jwgh | Let's say you're Randy Newman

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and you've been asked to play a song at the end of Steve Jobs's keynote at the beginning of MacWorld. Which of your songs would you pick to play?

Current Mood: amused

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From:

doctroid.livejournal.com

I'd play one whose point I understood.

From:

jwgh

I take it to be sort of the opposite of 'I've come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.'

Edited Date: 2008-01-15 08:09 pm (UTC)

From:

jwgh

Also, a fuller response is below.

(deleted comment)

From:

jwgh

I gather that the song was initially written as a response to one of George W. Bush's State of the Union speeches.

I said above that I thought it was sort of the opposite of 'I've come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.' It reminded me of that speech by Mark Antony because there's the sort of stated goal of the piece, which keeps getting returned to (and undermined) throughout the piece, and then there's the real goal which is somewhat submerged and doesn't entirely emerge until the end.

So the stated goal is to praise (or defend) America, but at the end it is more of an elegy for American greatness, ending with the words 'Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye'. For better or worse, he's saying, it's over.

That's what I make of it, anyway. Regardless of the exact meaning, I think that it was pretty funny song to pick to play at MacWorld.

From:

notr.livejournal.com

All that, say, Rolling Stone bothered to tell us was that he played "You've Got a Friend in Me." I had to dig down into blogs to find out that you were not actually making this up!

From:

jwgh

Yeah, that's really not the same song at all. I wonder if that's the song he was originally supposed to play and, if so, if he told anyone about the change in plans?