If you frequent the music section of We Got This Covered, you more than likely know that I love Disclosure and hate artists who rely upon ghostwriters. As such, you would probably expect me to fully get behind “Jaded,” Howard Lawrence’s vocal debut from their upcoming Caracal album whose lyrics make not-so-subtle jabs at artists who play a dubious role in the creative process behind their own releases.
Unfortunately, I find myself more inclined to write that this is a bad look for the English brothers.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing terrible with the production elements or arrangement; as far as those facets are concerned this is a track that measures up to everything else the outfit has been putting out as of late. Even Lawrence’s vocal samples were surprisingly keen compared to when other DJ/producers sing on their own tracks. From a lyrical standpoint, though, the song leaves much to be desired.
While the official music video for the track is a continuation of the story that began in that of “Omen,” “Jaded” makes the rookie lyricist mistake of telling instead of showing. The transparent chorus goes, “Why, oh why do you have to lie? / What are you afraid of? / We know what you’re made of,” which sounds like something an anarcho-political high school punk band might write into one of the songs they practice in their parents’ garage. Lawrence could have made his message more poignant by wrapping it in clever metaphor, or utilizing other creative devices to make it less obvious.
…But really, even if he did it would still kind of seem like something lame that Mick Jagger would do. The mystique of the classic dance music from which Disclosure take their cues lies in that it never overtly furthered an agenda bigger than “holy shit, listen to this!” The experience of the music itself was and should continue to be the end to which DJs and producers toil – and the beautiful paradox of this principle is that for the most part people in the electronic music community align themselves toward higher social and spiritual purposes without such a call to action being shoved down their throats.
Sorry to be honest, Disclosure, but I think that the next time you want to call out somebody in the industry you should keep it out of your music and go on a relentless Twitter tirade a la deadmau5 instead.
