JoIt’s the advertising riddle of 2021: how do you get people excited about the party when you’re the people who explicitly explain that they don’t party and that no one can go to a party because it’s a pandemic? The initial holding of the Biden Opening Committee until the week of the swearing-in ceremony was then as awkward and as confusing as might be expected.
A hard effort to stage something stimulating and fun, on Sunday night We, the people the concert and fundraising (a small donation gained Biden / Harris fans access to the virtual event) was nonsense, a kind of sadness, incredibly random, sadly low energy, wacky, admirable and in the end, maybe really a little nice?
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All we can’t help but love, hate and think about this week in pop culture.
The formation was not just the hilarious eclectic reserves that telegraph: “we know the guest of honor has no idea who most of these people are, but we were determined to hire at least one act to mark all the demographics to prove that we are inclusive ”for which these political events are famous.
Maybe it’s because the big guns are reserved for Wednesday’s early opening concert or maybe they couldn’t justify the effort of appearing at a virtual live event without the spirit of a live concert, but We, the people twists appear that cause a whiplash from a performer in list A to list not Z, but perhaps list P? List Q?
Keegan-Michael Key and Debra Messing, of the iconic The “I’m for Joe” meme, acted as co-hosts, and were perfectly cheerful and happy to have been there, so good for them. But while they enthusiastically introduced night training, it was tempting to laugh at their declining performances: “Cher!” “I Fall Out Boy!” “I [pause] Kal Penn … “
The president-elect and Dr. Jill Biden spoke, as did Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. “While our inaugural traditions seem a little different this year,” Biden warned, “we’re still together across America.”
So it may be necessary to enjoy these things for what they are in these extreme circumstances: the best that anyone can do. You have to feel it for that.
Between pandemic restrictions and ongoing threats of insurgency, it is the worst time to try to fool the illusion for a new administration and they are doing their best to do what they are capable of and what is right. It’s an impossible situation, as if someone had given you about a barrel of Busch Light, the keys to the Ponderosa Steakhouse party room, and said, “Make this a presidential act.”
There are many minds about it. It is exhausting that there is always insistence on doing this kind of thing, days of celebrations and ultimately uninteresting concerts as part of a certain pomp and circumstance of citizenship, and especially now when we are in a pandemic. Still, it’s time to start feeling good about things, or at least believe that it’s possible that one day you’ll feel good about things.
With that in mind, it is inspiring and enjoyable to have the opportunity to meet with people who are excited to stand up and support not only the newly elected president, but the promise of what the country could be under his leadership.
But at the end of the day, as you feel invigorated, sitting on the couch watching a failed live broadcast on your computer at eight o’clock on a Sunday evening like Grace Adler and the guy who went out with Meryl Streep on The Prom Are you trying to make yourself think that Fall Out Boy’s upcoming performance is similar to watching Beyoncé close Coachella?
Was the inaugural Committee trying to take melodic memories of the Obama era with that seemingly out-of-place reservation? Trying to reconnect Biden with times when Trump was nothing more than a tough reality TV star, the only facial masks we saw were in the cast of Grey’s Anatomy on Thursday nights, and we all went down, we went down in a previous round, sugar, we went down swinging?
Until the oral history of how this event aired is published – the first celebrity presenter was Michael Bivins, a former member of New Edition and Bell Biv DeVoe … – we will have to settle for being polite confused about how my favorite high school rock band from the 2005 promotion of high school became headliner. (Her performance of the 2014 single “Centuries” was … good?)
The discomfort of everything could not be saved.
A pop trio called AJR, who Messing and Key made known for writing and producing songs from their own living room, performed “Bummerland,” as if the jokes weren’t writing themselves.
Yes, they had booked Barbra Streisand, but only for voice-over. She teased that she would sing a song she performed for three presidents, and was excited to turn Biden into the fourth and then archive footage of her “Happy Days” belt at a concert she played years ago. What was that about “Bummerland?”
“A pop trio called AJR, who Messing and Key made known for writing and producing songs from their own living room, performed “Bummerland,” as if the jokes weren’t writing themselves.”
Kal Penn came together to talk about the famous bagels of … New Jersey (?), And the similarities between the possibility offered by America and being an actor. Will.i.am acted, which I can say for sure no one wanted.
Towards the end, we were blessed by the presence of Cher, who delivered a delicious speech before synchronizing her lips with her ballad “I Hope You Find It” from different areas of her home, not much different from a filmed music video that I, a 13-year-old, would do in my own living room tuning my lips to a Cher song.
The truth is, I think I was assigned this review to a stranger, which is certainly easy to do, especially considering the random list and the sadness of trying to augment people on a Zoom video. Instead of clapping, you have Deb and Keeg squealing and squealing about how good each performer was. There was no cheer or laughter, but there was that chaste sound of video failures that we all know now.
But there was legitimately something nice about it, even uplifting.
The first performer, for example, was Ben Harper, who sang the magnificent song “With My Two Hands.” It has a beautiful and attractive cadence, with lyrics like, “I can make peace on Earth with my own hands / I can clean the earth with my own hands / I can reach you with my own hands.”
Right now it’s a surreal message. It is very necessary, but it can only be metaphorical. We can’t do anything with our own hands (at least not without a disinfectant tub and diligent COVID testing), but it’s an appropriate message.
In recent weeks, we have all received strong and clear marching orders that every person who wants to end this current national nightmare will have to actively participate in the excavation of ourselves. This will only be possible if there is support: from the government, from the community. And it will only be possible if there is empathy, a new concept these days.
The final chorus of the song changes the lyrics to “with ours he has two hands. “Maybe the inches of ice that have formed on my heart over the last four years are really starting to thaw, because I found myself touched.
Carole King sat at the piano and performed “You Got Got Friend.” James Taylor toured while singing his own version of “America, the Beautiful.” There is no time when looking at any of these things is not the highlight of any day. They were lovely.
But just when they were beating us, the grand finale started and made us exasperated again that we were even doing it. As they did after the remarkable and impressive National Democratic Convention — a triumph of ingenuity and democracy — this concert inexplicably ended with a DJ.
This time it was DJ Cassidy instead of Diplo, but it was so weird to be watching a person on a YouTube sized screen popping up dance music as if we were all together on a stage ready to go to the party and not be seated on the same spot on the couch where we’ve been for the past 11 months, paying half attention while scrolling through Twitter.
I don’t know what we ever want from these celebrity-politics events that happen every four years and I definitely don’t know what we want from them in a pandemic.
Perhaps we can only say that it was the last inaugural act of Wednesday’s big show, which will star Lady Gaga, Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Timberlake and the definitive headliner: the rescue of the United States of America from its current hell of fire. It didn’t matter if you missed it, but seeing that you were sure to get more excited about the main event.