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February 2014

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In writing the movie “Dr. Strangelove”, Stanley Kubrick and his co-writers faced a problem. They had set out to write a serious movie about the dangers of nuclear proliferation, but every time they talked about the characters and their interactions they began to laugh – hysterically. There was nothing inherently funny about mushroom clouds, war rooms, bomb shelters or apocalyptic wastelands, but the notion of creating weapons that could wipe out all human life on earth for the sake of ‘security’ was so ridiculous that it was hilarious. Sometimes comedy gives us the distance that we need to comprehend the true horror of a predicament, which brings me to the state of popular music. I’ll admit at the outset that I’m not the target audience for most popular music, so I don’t expect to like it, but it doesn’t necessarily have to suck. I’ve been wondering for a while, when…