There is a certain emotion most of us get as we enter our 30’s. Having just turned 31, I am left with the occasional feeling of inadequacy, that my best years are behind me. While I’m willing to believe that I’ve aged like a fine wine, I do notice that the younger kids have more of a future ahead of them than I do. It’s why I’ve gone off the deep end and accepted the joke of being an old man, making “back in my day” jokes, if just because enough time has passed since I was in high school that most of the shopping center around there has largely changed. There used to be a Hollywood Video there. The place used to be happening. Now consumerism has made it boring, and very few places have the edge that they used to.
This is the reason I turn to a revelation that is abundantly clear in LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge.” The future is inevitable, and everything that we hold dear will fade into relics, being held by the gatekeepers waiting to introduce a younger generation to all of this high-quality art. Whenever I hear things like teenagers being into shows like Friends and The Office, I’m left thinking to myself of how I used to think those shows were garbage when I was their age. How did the sincerity meter swing back around to this mediocre Steve Carrell show?
Anyways, the one thing that has aged very well is the initial run of LCD Soundsystem albums. As someone who considered himself a disciple of Spin Magazine, I was well aware of James Murphy’s dance-punk band, considered to be progenitors of a new and exciting sound. Sure, they had an underlying hipster vibe to them, but they also had this aching sincerity in all of that made “Sound of Silver” one of those great records, full of nonstop dance hits that are unlike a lot of pop contemporaries. Maybe I just have a jaded view of things, but those songs still can get the crowd moving.
To get real tinfoil hat right now, I want to compare where I am at 31 to where Murphy was. When he was my age, he was on the verge of reinventing his career with LCD Soundsystem. Their self-titled debut was considered to be one of the most timeless records of the time. Most people are more likely to remember the song “Daft Punk is Playing at My House,” though it was also the one that introduced us to “Losing My Edge.”
The year was 2001 and it was quite a note to begin your new career on. For all we knew this could’ve been a novelty song like The Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” or M’s “Pop Muzik,” simply referencing a million different things to seem cool. It’s true that that’s part of the appeal, but you need to look at what’s being said underneath. You’ll grow overwhelmed reading the Genius page for this song because every five words seem to have a different annotation, and the chance of them being relevant is scattershot.
I like to think of this song as a dance club version of Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.” What we’re ultimately getting here is the passing of a generation, of one who lived through these experiences and knows firsthand what all of these experiences meant. It was an analog period where you couldn’t just look up answers. You just had to trust your friend that they were selling you the truth, and every reference here feels genuine to Murphy’s plight. This isn’t just because he’s some weird record geek. This song is actually about his own recent past.
To ask Murphy about the song is to get a personal look into what his career was like in the 20th century. Born in 1970, he was a DJ who gained a brief moment of fame by spinning disco records. To him, it was a weird experience because he never felt like he fit in with the trends of the time and was this strange anomaly, a figure to gawk at. He was also on the older side, unable to really compete with the upcoming talent whose ears were more in tune with trends. He was worried that he would be a novelty act and, if you had to guess by his shift into LCD Soundsystem, it turned out to be true.
Not bad for somebody who graduated from NYU with an English degree and turned down a writing gig on season one of Seinfeld to pursue music. It took him another decade to get anywhere, but the long haul proved to be worth it. If he’s known for anything, it’s LCD Soundsystem, and it’s clear to this day that this is what he always needed to do. Even if there’s an underlying sense of humor to his sound, he’s forthright in his earnestness, and it makes every song this catchy look into the soul, making us see dance music as something more emotionally complex, able to last as more than a loop played on full blast.
I think it’s why I keep turning to the music, able to see every one of his songs as holding some deeper truth in those pop hooks. Every piece of repetition feels intentional, forcing us to linger on one thought before progressing. Before Murphy could become a more interesting musician, he needed to admit something. He was a loser, not in touch with the world around him. Whatever he would say from here on out was going to be seen as a footnote to this. To admit that you were losing your edge was a quirky way to admit that this whole music thing, especially rejecting a job that likely would’ve given Murphy stability, might not work out and that this was career suicide.
To be transparent, I know very little about the dance club scene. I frankly don’t understand all of it nor has it ever appealed to me as more than a novelty. However, I do admire the length that Murphy goes to to make every reference here into an exploration of history that name-checks every significant voice. It’s the way he shifts from something personal and contemporary to, as he puts it watching “the kids are coming up from behind.” With every passing year, he’s becoming an antique.
With that said, it’s amusing that his starting point is for something that is inherently false: a 1968 Can show in Cologne. He wouldn’t be born for another two years, and in some ways shows his own disconnect from this history. He was born during it, suggesting that somebody else even older have lost their edge by the halfway mark of this song. Also, it reflects how time makes fools of us all, making us think that we were there for things that aren’t true. Was Murphy at any of these, or is he just pulling our leg? One would have to assume that some of this is true, though it may just be an identity crisis where he’s compensating with lies.
It’s brilliant and subversive, using terms like “the decks” to reflect how technology for the dance culture has shifted as well. There are so many small and subtle cues that make lines like “I’m losing my edge to the internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1962 to 1978” fee like flippant remarks. It’s like “these kids don’t get it,” reflecting the shift in time and that despite them knowing more, they don’t have it as something instinctual. Even the choice to reference kids in Tokyo, Berlin, and France show how things are expanding, making him feel smaller.
By the time that he sings “I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids,” you’re left in a sense that Murphy may be reflecting insecurity over truth. He’s more using the accomplishments of his generation to pump himself up as this meaningful figure. If anything, this 33-year journey through dance music is an incredible look into things that most of the millennials who came in his wake can’t appreciate. It’s all impersonal, a piece of technology that can be downloaded and consumed impersonally, without any effort put in. Even then, I don’t know that Daft Punk ever played CBGB’s (a largely punk rock club), but something tells me that Murphy’s playing a great joke on people who are taking this bigger picture seriously.
This all builds to a fairly sincere passage as if this is all an identity crisis that he’s struggling with. Every line has some subtle shift in denial and acceptance, eventually landing on something more honest:
But I'm losing my edge to better-looking peopleWith better ideas and more talentAnd they're actually really, really nice
Who isn’t losing their edge to better-looking people? While there’s plenty of room for a philosophical debate as to what beauty is, it makes sense from a manufacturing standpoint and one that feels true about a genre like dance music. It’s all about selling something sexy and fast, where we’re struggling to maintain beauty.
By the end, losing your edge isn’t just a relevance in terms of music. It’s one that tears apart things like ego, knowledge, mental capacity, beauty, technology, and personal security. No matter how you look at it, this song is a veiled look at how much culture has come and gone, losing some of its significance as it’s fallen into novelty. It’s likely that Murphy had a moment where somebody wanted to make a Yaz record and asked himself personally “Why would you do that?”
For a song that at times is rambling and full of references that mean little to me, it somehow captures the feeling of growing old perfectly. Murphy uses these references as a cultural cache to seem cool before giving up and accepting himself as old, repeating “You don’t know what you really want,” as a retort to young people as well as himself. It doesn’t matter what’s playing, so long as we keep dancing. This is self-acceptance as a great, epic metaphor and I can’t help but admire it as Murphy expounding on his past so that he could move forward.
If anything, Murphy wasn’t losing his edge at all. As I’ve mentioned, his best album (“Sound of Silver”) was ahead of him. He would mature and improve his sound over the years. By accepting that others wouldn’t get it, he became more confident and capable of making something more substantial, lasting in his career. I don’t know if this appeals to the youth demographic, but it worked for me at 15 as this eccentric weirdo trying to be cool. Even then, I kind of got it.
This song is encouraging because I do think it showed a way to not take yourself seriously as you age. While my birthday this year feels unceremonious, I look at “Losing My Edge” and find someone who was around my age trying to find ways to move forward. It’s an encouraging statement and one that I hope to take going forward. So what if I lose my edge? I can share my advice with the better-looking people and hopefully make their lives better, provided they’re willing to listen.
Finally, if you are a big LCD Soundsystem fan, I am sure you’ll agree on one thing. Shut Up and Play the Hits (2012) is one of the best concert documentaries of the 21st century. Down to the Chuck Klosterman interviews, it’s a look into a career that was assumingly at the end. It paints a picture of a figure who started this journey already convinced he wouldn’t make it and showed that not only was he capable, but he sold out Madison Square Garden with several amazing live shows. It’s a study of self-mythology that only enhances the live numbers and makes you a bigger fan of the band.
Simply put, there are 363 more days to go until my 32nd birthday, and I have those months to figure out how I want to make this year special. I am already a tenth of the way through this decade, and I need to have something significant to show for myself. By the end of his 30’s, Murphy was on the verge of selling out the biggest arenas in America. Where will I be? Hopefully someplace where I’m happy, where my work speaks for itself in a significant way. I don’t expect to be the richest author in the world, but I hope to be accepting of my place in my career.
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