www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2006/as-co ... 7w3052.htm
The music scene: Who is waiting on the world to change?
By John Fleming
Editor at Large
09-18-2006
John Mayer is a fine musician. He has given the last few years to creating deep heartfelt blues, some very soulful music that sometimes plumbs the depths of human emotion.
Mostly, though, he's an icon of the bubblegum-smacking crowd, so if you are, say, over 18, you can be forgiven for not knowing him from Bill's house cat. His popularity comes from the fact that he sings lots of lullabies that make the girls scream and the guys feel inadequate, land him in the top ten on the pop chart and make him a truckload of money.
He can be an all-around kind of music man, but one thing he apparently doesn't do is write songs that have a social conscience. Oh, there's nothing unusual about that. Most music of the day is what turns the spirit of the young or the young at heart — love, as in how good it is; love, as in how much it stinks; sex, as in enough said.
John Meyer's got some of those songs, including “Your Body is a Wonderland.”
And that's OK. It's his contribution to making the world a giddy place.
But it was a disturbing song called “Waiting for the World to Change” that gnawed at me before and after I shucked out 99 cents to download it the other day. I needed to make sure I was understanding what the guy was saying, wanted to make sure the music mixed with the words wasn't somehow suggesting irony resided within the lyrics.
I am very sad to report I found none.
And that gave me a stomachache.
Now I feel like my iTunes have been polluted and, I venture to say, the image of the very generation he claims to represent has been polluted.
This isn't a song of love or happiness or even sadness or serendipity; it is a song of defeat, and an outright celebration of apathy.
If the 18 to 24-year-olds of the nation aren't careful, this song could become the ballad that defines them.
What else to make of this:
It's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance
so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
now if we had the power
to bring our neighbors home from war
they would have never missed a Christmas
no more ribbons on their door
... it's not that we don't care,
we just know that the fight ain't fair
so we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change
So, because you don't have the power to change things, you just sit on your rump and wait ..., wait until, .... when? The cows come home?
Let's see. That would have gone over really well during the Civil Rights Movement, the women's suffrage movement, the war in Vietnam, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the American Revolution, and on and on.
It is a jarringly disturbing attitude especially when you stack it up against the veterans of political music, who have reluctantly come back on stage with messages that prick the collective consciousness — Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, to name a few.
If Woody Guthrie were alive, he would not only be mad, he would be strumming his guitar and making a statement along with them. If Pete Seeger were up to it, he would be there, too.
CSN&Y are packing venues across the nation using music of a quarter century ago to stir middle-agers into action. Patti Smith is calling for nothing short of revolution.
Where is the musical outrage?
Well, it's out there, but just not like it used to be. The medium is fractured. We don't listen to the same stations, and the stations, numerous as they are, often don't like the controversial. ClearChannel, that is.
And in fairness, John Mayer doesn't speak for all young people any more than the ardently anti-war band Green Day speaks for all young people.
But the artistic sin he is committing — suggesting you have no power — is especially galling. That's not only wrong, it goes against everything America stands for.
Since when did we ever lay down — even in the face of wrong-headed super-patriots — without a fight?
From a nation that produced icons of folk music like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, John Mayer is an embarrassment.
About John Fleming: John Fleming is The Star's editor at large.
Contact John Fleming: E-mail:
johnfleming2005@bellsouth.net
I salute you. 
