I can’t say I remember when trend lists started popping up on Facebook, Yahoo, etc. All I know is that I have grown to love the things like dear, know-it-all friends. They are the perfect at-a-glance tools for people like me – people who tipped the 30s scale and want to know what the kids today – with their hula hoops, MTVs and jalopy hot rods – are boppin’ to.
My favorite thing about trend lists is that you can always rely on at least one trending topic showing up and looking like it has no business whatsoever hanging with the rest of the group. Just this morning I checked the Yahoo home page and discovered that Axl Rose was trending – at number one. And of course I clicked – half out of curiosity, half out of hopes that someone had finally orchestrated a class-action lawsuit against him for the decade-plus wait for Chinese Democracy and the soul-crushing disappointment spawned by its release. With expectations of that caliber, one can imagine the shock I felt upon reading the Daily Mail headline: “Axl Rose revealed as ‘greatest singer of all time’ in study.”
*insert obligatory record scratch sound effect here
Photo by Jason Halstead
I’ll go ahead and clarify here that the study was conducted in celebration of the Billboard Music Awards, and that noted singers – past and present – were pitted against one another in terms of coverage within a five-octave vocal range. HOWEVER – those of compromised attention spans very likely scanned said headline and closed the file on their “Why is Axl Rose suddenly relevant again?” fact-finding missions. With that, living vocalists likely spent a sizeable portion of the day wearing vexed expressions, while those in the afterlife felt a disturbance strong enough to punch a hole through the divider between our planes of existence. If any of us had bothered to look through that hole, we would have seen Freddie Mercury, clad in his white denim vestments; a single tear rolling down his stoic face like the litter-abhoring Native American in the 1970s PSA.
To the minds behind this data composition, I have this to say: Congratulations; you have awakened the sleeping giant. With that single headline, you have laid out a mile-long buffet to feed one of the biggest egos in rock and roll history.
You might think I’m referring to the ego that belonged to “Appetite for Destruction” Axl Rose. But no. In that context, it would have actually made sense. That guy was a friggin’ dynamo. That’s the guy whose looks, talent and stage presence gave him carte blanche to act like an insufferable twat – perhaps the only human in history who could stand in white bicycle shorts and a fur coat and demand the respect of millions without seeming utterly ridiculous.
No, the ego of which I speak belongs to the guy who by all rights has spent many a year crafting a persona that makes him seem like a caricature…of himself. The guy who obliterated his 80s rock street cred in one fell swoop by getting into a slap fight with a fashion designer. The very same frontman who went from bedding and wedding Victoria’s Secret models to gnawing on the legs of Swedish security guards like a belligerent, corn-rowed zombie.
Don’t you get it? It had just become acceptable to laugh at the guy – and since his antics ensured he was hoisted by his own petard, we didn’t even have to feel BAD about it! Not only did you craft a sort of validity to the notion that man has probably carried with him since “Welcome to the Jungle” dropped, but then you had to go and back it up with science! The spreadsheets and bar graphs you’ve presented to the world are crisp. And lovely. And oh so harmful.
Somewhere out there is a person who will lend a voice to the opposition of this revelation – someone who will take up arms and lead the charge in the names of warriors like Grace Slick and Sebastian Bach. Oh, but don’t look at me. I’m up against deadlines and have to begin my work days pretty damn early. Best of luck on your crusade. Me, I think I’ll just take off my biker shorts, use ’em to fashion a crude white flag and jam out to “Rocket Queen” – that track’s always been one of my personal favorites.
