Eric Pfeil's pop diary: Summer Of Pop

Episode 271

For your chroniclers, the summer was of modest pop-cultural enlightenment value at best. I was only able to wring three insights from my heat-induced suboptimal brain. First: Taylor Swift is the Phil Collins of her time. There's nothing bad about that. But it does explain why I can't relate to her very much.

But it doesn't make me swell with curiosity or anything like that – it's an art-friendly disinterest. I often have that with things that can't be escaped, possibly a pubertal reflex. Taylor Swift is the roaring now on stilts, the here and now to sing along to – just like Phil Collins was in the 80s. I'm excited to see how I'll find Taylor Swift in 40 years (even at 94), when her persona and her music are freed from the negative of omnipresence.

My appreciation of the former Genesis musician has definitely been greatly enhanced by the fact that he no longer has 47 songs in the charts at the same time: after his omnipresence annoyed me more than all the teachers at school in the 80s, I quite like him now. I even bought his album “No Jacket Required” recently, although I've never heard it before.

I basically only listen to Phil Collins when I'm driving around and find myself listening to stations with the best of the 80s instead of the culture-obsessed public radio stations. Possibly a sign of increasing mental decline. My favorite station has the brilliant name 80s80s, and one of the presenters is a gentleman called Torte. In my opinion, that alone is reason enough to tune in regularly.

Buying records that you no longer want

The second insight is nothing new for victims of senseless vinyl accumulation: the joy of buying a record at a flea market is increased by the story that goes with the purchase. I recently found Stevie Wonder's “In Square Circle” in a three-euro box. When I tried to hand the money to the seller, he spoke with the most beautiful Polish accent: “This man always had high phone bills. He kept calling just to say: I love you.” I gave him five euros and said: “That's right.”

For the rest of the day I was filled with a special cheerfulness, I was practically swinging with the cosmos. And I didn't really want the Stevie Wonder record that badly anymore. Some cunning goddess of fate wants me to always find the exact records at flea markets that I haven't been looking for for some time. But how do you deal with such an existentially complex situation? Of course you buy the record anyway, feel strangely guilty about it and continue to work towards the static worst-case scenario in your own apartment.

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The third revelation: AC/DC are, after all, the best rock band of all time. Maybe not the current version, where people put on glowing devil horns at stadium shows in the dark, but definitely the one with Bon Scott and the first two Brian Johnson records. I bought their early records again during the summer, and they are even better than when I used to jump around the children's room to them soloing on a tennis racket because I didn't have a guitar.

Taylor Swift and AC/DC aren't that far apart: musically, they both cover a similar, manageable area. AC/DC's glowing devil horns and Swifties' glowing bracelets are ultimately the same thing: fetishes of consolidation, totems of pop. Trump supporters tried something similar with the solidarity bandage on their ears, but it didn't shine in the dark.

That was my summer in a nutshell too: I sat on the balcony, thinking about Taylor Swift and listening to “Powerage” by AC/DC. And while I was doing that, with my red devil horns flashing on my head, I stared at the Collins photo on the inside cover of “No Jacket Required” and could only think one thing: I need exactly that suit!