Back in 2011 Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” became the celebratory anthem of bin Laden’s demise. The song had been released in 2009 and gone mega-platinum that year, the singer just sixteen years old. The day after the nighttime raid on the Al Qaeda leader’s compound in Pakistan, Cyrus’s hit was taken up by the tank-topped zeitgeist, the YouTube video racking up millions of new hits. Legions of viewers put up their jubilant posts on the site, bigoted slurs cavorting with sexually prurient outpourings. America had voted with its virtual feet and made “Party in the USA” bin Laden’s funeral song, the lighter-than-air digital body of pop culture dancing triumphantly on the arch-terrorist’s watery grave.
The message of “Party in the USA” is that the American Dream comes not from hard work, but by being discovered on the dance floor. The advertisement of sexual availability is the quickest road to success, one to be raced down in a Camaro with big fat racing stripes.
-- David Yearsley
1 comment:
Party on Garth!
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