, religious awakening), as though this makes them more interesting to the interviewer and therefore the reader, as though this makes them more valuable in the world, more competitive with others in the world who are playing the same game of sort of deifying themselves while leaving a total absence of actually talking about their work; the thing they’re most passionate about.

It’s alway been that this kind of self-heightening has gone in in music to some degree, but to see it spread into real life, for no apparent reason I can find…. really aggravates me.

I mean I like my friends because they show a vulnerability, I like artists and musicians who talk about their processes and share their trials and tribulations. I am repelled by people who put themselves on a pedestal. When people start to promote themselves as above me or unattainable in some way, I no longer see the point, I lose respect for them… a songwriter who tries to make what they do sound mysterious, instead of sharing their work, or a friend with a spiralling (upward) career making out that they’re somehow detached from me, or my world now…. where does this come from?

I remember reading Smash Hits as a 12 year old and believing the lives of the people depicted were somehow different/heightened, I used to wonder about it a lot, it was a given that their lives were special somehow. But was that what made me like them or did I just like their cool hair and clothes? Would I have been less interested in Johnny Depp or Christian Slater if they’d talked about running out of toilet paper, or being hurt by someone’s comments? Isn’t this kind of ‘normal stuff’ exactly the kind of thing that tabloids try to get because ‘dirt’ sells. Levelling off the playing field, finding out Jennifer Aniston’s love life isn’t so perfect after all… we love that stuff right? We love when people are candid. Our eyes glaze over when politicians speak in principles rather than concretes.

So Is this kind of pretentious behaviour the path to success? I know it’s a form of self branding but should it spread to every level of life, are we assuming it’s valuable without thinking about it? Isn’t the need for the candid moments, and ‘dirt’ a reaction against it all? And anyway do people really value pretension from their family, friends and colleagues?

Am I really the only person in the world that doesn’t want to hear about some little musicians constructed world of natural perfection?