God damn it…
Yeah, I was insanely sick the past couple of days. It started when a toothache started to really make itself very noticeable while I was writing my JPEGMAFIA piece on Thursday. I phoned up the emergency dentist and made an appointment for the next day, for the second time in the past ten days. “But Alex”, I hear you cry, “Why aren’t you registered to a regular dentist? Or why haven’t you even gone to the dentist in the previous decade??”. To which I reply: shut up, mum! Anyway, soon after I made that appointment, my toothache became unbearable. Paracetamols were no good, I’m apparently not supposed to take ibuprofen because of my ulcerative colitis, so I was running out of options. Until I remembered that I used to be prescribed codeine! I rooted through all my old medications until I found a pack, and then munched down about a thousand of them! This kinda sorted out my toothache, but at the same time fucked me over in every other sense. The next day, I could barely get out of bed, cancelled my Chinese class in the morning, and honestly tried to write this fucking post, but my head felt like all my brain synapses had been placed inside an oil drum that had been violently kicked off the top of the K2. The effort it took to exist yesterday was already unbearable, never mind write this dumb list that nobody reads.
Which is a shame, considering that this is the only album on the list so far that actually has a song on it written about me. No, honestly, it does. Yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but it’s not, don’t put in the paper that I got crazy.
Because I’m not crazy!! At least, I’m not that sort of crazy. You’re talking about me like I’m one of those ‘creepy and deluded but generally harmless’ crazies, that will at worst get their Facebook account banned after they spam Camila Cabello questions about how they stole their dreams to write Havana. That is not my jam! I’m way more of a physical crazy. I dunno, maybe it was just me being brought up right, but I’m not going to waste my craziness on making statements online like these bloody Gen Z keyboard warrior crazies. I’m the kind of crazy that will correctly comprehend the coded messages that Reeta Chakrabarti is trying to send me on the BBC News at Ten and then translate that into actual action. While you half arsed Gen Z crazies are sending Tweets of your button mushroom genitalia to Myleene Klass, I’m in the master bedroom of Garth Crooks, licking a knife while I watch him sleep and waiting for the official telepathic confirmation from The Ancient Order of Hibernians that the deed is to be done. We are not the same. Go outside and touch grass, son! Specifically, touch the grass of the the Buckingham Palace lawn that you intend to defecate on after breaking into the palace naked last Tuesday night. There are levels to this shit!
So, yeah, as I was saying, Rich is definitely about me, or at least inspired by me.
Young Jesus’s last record was the already incredible ‘Shepherd Head’*, which reached #17 in 2022. In that review, inspired by a conversation I’d had with a friend, I started to unpick the privileges that many of the artists have had and the opportunities that their financial upbringing had afforded to them. I could do it again this year: The Smile are mega posh, privately educated, chinless wonders; James Blake‘s Dad was already recording musician with more than a dozen record credits, and Blake had classical piano lessons as a child; Allie X admits that “I grew up in the suburbs in a privileged kind of position; upper-middle class, never struggled for anything”‘; Les Savy Fav met at the Rhode Island School of Design private school, for God’s sake. Some of them shared classes with Seth McFarlane, which is actually extremely troubling for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on. I don’t do this to shame people or to wag my fingers about how these lopsided opportunities somehow make their art invalid. I just believe that there is no war but class war and that these disparities should always be noted to reveal the lie that there is true equality under capitalism. I aired these points during my 2022 Young Jesus review, though also pointing out that I had no idea what privileges head honcho John Rossiter ever had access to.
I grew up rich
And my daddy did too
But we’re never happy
In fact, if you knew
That his grandpa killed himself
In the garage
And four of us tried
But we didn’t get farMy aunt stabbed her brother
Deep in the neck
And then they committed her
Schizophrenic
She was lobotomized
For being free
For being dangerous
For what she’d seen
(*plus love was given for ‘love for a new century‘, an EP that was available for one day to raise money for the Midwest Action Coalition US abortion support. Phew! Thank God we solved that! Can’t imagine things getting any worse in 2025!)
Rich sounds to me like some sort of response to that?? We can never assume that John Rossiter is writing entirely from his own perspective, and the cast of characters present in ‘The Fool’s lyrics are one of its major selling points. The protagonist of Rich though, is explaining how their extra privileged upbringing didn’t shield them from suffering, that being financially well off doesn’t shield you from suicide, murder and mental health issues. In fact, the lyric suggests that one curse of the wealthy might be their inability to face up to these issues and question them:
Two anorexic
And two just got clean
And we never talk about
What it all means
Cuz this is the goddamn
American Dream
A lawyer, a banker
A couple more drinks
Cuz somebody’s daddy
Way back in the day
Made boatloads of money
From owning slaves
That slave line is one of the reasons I don’t believe Rich is a direct retort to my review. Although Rossiter is arguing that there’s still a unique type of misery that the upper classes experience – and that to ensure that you never need to worry about money again doesn’t shield you from life’s other worries – they’re careful to highlight that there is no moral ambiguity here. These people didn’t “Pull Themselves Up By Their Bootstraps” or “Start From the Bottom Now They’re Here”. This is generational wealth going back to at least when the US government paid them money to apologise for taking their slaves away. Rich isn’t arguing against my broadcasting of artist’s privileges, and also isn’t arguing that the rich deserve more of our pity, only noting that such great privilege doesn’t necessarily lead to a sheltered existence away from all human pain and misery. Cool. And it’s a great song. On an amazing album. I would never suggest that wasn’t the case though: again, I never argued that art made from privileged positions is invalidated. I just want to outline how not as many people are in a position to make art as there should be.
On the last verse, Rossiter gets a little amusing, but also risks losing the thread entirely:
And so many artists
Have a trust to their name
And nobody talks
And it all stays the same
We fight with each other
For the purest of all
Looks a lot like the whiteness
Back when daddy was born
OK, OK, OK, so many artists have a trust fund to their name? That’s very funny. Good start. And the next bit about all these rich kid artists arguing with each other, four Yorkshiremen style, over who was actually the poorest is also a funny allusion. However, when I listed the privileged upbringing of recent Necessary Evil entries, you might have noticed how I missed out JPEGMAFIA (signed up for the military aged 18 to escape a life of poverty – ““A recruiter came to school and I was like, ‘I have no other option, I can either die here or … at least this will get me out of my situation,”) and Lava La Rue (raised by a single mother on a London council estate and direct descendant of the Windrush Generation), which, without going too much into it, kind of outlines the assumptions that the track – or at least the protagonist – is making. That next line associating anti-rich hatred with racism in the past is –wow! – a brave one, and I simply have to read it as the deranged rantings of the upper class protagonist. The last bit really confuses me though:
And the worst of it all
Is that art saved my life
And the money did too
Yeah the money was nice
Cuz it bought me a shrink
And a warm place to live
And I bought a guitar
Back when I was a kid
Even if Rossiter is speaking through a character here, what point is being made?? Is the point that as long as artists have the foundations to make art then whatever privileges they had even out? Why bring the shrink up? Is that actually an argument that even with all of this misery the upper classes will still have it better because they can always afford the attempts at a cure? And what about that “The worst of it all is…”?? Is this in the voice of some deluded upper class protagonist again?? Are they being sarcastic and linking it back to anti-rich feelings being the same as racism?? Or is this actually Young Jesus being very ‘COMRADE ROSSITER!’ and completely seriously stating how the worst thing is privileged toffs making music to ask you to feel their pain?? John, mate, I appreciate the diss track, but I’m just not sure how best to respond!
Which is all to say: I love music that makes me think this much and Rich is a bigger diss track than Not Like Us.
‘The Fool’ is an absolutely fantastic record, by far and away Rossiter’s best so far. Stripped back from the proggy waves of ‘Welcome to Conceptual Beach‘ and the more electronic tones of ‘Shepherd Head‘, what might superficially sound like YJ devolving their sound actually leads to their most subtly rich and deep music yet. I may have been kinda joking when I focused on Rich, and I guess there’s a nonzero chance that Rossiter didn’t write in response to my 2022 post that has been viewed six times. That’s not a joke. Six times that post has been viewed. People really don’t give a shit about Young Jesus. And Rich actually fits beautifully within the album’s themes of happiness never being easy to come by, and how it’s difficult to celebrate successes in such a broken system.
And a moment, please, for Mr Rossiter’s voice. One that initially seems flat and monotonous, but the more you listen to YJ the more you appreciate how Rossiter is able to take that voice to any tone and to myriad emotions. They just sound like that! It’s beautiful, and so perfect for the music Young Jesus makes.
Fuck, I’ve spent quite a lot of time on this post. Six views for my last Young Jesus post?! Like, ever!
Album Title as AI Art
That is one fool ass kid.
Necessary Evil 