Time to pretend

Time to pretend (TTP) is a pop song by a band called MGMT. The song has over 300,000 hits on YouTube, so it is quite popular. I’m going to look at the video and the lyrics and look at the ideas it presents.

The video is very colourful but it doesn’t really have much to do with the lyrics. It serves two purposes. People who just like looking at colours and cats and memes will just like watching the video without needing to give it any more thought. People who think of themselves as more sophisticated will think it looks over the top and will congratulate themselves as being in on the joke. The lyrics also have two interpretations.

Let’s look at the lyrics of the first verse:

I’m feeling rough, I’m feeling raw

I’m in the prime of my life

Let’s make some music, make some money

Find some models for wives

I’ll move to Paris, shoot some heroin

And fuck with the stars

You man the island and the cocaine

And the elegant cars

There are a couple of ways of interpreting these lyrics. Some people might hear the lyrics and think they present a desirable lifestyle: travel, drugs, fucking beautiful women and that sort of thing. A person living like that might sometimes feel bad, e.g.- hangovers, but think that is a price worth paying. Other people might say that the lyrics are satirising and exaggerating that lifestyle, and congratulate themselves on being smarter than the people who just like drugs and sex. The lyrics don’t say which view MGMT actually takes. The lyrics are written to be ambiguous and to allow both interpretations.

The lyrics for the next verse say:

This is our decision, to live fast and die young

We’ve got the vision, now let’s have some fun

Yeah, it’s overwhelming, but what else can we do?

Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?

Forget about our mothers and our friends

We’re fated to pretend

To pretend

We’re fated to pretend

To pretend

In this verse, MGMT contrast the rock and roll lifestyle with having a normal job and family. MGMT leave it ambiguous which lifestyle they prefer. At the end of the verse they say they’re fated to pretend. They’re admitting that the idea that the rock and roll lifestyle is glamorous and wonderful is a pretence. They are providing a way for people with ordinary jobs and families to pretend that they could have a rock and roll lifestyle where they have fun and no responsibilities. MGMT don’t mention any third alternative, like having your own business or doing philosophy partly because they don’t really understand such ideas and partly because most of the potential audience wouldn’t understand or like such ideas.

Some people will interpret the verse differently as mocking the rock and roll lifestyle as a lonely and boring pretence at having fun. Actually having relationships with family and friends is better than the rock and roll lifestyle as it is usually portrayed.

There is another point to note.  MGMT say they are “fated to pretend”, which implies that they don’t have a choice about whether to pretend. But they start the verse by saying “This is our decision”. This is an admission that MGMT and the audience could take responsibility for improving their lives, but they prefer to pretend that they have no choice but to live the way they do.

I’m not going to go through the rest of TTP because the rest of the song is similar to what I’ve discussed so far. TTP is a sophisticated presentation of a philosophical package deal. Your alternatives are either to be an irresponsible, drug taking rock star or have a normal life and a family. In reality, you could develop a better life than either of these alternatives but that requires thinking and taking responsibility, which most people don’t want to do. The standard pattern of having a job and a family exists for a reason: it’s a way of living that most people can tolerate and doesn’t require much innovation. Sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyles are harder to maintain and tolerate and involves deliberately disabling your ability to think through drugs and so on a lot of the time in order to keep going.

Many people with a standard family life do a substantial amount of sex and drugs to make their lives tolerable. So the distinction between the sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle and normal family life isn’t as sharp as people like to pretend. The differences between those lifestyles are a matter of degree rather than a qualitative difference since they are both set up so that people can enact them with as little thought as possible.