Burns & Poe – I Need A Job

OCCUPY SOMETHING?

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[3.83]Anthony Easton: As a liberal, this breaks my heart. But thinking and reading seriously about this, I am not sure how functional the WPA actually was in providing employment for people. I am not sure how useful Obama’s wealth plans are, and I damn well know that the Eurozone work is a complete fucking disaster. I mean, it is better than Friedman style free-markets, and China’s ignorance of labor standards means everyone (including the 6 year-olds) has a job, and “working with their hands” is what happens in toxic factories there. As much as I appreciate rousing choruses, it doesn’t provide a solution; but then, neither can I. (I am writing this, instead of being arrested at Occupy Toronto, and any job I have is tenuous freelance work and I have student loans I cannot afford, so I can’t fault Burns and Poe very much.)
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Brad Shoup: That’s weird… my dog started howling. Look, I understand we need outlets for free-floating unease, and the byzantine, opaque nature of a mature democracy can cause existential fits. And I don’t like telling songwriting constructs how they ought to act, but for a guy who just wants to work, dude whines a lot. In the complex cosmology of this song, Obama is some kind of trickster sun-god, snatching our jobs and stuffing them in a sack. And Congress, apparently, is made of men and women who aren’t, by and large, a collection of ultra-connected millionaires who will hit the ground running once their time in office concludes. To Burns and Poe, the government is utterly ineffective, except when they confidently request some work from it. Their meta-plan is to write a comically simple protest song clocking in at barely over two minutes, in hopes that kindly radio programmers will offer them welfare in the form of gap-plugging airtime for the morning shows. As hustles go, it’s not bad. Lord knows that Trick Pony money ain’t pouring in.
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Katherine St Asaph: Something tells me Burns and Poe have more criteria than just working with their two (four?) hands. Not much handiwork went into the arrangement, after all.
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Edward Okulicz: I appreciate slogans and catch-cries. I’m not sure that I appreciate them when they’re sung. Burns & Poe sure know punctum and how to swing a few hits at Washington, but I’m curious to know what Washington is a metonym for — Obama? The Republican-controlled congress? Lobbyists whose companies downsize ruthlessly or move jobs off-shore? Its generous malleability to any feeling of political or work-related disengagement is hard to deny but it’s still just a shallow slogan.
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Jonathan Bogart: Brevity is the soul of pop; a lot is covered by a meme-sized bite.
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Zach Lyon: This song makes so much nonsense in such a small space I’m surprised it doesn’t end with WE ARE THE 53%.
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