First of all. I had no idea about this song until a few weeks ago. Secondly, I haven't been to America in over two years. I'm super homesick. I don't think I'll be able to make it for another six or eight months either. My impression of the place these days is that of an angry political smack down and a lot of people without jobs. But for this to be the number 1 billboard song is a total surprise.
Billboard gives me a kind of cringe reaction. I guess I trained myself to be all alternative when I was a kid. I would decry anything that was popular as being shit. I still kind of do that. I think that way whenever I see Maroon 5. Maroon 5 is just that frontier of boring crap. It is like a Dave Mathews Band hermit crab that died and Maroon 5 moved into the shell. See....I get onto a stream of conscious that dregs up all kinds of venom.
But damn, this song is so emo. It has been viewed on youtube 300 million times. I don't know what to conclude about my countrymen these days? Are they politically divided and just super emo? What the hell is going on? And it sucks because I'm in Korea. Kpop is so popular here that Koreans have deluded themselves into thinking that there are people in Nebraska bobbing their heads to The Wonder Girls....eh maybe one or two might be. It sucks culturally to be in Korea and away from popular culture in America.
My co-workers have all been in Korea for about the same amount of time as me. Conversations always devolve down to shit that was said on the Chappelle Show. I figure there are two reasons for that. 1 Dave Chappelle rules. 2. That's where culture stopped for us.
I posted on facebook about how deep this song is, and about how it is strange for it to be the #1 song. I also mentioned how late to the party I was. My friend a D.J. in the group "Flosstradamus," replied that the song had actually been out since 2011. Trust me, Korea isn't going to catch on until a few weeks later. They've got their own thing that they are dealing with now. It's cool though, I heard this on Bae Chul Soo last week, so it will catch on eventually.