Op-Ed
The Coolness of Anderson Cooper, the Genius of Zac Efron
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The Absurdity Exhibition
I’m sitting in Libe Café on a gray Saturday afternoon, shifting my eyes anxiously, making sure the people around me don’t peak over at my computer screen to see me previewing songs on Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens’ iTunes Celebrity Playlist. I don’t want to ruin the surprise, but 40 percent of the High School Musical stars’ playlist is comprised of Hoobastank and MC Hammer … so there’s that.
But the Efron/Hudgens (from here on referred to as Hudgron) playlist — one comprised of vomit-inducing commercialized pop tunes that are annotated with poignant explanations of the each song’s inclusion such as, “I love this song cuz Elvis is da man.” — is markedly different from the vast majority of the celebrity playlists iTunes has to offer. More often than not celebrity playlists encompass either songs that no one outside of the offices at Spin has ever heard or tracks lost between singles on the albums of mainstream pop stars. Most celebrities toss together a mixture of Arcade Fire’s rarest and +/- {Plus/Minus}’s most popular; most form an awkward patchwork of Take 6’s biggest and Nirvana’s smallest.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper, for example, serves up a playlist with not only the token obscure song from an obscure band — “You’ve Got it All” by +/- {Plus/Minus} — and the token mainstream rarity — “Set the Ray to Jerry” by Smashing Pumpkins — but includes Pavement, a band that’s become a symbol of the coolness of obscurity.
The fact that these celebrity playlists are so underground/obscure-heavy should come as no surprise. Expressing musical preferences is nothing but an outward expression of self. And like all other conscious expressions of self, this process is contrived. The musical preferences we claim to have are less dependent on what kind of tunes we actually like than how we want other people to see us. During the five days of man flirting more commonly referred to as “rush week”, I was asked what kind of music I am into. I wavered for a few seconds, rambling about nonspecific rock music until I inexplicably settled on Incubus. Yeah, I like Incubus, but they are in no way emblematic of my musical tastes on the whole.
I tossed Incubus into a conversation at a frat because my goal was to come off as down to earth, with a slight edge but “hardly concerned” edgy, just like Anderson Cooper spouted off tracks by unknown New York bands in a playlist intended to distance himself from the mainstream, stuffed-suit hack persona that he has taken on. It’s his job to deliver the news so emotionlessly and with such neutrality that the audience sees him less as a human being than a mechanized conduit. Given the rare opportunity to show the audience his “true colors,” it’s no wonder he taints those colors in order to come off as thoughtful and fundamentally not mainstream.
Most celebrities choose to go the Anderson Cooper route in an attempt to add depth to a public self that is perceived as flat and nice and out of touch.
On the other hand, some celebrities select their songs differently. Former world champion boxer Evander Holyfield compiled a playlist of jazzy soul songs that’s less notable for its tracks than for the commentary about how he chose them. Holyfield says of the significance The Isley Brothers “For the Love of You,” “This song kind of reminds me of the one of the first albums that I bought (the O-Jays were the first.) I was just getting myself to a point that I could have a conversation because I did not run out of words to say to the girls. I didn’t have to break up with someone because I did not have anything to say anymore.” I’m not going to pretend to understand what the hell Evander is talking about, but I’m sure it makes sense to someone who took fists to the temples for a quarter century.
Finally we return to Hugdron. The couple’s playlist is unapologetically full of annoying mainstream pop garbage that becomes unacceptable once you hit ninth grade. Let’s face it, “The Reason” probably compels those sellouts in Hoobastank to smash their ears into hard surfaces just like everybody else. We have to assume that Hudgron compiled this playlist not to show the readers something about themselves but rather to achieve a much different goal.
The only people who enjoy songs like “The Reason” and “Accidentally in Love” are the same over-medicated little nerds who made High School Musical into a worldwide phenomenon for the ‘tween sector. If these little girls and boys find their way to iTunes and see that Hudgron likes the same aural trash that they like, they’ll conclude that they have something in common with the superstars they adore. This will turn the little kids into hardcore fans and hyperconsumers of all things Hudgron. I make fun of their playlist but it’s really marketing brilliance. Hudgron is making the iTunes Celebrity Playlist work for them, or more accurately their bank accounts.
And Anderson Cooper just wants us to think he’s a cool dude.
Tony Manfred is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at tmanfred@cornellsun.com. The Absurdity Exhibition appears alternate Mondays.