Letters from the office #1

Gerry Rafferty's Gen Z renaissance and other musical thoughts of the day.

“I’m in my Rayne Fisher-Quann era,” I say to myself as I start planning out mini essays that have neither the scope nor the intellectual analysis that her articles do. Truth be told, this year I wanted to start expanding the variety of music-themed writings I produce on Dead Letter Offices. I wanted to start researching and writing essays à la Trash Theory, and I also wanted to sink my teeth into the worlds of music criticism and fandom, similar to how the aforementioned Fisher-Quann writes compelling pieces on society and culture.

But the thing is, doing longer form articles and essays takes a great deal of time. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to do them - I just can’t churn them out particularly quickly. I put a lot of pressure on myself to do things that I’m not obligated to or to get them perfectly right, and combined with my depression, uni workload, part time comedy career, doing long distance, and trying to find other places to submit my writing – well, it’s a bit hard to find time to do the heavier stuff. I’m very proud of the piece I wrote this January on the rise and fall of U2, but when I finished it, I didn’t want to read it or hear about U2 for at least a month.

I’ve come up with a compromise: write shorter bits and bobs, then stick them together in a musical laundry list of sorts. I don’t know if this will become a series of laundry lists that I do from time to time. We’ll see. But the longform essays will come eventually, promise (although I can’t tell if that promise is more for myself than any prospective reader). In the meantime, I’ve written about some musical thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain and taking up space.  

Behold: my two cents on Gerry Rafferty’s Gen Z renaissance, Matty Healy’s umpteenth cancellation, the vibes I get from various Top of the Pops hosts, and Phum Viphurit’s new album The Greng Jai Piece.

On Gerry Rafferty’s Gen Z Renaissance

A fun fact about me is that I love deeply uncool music and I don’t particularly give a shit. I’m not talking about music that I actually find bad, but rather music that would tear my street cred in two. It genuinely surprises me that I don’t own a copy of Paul Young’s No Parlez. I can rap about 75% of the Wham Rap. I love the novelty song ‘Car 67’. Unironically. And I will, to some extent, defend the artistic output of Phil Collins post 1981. 

But there’s a whole genre of uncool music that I love from the 1970s. It doesn’t really have a name, but I imagine the sort of person who listens to it would probably be a bearded guy in flares, a wide collared shirt, and a knitted tank top. I made a playlist trying to curate all the songs that have this specific vibe - a sort of twee soft pop/rock situation - called Orange Wallpaper. On it you’ll find certain songs by Gallagher and Lyle, Lindisfarne, 10cc, Justin Hayward, and others of the same ilk. (To clarify, I don’t think any of the artists on this playlist are bad, and some of them I think are even a bit cool. It’s just the style of these specific songs that I find somewhat cheesy.)

One of the main artists that features on this playlist is everyone’s favourite Scottish musician, Gerry Rafferty. Best known for his song ‘Baker Street’, Rafferty was a founding member of folk rock band Stealers Wheel and enjoyed his fair share of success in the late seventies. I was introduced to him through my dad, who grew up in Britain during this time and has a particular soft spot for Rafferty’s 1978 sophomore album City to City, which has both the hits ‘Baker Street’ and ‘Right Down The Line’. Although you might also know ‘Baker Street’ (or at least, the iconic saxophone riff) from this vine.

As of late though, it would appear that the majority of people my age know Gerry Rafferty from TikTok, because ‘Right Down The Line’ has exploded in popularity over there. I cannot express to you how unbelievably funny I find this. TikTok’s gentrification of popular songs is a debate for another day, but I am actually quite pleased Rafferty is having his own little renaissance among Gen Z. Sure, most of them probably don’t know his name or listen to him beyond that song, but it amuses me that this uncool soft rock musician from the late seventies is suddenly having his day in the sun nearly fifty years later. 

After doing some digging, I found out that the reason ‘Right Down The Line’ has suddenly been gaining traction is because it was briefly used in an episode of the hit television show Euphoria. I’ve never watched it, but I’ve seen countless commentary videos on it and if you’ve had an online presence longer than five seconds you’ve probably heard of Sam Levinson’s drama about high school drug addicts. Honestly, finding out that Gerry Rafferty features in this show was even funnier to me than his initial TikTok boom. Euphoria has a reputation for being a cool, edgy show, and all of a sudden, you’re telling me that this little soft rock ballad by a guy that looks like a geography teacher is going to play while the main characters do a bit of coke? Who the hell is scoring this?

I guess why I’ve found this whole Gerry Rafferty debacle so amusing is because it is a direct collision between my all consuming interest in seventies/eighties music and my own status as a member of Gen Z. Typically, these things don’t overlap very much besides the songs that have somehow stood the test of time and are universally known (something like ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ springs to mind). But all of a sudden, Rafferty is appearing on Spotify’s my life is a movie playlist, which bears the pretentious lowercase description “every main character needs their soundtrack”. I actually barked out a laugh when I saw he was featured on a playlist like this, because the ‘main character’ concept is so utterly Gen Z that I could never reconcile it with somebody like him. He feels like just an average guy, not some perfectly manicured pop star.

I’ve seen reels about how the current music industry and Gen Z are so obsessed with appearances. Every artist needs to look gorgeous or stunning to at least have a shot at making it in the charts. Let’s bring back musicians that look like Russian car mechanics, according to this guy. We need more middle-aged pop stars. And Gerry Rafferty, as I’ve said, looks like a geography teacher (with all due respect to the man). For someone that has mixed feelings on TikTok’s ability to make any song instantly popular, I’m happy that we’re embracing someone as ‘uncool’ as him. It genuinely cheers me to think that people are enjoying music that doesn’t come with painstakingly curated aesthetics or images. Who knows, maybe we can get the TikTok girlies to start making videos set to Gilbert O’Sullivan next.

On Matty Healy’s Umpteenth Cancellation

“pro tip,” tweeted @lovelessgxrl last week. “the 1975’s music sounds a lot better when you don’t check to see why matty healy is trending every week”.

*wakes up* *sighs* *cracks knuckles* (Just kidding, I can’t really crack my knuckles.)

I am not joking when I say that it is getting harder and harder to be a fan of The 1975 every single day. I don’t mean that in the sense their music is getting worse - in fact, it’s actually kind of the opposite. What I mean is that as fans we are forced to endure this endless cycle:

1. Matty Healy says something stupid.

2. He receives hate and us fans get tarred with the same brush regardless of how we feel about it.

3. People eventually forget about what he said and everyone goes back to talking about how much they’d like to jump Healy’s bones. 

I for one am quite tired.

Well, when I say ‘us fans’, I am including myself in that collective from afar. I’ve been a fan of The 1975 since late 2018, not long after the release of their third album A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships. Seeing them live in 2019 was one of the best experiences of my life and I do think my love for them peaked in that year, though I’ve been following them fairly devotedly still. However, that devotion has never reached the point of me joining Stan Twitter, and that is mostly because my mental health is already on fire as is and actively engaging with people on there would probably send me over the edge.

That being said, I am on Twitter. I just merely lurk here and there. And as a result of my lurking, I can tell you that Healy has gotten into hot water countless times for saying or doing something stupid. He’s a problematic fave, as stans (read: the terminally online) like to say. Being a fan of The 1975 on Twitter in 2020 was unbearable, because the amount of vitriol and lack of critical thinking people possessed was awful. Healy would say something a bit tone deaf, and although rightly criticising him for it, people would get out their pitchforks rather than thinking about whether or not this was a hill worth dying on.

But that was then. This time, Healy has gotten into trouble for making some genuinely reprehensible jokes on a podcast that are all at the expense of various minorities. Whether you’re a fan or not, you have to admit that what he’s done is awful. And of course, Twitter has gotten out their pitchforks again to condemn him, which he honestly does deserve. But the cynic in me also believes that after a while, this is all going to die down and people are going to go back to making thirst edits of Healy and talking about him as if they know him personally. This has led me to consider three things.

Firstly, is Twitter’s cancellation crusade actually productive in the long term? Only a handful of months ago they were fawning over Healy’s episode of Chicken Shop Date with Amelia Dimoldenberg and openly expressing their thirst for him in a way that amused me but also slightly embarrassed me on their behalf. Now they’re treating him with a certain flavour of censure that would make Joseph McCarthy proud. A part of me thinks this is just Twitter being Twitter, because irrespective of fandom, Stan Twitter lacks any critical thinking skills. They just swing from one viewpoint to another with the herd mentality they’ve always possessed. If you look up The 1975 on literally any other social media platform, nobody really gives a damn. It’s always only just within the Twitter bubble that anyone feels morally obligated to bring a celebrity they don’t know to justice.

Secondly, how do I feel, both as a 1975 fan and a woman of colour? Of course I feel hurt by Healy’s jokes. They’re jokes made at my expense, made by someone who’s written songs that I adore. It does to some extent feel like a slap in the face. But what should I do about it? Should I stop listening to their music? I don’t really think that’s going to make a difference. The 1975’s music isn’t so intertwined with my own moral code that I can’t listen to their records without a bad taste in my mouth. The songs don’t sound terrible all of a sudden. They’re still great songs. In all honesty, I don’t really feel that much. Healy has been pulling the same stunts for a long time and people always react the same way - that is, condemnation followed by gradual forgetting or forgiving depending on who you ask. It doesn’t surprise me and so I don’t really feel a sense of betrayal.

But that is also my third point - should I do something about it? Should I even care? Technology has become so advanced since the twentieth century and I honestly feel that we shouldn’t know this much about each other let alone celebrities. That’s not to say we shouldn’t call out people for doing and saying terrible things. What I mean is, if we’re following people as closely as we are, we are inevitably going to find out something bad about them. Nobody’s hands are clean because nobody is perfect. So many classic rock musicians have probably said or done “problematic” things, but we don’t know about it because we didn’t have the technology to closely monitor everything they did back in the day.

The simple truth is that people can be shitty. And when you spend your entire existence trying to call out people for every last horrible thing they’ve done, it’s exhausting. Nothing is morally flawless, and you’ll never enjoy yourself if you try and find something that is. The rise of social media has also fostered this rise in parasocial relationships not just with musicians, but with celebrities in general. I completely understand wanting to get closer to people who have made things that have changed your life or improved it in some way, but a line has to be drawn somewhere, or you’ll end up feeling betrayed and hurt. In the end, Courtney Barnett said it best: “put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you”. 

I’m at risk of beginning a broader discussion surrounding cancel culture, which I don’t really want to do. But will I keep listening to The 1975 and see them twice in April? Yes. Are there other artists out there who have said and done bad things? Of course. Does it warrant never listening to them and/or burning their merch? It’s up to you. I don’t think we should be so quick to cancel nor to forgive. I operate on a case by case basis with how I want to respond to something, because I think cutting things out of your life as soon as you find them morally wrong will leave you with very little. Some things are so terrible that there is no choice but to wash your hands of them, but for the most part, I think there’s nuance to be had in discerning what media to consume. And I think that nuance is something most people on Twitter painfully lack.

On Tier Ranking Top of the Pops Hosts With Little To No Explanation

*cue Whole Lotta Love or Yellow Pearl theme song, depending on which year you’re tuning into*

In the past couple of years, I’ve watched countless old school episodes of Top of the Pops on YouTube with my dad, who often provides excellent commentary on the acts. We usually pick a year somewhere roughly between 1971 and 1987, then we find an episode from that year. I haven’t watched every single broadcast but I have become a bit familiar with some of the hosts.  So, as a sort of palate cleanser in between these lengthy musical discussions, I will present to you a tier ranking of said TOTP hosts with minimal explanation: 

S: John Peel & Janice Long (iconic duo)

A: David “Kid” Jensen

B: Peter Powell, Mike Read

C: Noel Edmonds, Tony Blackburn

D: Dave Lee Travis

Spawn of Satan: Jimmy Savile (self-explanatory)

On Phum Viphurit’s The Greng Jai Piece

Phum Viphurit’s second studio album, The Greng Jai Piece, released on January 31st, 2023.

When I discovered bedroom pop and its other indie scene offshoots in 2018, one of the things that appealed to me was how racially diverse its artists were. Up until then, my tastes were very white with the exception of 2 Tone and a couple of punk bands. Now I was listening to Boy Pablo, Mellow Fellow, and beabadoobee (yes, I was a fan even before the Patched Up EP and I’m genuinely quite astonished at how far back I go with her music). But my most important discovery was Phum Viphurit, a Thai singer-songwriter who had been raised in New Zealand. 

Growing up, I never really had any Thai artists to listen to. Of course, there were the pop giants that my mum had always heard on the radio, like Bird Thongchai. There was also the Thai reggae band Job 2 Do which my dad had discovered when I was small. But there didn’t really appear to be a Thai indie scene that was accessible to the outside world until Phum Viphurit came along with his viral hit ‘Lover Boy’. Suddenly, I had found an artist whose background and upbringing resembled my own, even if it wasn’t the exact same fit. 

I’ve been a fan of Viphurit since ‘Lover Boy’, going back to his debut album Manchild and then later championing his EP Bangkok Balter Club when it dropped in 2019. His Spotify bio best describes his flavour of indie pop: “a mixture of culture and colours, portrayed in a mellow, upbeat yet intimate sound”. In particular, I’ve always loved his guitar work - it feels very intricate yet cleanly executed, teasing out melodies and grooves that are just as fun to play as they are to listen to. 

The Greng Jai Piece is Viphurit’s sophomore record and his first solo release since 2019, although he’s done various collaborations during the Covid years. Needless to say, I was quite excited for it, since I’ve not only enjoyed his past work, but the singles released in anticipation of his new album. ‘Healing House’ is filled with Viphurit’s distinctive fingerstyle guitar and spins a candid but heartfelt tale about recovery and addiction. ‘Temple Fair’ is a more mellow situation, boasting gorgeous harmonies and commentary on social class. The final single, ‘Welcome Change’, is similarly laid back and enjoys a slinky, hypnotic groove that gradually picks up its pace until it’s transformed into a disco-like beat.

Something that I’ve noticed about Viphurit is that the subject matter of his songs has grown bolder and more personal over the years. The love songs of Manchild have evolved into ruminations on mental health or societal pressures, and these more intimate reflections pair nicely with his gentle style of music. The Greng Jai Piece continues this trend, with the aforementioned singles covering heavier subject matter and many of the album tracks tackling more existential themes. 

The album’s name comes from the Thai concept of ‘greng jai’ - a sense of not wanting to inconvenience others and instead putting them before you. Although a well-meaning, generous sentiment, I’ve found that many Thais submit to greng jai to an almost detrimental extent. They will let people walk over them or not speak up about issues affecting them due to the fear they’ll come off as a burden. Viphurit explores the double-edged nature of this concept in the track ‘Greng Jai Please’, which I feel is one of his strongest compositions - especially lyrically - to date. The way he dissects its strengths and flaws, how it permeates all of Thai culture and how it deeply affects self-perception, is extremely relatable to me as someone who has grown up witnessing my family adhering to it as much as possible. 

More than ever, The Greng Jai Piece is Viphurit connecting with his Thai heritage and exploring how it has shaped him. ‘Greng Jai Please’ is the most obvious example of that, but it also comes through on tracks like ‘Lady Papaya’, which samples from an old Thai pop song and continues its narrative about a Somtum shop owner. Additionally, ‘Temple Fair’ is inspired by the Thai film Monrak Transistor and “the boundaries of Thainess within our modern day context”, according to Viphurit. Indeed, there is a Thainess that permeates the entire record and I really enjoyed listening to an album that I could relate to. In many ways it feels like a reflection of my own experiences.

My only gripe with the album is that it feels very one note from a musical standpoint. Every song has the same set of sonic fingerprints so to speak - a mellow, acoustic soundscape that doesn’t push many boundaries or adventure beyond what Viphurit is already known for. I would’ve liked to have seen more experimental tracks like ‘Lady Papaya’, the groovy funk of which felt like a breath of fresh air. I wanted a bit of energy here and there rather than continually being given the same softened mood over and over.

That being said, The Greng Jai Piece is Viphurit’s strongest lyrical effort to date and some of his best work as a storyteller. As he continues to explore deeper, broader concepts, I’m excited to see what he delves into next. Sure, maybe this record isn’t a major leap forward. Maybe he isn't making strides with his musical ambition. But it’s definitely a step in the right direction, even if it’s a small one. And if there’s something I’ve learned from Viphurit’s observations, it’s that as long as you’re gentle with yourself, you can take all the time that you need.