// Mike Skinner // 01.05.13
The first album I ever owned was Vanilla Ice’s II The Extreme. I'm quiet proud of the fact that I listened to it once and thought, ‘That first song is a tune, but the rest is rubbish’.
Freddie couldn't give them any old rubbish, he had to give them Bohemian Rhapsody
When people see Freddie Mercury controlling a crowd of a hundred thousand people at Live Aid, they somehow imbue Freddie with the power of a hundred thousand people. But he only had that power because those people decided to like him. He was just the thing they happened to be into and any power he had was contingent on his ability to carry on giving them what they wanted. If he was truly powerful he’d have been able to give them any old any old rubbish and they still would have responded in the same way. But Freddie couldn't give them any old rubbish, he had to give them Bohemian Rhapsody.
It is possible to trigger change, but that change only comes about as a result of people acting according to their own free will, and no one can have control of that. You might think governments have infinite power, but in reality they’re pretty powerless, simply hoping to make decisions people agree with, or tying to take the credit for these they already do.
A lot of artists do a good song, then a shit one. They can retain their audience’s interest while writing shit songs for a certain amount of time, until ultimately people will go, ‘Actually that's shit’ and you get this very rapid depreciation in the value they're perceived to have as an artist. The duration of that grace period depends entirely on the charisma or mythological presence of the individuals concerned.
The most important scene in any film is the last one.
Every political dream pursued to its end becomes fascism.
Pop art
If you think about what really succeeds in art, it’s that unquantifiable newness that demonstrates why what went previously was wrong.
The first album I ever owned was Vanilla Ice’s II The Extreme. I'm quiet proud of the fact that I listened to it once and thought, ‘That first song is a tune, but the rest is rubbish’.
Freddie couldn't give them any old rubbish, he had to give them Bohemian Rhapsody
When people see Freddie Mercury controlling a crowd of a hundred thousand people at Live Aid, they somehow imbue Freddie with the power of a hundred thousand people. But he only had that power because those people decided to like him. He was just the thing they happened to be into and any power he had was contingent on his ability to carry on giving them what they wanted. If he was truly powerful he’d have been able to give them any old any old rubbish and they still would have responded in the same way. But Freddie couldn't give them any old rubbish, he had to give them Bohemian Rhapsody.
It is possible to trigger change, but that change only comes about as a result of people acting according to their own free will, and no one can have control of that. You might think governments have infinite power, but in reality they’re pretty powerless, simply hoping to make decisions people agree with, or tying to take the credit for these they already do.
A lot of artists do a good song, then a shit one. They can retain their audience’s interest while writing shit songs for a certain amount of time, until ultimately people will go, ‘Actually that's shit’ and you get this very rapid depreciation in the value they're perceived to have as an artist. The duration of that grace period depends entirely on the charisma or mythological presence of the individuals concerned.
The most important scene in any film is the last one.
Every political dream pursued to its end becomes fascism.
Pop art
If you think about what really succeeds in art, it’s that unquantifiable newness that demonstrates why what went previously was wrong.
