Pop music has evolved to a point where the success of the song perhaps lies less in the hands of the singer, and more in thosethe hands of the producer, sound production, and marketing team. With big data and enhanced analysis of listening patterns, record companies have got pop music down to a science. Attractive pop artists sing about universal, easily relatable topics, and the massive sound production teams finely tune the song for maximum catchiness and radio replayability.
Courtney Barnett, a twentyeight year old from Australia, defies this industrial take on music. At its core, Barnett’s debut album Sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit is authentic and honest, and that’s perhaps why she has been so successful. She keeps away from most artist’s grandiose statements on love and politics, and instead sings about seemingly trivial and banal observations of her selfadmittedly mundane life. From equating the cracks on her ceilings to palmistry lines or debating between going out to a party and staying inside, Barnett meanders on through topics that are excruciatingly mundane, yet ultimately relatable.
Yet, despite the simplicity of Barnett’s threepiece garagebandesque setup and lyrics that seem transposed from smalltalk you had with a coworker, it would be a tremendous oversight to dismiss Barnett as trite. Barnett’s obsession with the mundane extends to commentary on an existential angst that befalls many of the younger to middle aged working adults in today’s environment. In this way, Barnett’s observations of gardening, swimming, and a dead seal serve as ways to simply highlight a seeming existential purposelessness; as Courtney Barnett remarks in “Avant Gardener,” why go out to fix her lawn when she can just lay in bed and do nothing?
Similarly, Barnett sings heavily about topics of failed potential and insecurity. In “Nobody Really Cares if you Don’t Go To the Party,” Barnett notes the success of her optimistic friends while morbidly remarking that dying in her sleep would not be a bad way to go. In “Small Poppies,” Barnett talks about her overwhelming uncertainty, crooning that “I don’t know quite who I am, but oh man I am trying.” While Kendrick gives voice to the black minority, Barnett champions a stranger crowd made up of the insecure and unsuccessful, of the introverted and socially awkward.
With a Grammyaward nomination and a win as Australia’s Best Artist 2015, Barnett’s music has seemingly resonated with listeners. Through cleanly simple compositions and deft lyrical work, Barnett has created music that is authentic, honest, and ultimately, human.