Feel the Love

Today is Schadenfreude Day here at No Such Nonsense, wherein we take just a little bit of pleasure in the misfortunes of others.

Who am I kidding? Every day is Schadenfreude Day when I'm around. And on the subject of Schadenfreude, mad props to the Germans for having the good sense to coin such a perfect word for such a profoundly human emotion.

But to get back to the point of this post - two recent news items had me experiencing more than a little schdenfreudeyness.

Exhibit 1: Avril Lavigne

Avril is being sued for stealing large parts of the song Girlfriend (get out of my head, you evil little song) from an obscure little 1970's ditty called 'I wanna be your boyfriend.' Now Avril has always maintained that she writes her own songs, positioning herself as an authentic alternative to the processed pop delights of Britney et al. So this couldn't possibly be true, right? Surely a former mentor, collaborator and friend - a respected voice in the Canadian music scene - can speak up for Avril and clear this whole mess up. And so, to Chantal Kreviazuk, with whom Avril wrote much of her second album. Says Chantal, in this month's Performing Songwriter (per Lainey):

"I mean, Avril, songwriter? Avril doesn't really sit down and write songs by herself or anything. Avril will also cross the ethical line, and no one says anything. That's why I'll never work with her again. I sent her a song two years ago called "Contagious," and I just saw the tracklisting to this album and there's a song called "Contagious" on it-- and my name’s not on it. What do you do with that?"

See, if Avril weren't such an annoying, spit-spewing, self-satisfied little twerp, we might feel bad for her. Not everyone can be a songwriter. If it was easy, everyone would do it. But, no, songwriting is hard. And so folks like Linda Perry and Max Martin and Chantal Kreviazuk are paid a lot of money to write songs for other people. There's no shame in not being able to write a great pop song. But if you can't do it, maybe you shouldn't pretend that you can.

Exhibit 2: Tipper Gore

Maybe I'm going to hell for this one, but I can't help it. Tipper's son, Al Gore III, was arrested this week for drug possession. Young Albert was speeding along in his Prius, was stopped by police and happened to have with him some Pot, Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall.

Now you may recall that Tipper spend much of the late 1980s and early 1990s campaigning to clean up that dirty rock and roll music, after she found her 11-year-old daughter getting her groove on to Prince's Darling Nikki. It was largely through Tipper's efforts that the recording industry introduced the parental advisory label (which, incidently, one assumes has been rendered totally useless in an i-pod world).

So after Tipper spent a decade worrying about stopping other people's kids from listening to the dirty, dirty rap music, it turns out she might have wanted to spent a little more time explaining the whole 'drugs are bad' thing to her own brood. If only the bottle of Vicodin had a parental advisory label on it!