ALARM CLOCK REVIEW: “Gangnam Style,” 6:43am

on Sep 28, 2012

 
"Without you, I am nothing!"


After two rounds of the snooze bar, the nonsensical conversation I was having with an old middle school classmate whose name I can no longer remember is permanently interrupted by the workmanlike monotone call of “heeeeyyyy, sexy ladies!” A feeling of emptiness sets in almost immediately. It was apparent from the beginning that the complete package had a value greater than any one part of it, but the stark light of the radio format forces the outwardly confident tune to confess to its visual better-half, “without you, I am nothing.” Unmoored from the Internet, where its claim to the zeitgeist (at least for another week or two) is clear and continuously refreshed, the song drifts aimlessly, lost in time, imaginably just as much at home next to a deep cut from C + C Music Factory as the fist-pumpers they play in the grocery store up the street from my apartment.

Unlike yelling at someone’s butt, which is never lost in time, but always timeless.