Sugar High '98

Pop Still Matters? You Must Be Crazy!

Comments (0) By Jane Dark Tuesday, Jan 12 1999

Or maybe the song's the last echo of Kurt's suicide (now that's self-canceling). His note, after all, was about the sickness of rock stardom, and about his failure to have the right relationship to the kids. To Local H these aren't private demons— they're simply material. Now that grunge has laid its cards on the table, we can all stop playing. Dave Grohl has. Despite being one of the living relics of the religion, this year he canceled grunge entirely. Having wandered onto Howard Stern, he apparently figured it was too late to be cool (Where's the "Corporate Shock Jocks Still Suck" T-shirt, Dave?). So instead he played an "Everlong"— aimlessly aggressive on record— that ended up displacing the original from mod-rock playlists. He sang it slow and sad, like a real love song, and worked his acoustic guitar like an amateur. You could hear him breathing as he sang "breathe out so I can breathe you in"; you could hear him waiting when he swore he'd "waited here for you." And when he pleaded "come down and waste away with me," damn if he didn't sound wasted. To finally get it exactly right, to get at the truth of your song on an idiot talk show, in a way that makes everything you've ever sung seem like bullshit— it's enough to make you crazy.