15th
Speak, Memory, of the Cunning Lady…
It wasn’t anything I had planned on, but after a few months of hearing it on the radio, I became obsessed with a song. Not just any song. The worst song in the world.
Question: Am I a bad person because I really like the song “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga.
Answer: Yes.
The song praises the most terrible, heathen aspects of contemporary culture. It might singlehandedly prove the death of Western civilization. When I first heard it, I imagined that it was the song that the sirens sang to Odysseus and his men in the Aegean Sea. Of course, some of the sailors would still listen to the song and would find it irresistible. But I think if Odysseus had heard the song he would have cried from sadness.
.
The sophistication of the beat is fit for a thirteen year old and, coincidentally enough, that’s 80% of Lady Gaga’s audience right there. That seems appropriate, until one remembers that the message of the song is to push through the blackout drunk dizzies and continue to dance, thereby attracting as many one-night stands as possible. When I was 13 I still listened to the Shiloh book on tape. A lot.
So it’s not the awful music, it’s not the concerning lyrics, it’s not anything that the song stands for. And it’s absolutely not the video, which is maybe the most contrived thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube. And that’s saying something—they have clips of Blind Date on there. What is it, then?
The enthralling qualities of “Just Dance” stem from its fulfillment of the three original purposes of song-making: to tell a story, to inform the listener’s moral sense, and to offer reassurance and hope. Since I already mentioned it, let’s go back to The Odyssey: the original chart-topping hit. The epic poem, which was sung to generations of misty-eyed Greek boys, is one of the very first existing works of Western literature and is quite possibly the crux of the entire Western canon. Just as the poem is typical fare for 9th grade English classes as an introduction to all of literature, it served (and arguably still does) as the fixed gold standard for fiction. Homer not only created a story, but he created the story, and the way to tell it. There’s no need for me to go into any analysis of the poem—hundreds of scholars (real ones) have done so. But I will note that the poem serves three primary functions:
1. Entertaining. The Odyssey is, at its core, a really great story. Sea monsters, Cyclops, beautiful and seductive women, deities, alcohol, food, gruff suitors, a love story, a father-son bonding story…it’s every movie on imdb rolled into one. What else is there to do in 8th century Greece at night or on a lazy Sunday? Invent Calculus? I don’t think so.
2. Didactic. Watching Sylvester Stallone reruns on TV offers a pseudo-parent that informs a young boy’s moral compass. Right: fighting for what is just. Loving your son. Working hard. Wrong: Guys who fight dirty. Guys who are wimps. For young Hepatitis or Ajax or whoever, enter the oral poet, the first lo-fi babysitter. All of the characters in The Odyssey are conveying a moral message that instruct and develop its listeners’ moral sense.
3. Encouraging. Would the poem have survived if Homer had been Debbie Downer, and Odysseus had never made it home? Would it have survived if Telemachus had decided, instead of going after his father, to just hang out at home and drink himself into oblivion? Would it have survived if Penelope had been feeling all girly and made out with one of her suitors? I have no idea. But the story is, without a doubt, overwhelmingly positive and proactive. It’s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful Aegeans.
“Just Dance” is the contemporary equivalent of The Odyssey, perfectly suited for our attention span at just over four minutes. Or, perhaps “equivalent” is too selective a word. The song realizes all of the same functions as The Odyssey (and, for that matter, most of Western literature)—a rare accomplishment for contemporary top 40 hit. Most songs execute one function: they’re a good story (“Mrs. Officer” by Lil’ Wayne ft. Bobby Valentino), they’re ethically instructional (“Live your Life” by T.I. and Rihanna), or they offer some sort of hope (“Ride” by Ace Hood). The fact that “Just Dance” does all three is, I believe, what has skyrocketed it to being the number one pop song in America right now. I know it’s not her bangs.
It’s entertaining, of course: a girl is having an adventure fueled by strong drinks and kickin’ beats: who knows what will happen! Oh wait. I think I do. Additionally, it’s didactic, overtly so: Lady Gaga is actually telling us what to do. We are free to make our own choice, but we have a specific sense of direction from the singer. We should dance. We must dance. If we don’t dance, something bad might happen. This explication is even more straightforward than the Homeric kind. In The Odyssey, it’s pretty obvious that the hero is the good guy, and that we should strive to embody his arête in our lives. But that’s too open-ended for Gaga. The hero of the song is just going to dance. From our experience with Western Literature, then, we would assume that the protagonist is the honorable character that we should imitate. But Gaga explicitly confirms our assumptions, repeating instructions over and over: yes! Just dance!
The didactic nature of old songs was moral—listeners received ethical instruction on how to live. Though the instruction in Gaga’s song is an action, dancing, within the context of the song it acts as a principle. “Dancing” for Gaga doesn’t just mean stepping to the foot-stomping party anthems. In the song, the protagonist chooses to fully commit herself to the moment. She refuses to concern herself with trifling details like the location of her phone or the name of the club. She isn’t going to worry about her wobbly vision or the history of her costume changes. These are unnecessary wastes of time and energy that offer no productivity. The club is dark and loud and crowded—it’s highly unlikely she would ever find her phone that night. She’s not going to be tested on the name of the club, so it’s unnecessary information at the moment—she can determine that when she leaves. She’s already had too much to drink, so her dizziness isn’t going to disappear anytime soon. Somehow her shirt got turned inside out, but it probably still looks good and, ultimately, she still has a shirt. She is going to embrace the situation and dance, thereby signifying her differentiation between what is worthy and what is inconsequential—just like Odysseus. And, just like Odysseus, she will pursue her quest (in this case “getting hosed tonight”) without being defeated by trivial obstacles. She even alludes to the characteristically Greek virtue of physical fitness as part of her instruction: “Go! Use your muscle, carve it out, work it hustle / (I got it just stay close enough to get it) / Don’t slow! Drive it, clean it, lights out, bleed it / Spend the lasto / (I got it) / In your pocko / (I got it)” Clearly, Lady Gaga is not keeping her Homeric references subtle.
The final function of classical songs is to offer a sense of hope and reassurance to the listener. If the song was sung during a time of famine, war, pestilence, or other uncomfortable conditions, it didn’t matter. Listener, take heart: good will ultimately win, and evil will ultimately lose. Despite years and years of setbacks including witches, his own incompetent sailors, and actual deities working against him, Odysseus made it to Ithaca and reclaimed his wife, son, and home. To any young boy listening who felt 
that sometimes the gods were conspiring against him, The Odyssey offered unequivocal comfort. Heroic and honorable qualities would eventually fare stronger than any obstacle, and everything would be fine. That exact sense of optimism exists in Gaga’s song. “It’s alright, alright, just dance, gonna be okay…” The word “just” in this case doesn’t really mean “no less than” or “neither more nor less than”, as in “When I heard this melancholy News, I was just ready to expire with Grief” (John Melton, 1726, Astrologer or the figure-cast), or as in “don’t do anything other than dance”. It means “simply”. Though these two definitions of the word sound congruous (and, indeed, are listed in the same breath in the Oxford English Dictionary), they are mildly differentiable. To be instructed to “do this, only this, and nothing else” and to be instructed to do “simply this” are different in tone. The former is highly specific, the latter is much more soothing to hear. Simply dance, and everything else will take care of itself. Oh look, here’s Colby O’Donis. He’s saying that you can leave the club with him. See? You don’t need to fret over your lost keys. You’re fine. We’re fine. Everything is fine.
Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” executes the three classical functions of songs in a truly contemporary, over-the-top, no-room-for-questions manner. It offers an exciting story of adventure complete with a hero and a traditional myriad of obstacles. It offers the listener explicit instructions and guidance about being a virtuous human being. And, finally, it offers a supreme sense of encouragement. Like Odysseus, the protagonist in the song is battling various forces in the name of doing the right thing, on a quest towards the fated happy ending. However, unlike Odysseus, and despite the song’s reassuring message, we are never positive that everything works out okay for Gaga in the end. Did she make it home? Did something bad happen to her on the dance floor? Though we have been instructed not to ask such trifling questions and to embrace the moment, and though we have been assured that dancing will ward off all evil, we are ultimately left with questions and concerns regarding the well-being of our beloved protagonist. Perhaps this aspect, more than anything else, fuels my (and fifty million other Americans’) insatiable desire to hear the song. When the familiar synthesized invocation spills out of the speakers, we momentarily suspect that, maybe, just this once, we’ll hear the extended version—the one with her gallantly returning home to a joyous welcome from her roommates. We sit impatiently, just as the boys of ancient Greece did, reveling in the same story that we’ve heard a thousand times before. We wait for the end, restless for the fantastic finale that we can only imagine. And though it never comes, and the song fades into a car commercial, we sit back, fully content with the previous four minutes, anxious for it to begin all over again.
