Ke$ha Releases Video For "Die Young"
posted in: Music News • Pop
If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you’re going to find a lot to like in Ke$ha’s new video for “Die Young.” Inverted crosses and satanic pentagrams flash repeatedly in blatant, seizure-inducing patterns, while upside-down triangles appear superimposed over almost every single shot, splicing up the frames into disjointed tesselations. There’s definitely enough imagery present to incite rabid online discussions of secret Illuminati plots to take over the world, but like most of those theories, such arguments seem to miss the mark. What’s really going on in with the proliferation of these kind of inscrutable symbols in Ke$ha’s new video is a lot less sinister, but not any less devious.
Contemporary pop music loves youth almost as much as it loves sex. If you need proof, just listen to recent singles from One Direction or fun. This isn’t new, and it isn’t a coincidence. What’s common to both is that feeling of an endless present in which it’s almost impossible to imagine an experience that extends past “tonight” or even just “this moment.” Though morally righteous media critics make a big deal out of pop artists selling sex, that’s not really what they’re selling; they’re selling what sex means: an embrace of the moment, and a willful ignorance of any commitments outside of the instantaneous consumption of pleasure. When Ke$ha sings, “I’ll show you the wild side / Like it’s the last night of our lives” in the pre-chorus of “Die Young,” she’s hitting the sweet spot right in the middle of the Venn diagram of youth and sex. Her hungry, escalating church orgy during the course of the video makes it clear that both things are inseparable: the impregnable present moment of youth feels like sex, and vice versa.
If this also sounds a lot like the experience of listening to pop music, that’s because it is. It is exactly that. And it is exactly like watching the video for “Die Young.” During those three and a half minutes, nothing else matters except the undeniably catchy melody, the fat, buzzing synth, and the insistent four-on-the-floor kick. In the midst of the vast amount of visual symbols being thrown at you in neon-colored bursts, it’s almost impossible to step back and think coherently about the whole experience “ those who do simply end up with incoherent and implausible conspiracy theories. Ultimately, you have no choice but to surrender to the moment, to not think, and to just experience the immediate present that is being delivered straight to you on a pop-powered hedonic assembly line. While this isn’t the work of a secret underground organization dedicated to a new world order, it is the product of producers who are just as savvy about controlling how you think and experience music. And it really does work.
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