All in Music

The release of Apple’s fifth album could not be more timely. The scourge of the ongoing pandemic, the depressing lockdown, and the augmenting repression by populist fascists around the world, Fetch The Bolt Cutters accompanies us to face the brutal realities of these strange times with a refreshing tenderness—the tenderness of serious artistry and the guiding presence of feminine endurance.

That was what I wanted. I loathed melodrama. I wanted my writing to be about normal, boring people doing normal, boring things. So I wrote stories about people making relationship decisions that seem inconsequential but actually meant everything; about an unhappy couple having a daylong fight; about a little boy who wants to take a ride in his aunt’s fancy car.

There’s a story being told in “True Faith” about the past, the present, and the future. It’s not quite clear what the story is, it’s certainly not linear, but the song evokes an unhappy past, a sudden awareness of now, and an ambivalence about tomorrow.

Their bows held correctly (almost), their fingers wiggling their vibratos to beat the band, and their faces showing just the correct amount of emotional ecstasy. However, when the sound reached my ears, I literally started laughing aloud. It was the cheesy sound of a keyboard synthesizer. It was like being promised expensive dark chocolate chips only to discover they were really carob chips.

Given the butterfly effect of time and history, it is not a stretch to say that if LMFAO had not announced their indefinite hiatus, Donald Trump may never have been elected president. The COVID-19 pandemic may never have settled its jaws over our great nation. We could honestly be, rather than working from home in our sweatpants, out on the dance floor, shuffling to whatever genius music LMFAO released in this alternate timeline.