While working on some more Aimee Terese songs, I got sidetracked by a couple about alienation and online culture. But it's not unrelated, since they are the background conditions that lead so many people to search out refreshing online figures like her.
The first one is still in progress, based on a classic '90s hit which is itself reminiscent of an earlier one from the '60s — "Nowhere Man" by the Beatles. (Original lyrics here.)
This was part of a broader zeitgeist of leaving behind the cocooning / falling-crime Midcentury (roughly the '30s through the '50s), and becoming more outgoing, interactive, and connected. It acknowledged the cocooning mindset, but sought to coax the listener out by portraying how weighty and oppressive the climate had become by that point.
Other major examples are "The Sound of Silence" and "I Am a Rock" by Simon and Garfunkel, as well as books and movies like The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, and its later counterpart The Feminine Mystique. Recent shows like Mad Men explored this social-cultural transition as well. I wrote at length about these topics from about 2010 to 2012, so flip through those years in the sidebar to read more in depth.
Despite adapting "Nowhere Man" to a contempo setting, I decided to strike the universal chord of the original, back when societies were unified rather than polarized like now. There's nothing about specific tribes and their shibboleths, and the in-jokes are common to all sub-cultures. It's more like imagining the Midcentury zeitgeist, if they had the internet and a matured online culture.
This could never catch on today because nobody wants to acknowledge common problems across tribal lines, and it would devolve into Team A blaming Team B for A's problems, or Team A dunking on Team B and pretending they have no similar problems of their own. The audience for this song would be pretty narrow, but hopefully they're more likely to be reading sites like this one.
Not much in the pronunciation guide this time. "The real world" is the same length as "the world" in the original, so each word being half as long, and both "real" and "world" getting stressed. In the final line of verse 3, stress on "be" ("you'll BE in-ter-ACT-ing...").
* * *
He's a too online man
Sinking in the online sand
Huddled in the online stands, just onlooking
Disconnected from his roots
Transplant in a strange milieu
Can he be the only dude who's coping?
Online man, are ya winning?
Not too late for new beginnings
Online man, the real world will reach out its hand
Fingers numb from scrolling screens
Rusted mask of irony
Online man, can you still feel at all?
Online man, it's grown so murky
You can't spend your lifetime lurking
IRL, you'll be interacting with people, not brands
Disconnected from his roots
Transplant in a strange milieu
Can he be the only dude who's coping?
Online man, are ya winning?
Not too late for new beginnings
Online man, the real world will reach out its hand
He's a too online man
Sinking in the online sand
Huddled in the online stands, just onlooking
Huddled in the online stands, just onlooking
Huddled in the online stands, just onlooking
Nice.
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