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Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com ARTS

MUSIC COLUMN

Shut up and listen to 
‘Shut Up and Dance’
R

ock ‘n’ roll’s not dead. It’s 
sitting right at number 2 on 
the iTunes singles chart.

I’ll be the 

first to admit 
that I didn’t 
see it coming. 
Don’t get me 
wrong, I liked 
Walk the 
Moon’s first 
single, “Anna 
Sun,” as much 
as anybody. I’ve 
always been 
a huge fan of 
The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc 
Party and those other new wave 
revivalists, so if a band can take 
the characteristics of these bands 
— huge choruses, disco-influenced 
backbeats and rough lyrics about 
“towns” and/or needing to get 
out of them — and distill them 
skillfully into a new four-minute 
composition, my acceptance is 
basically a given.

That said, I didn’t expect to 

hear much more from Walk the 
Moon after “Anna Sun.” It was one 
of those huge songs that felt like a 
big hit if you listened primarily to 
the Alt Nation channel on Sirius 
and drove around with friends 
who’d sing along when it came on 
that station. I put the track on my 
iPod thinking that in a short time 
I’d scroll across the title and it 
would stick out like that guy who 
wore a Mitt Romney mask to last 
year’s Halloween party.

Then I heard “Shut Up and 

Dance” when it was first released, 
and it pretty much confirmed my 
prediction. Bland guitar chords, 
a catchy cookie-cutter chorus 
and no signs of innovation — this 
song wouldn’t last the rest of 
the month. Bands come out with 
new singles every day, and “Shut 
Up and Dance” didn’t have what 
it would take to avoid quickly 
getting lost in the shuffle.

That was August 2014, and in 

the subsequent seasons, Walk 
the Moon slowly slipped out of 
my consciousness. I didn’t listen 
to the radio at school, and I got 
caught up in other new releases — 
very few of which were from rock 
bands. I even, regretfully, deleted 

“Anna Sun” off my iPod.

But, like the whispers of that 

secret you knew no one would 
ever find out about, “Shut Up and 
Dance” came back to me. First 
it was innocuous enough for me 
to dismiss — I caught the closing 
notes as I walked into a store, and 
I picked it up from a passing car 
on State Street. Then my Twitter 
timeline seemed unusually 
excited for Walk the Moon’s show 
in Detroit back in April — an 
interesting blip on my radar, but 
not much more.

Finally, not long after the 

concert, I go to a party and pretty 
good music is playing, but nothing 
out of the ordinary — the great 
’00s nostalgia trips and the best 
hits of this school year. Suddenly, 
the choppy opening guitar notes 
of “Shut Up and Dance” echo 
around the room. I’m confused, 
but people are dancing. Everyone 
seems to know this song. And 
everyone seems to love this song. 
And everyone screams along to 
the chorus, because why the hell 
wouldn’t you scream along? After 
way too much denial, I realize this 
plain old rock song is a fucking hit.

Now, I stand by what I said 

— “Shut Up and Dance” is a 
cookie-cutter rock song. The four-
on-the-floor beat (God bless it), a 
singer declaring “this woman is 
my destiny” and a breakdown with 
the inevitable audience-clapping 
already inserted (genius!). 
However, “Shut Up and Dance” 
doesn’t work despite these clichés, 
but because of how effectively 
it executes them, and how great 
it feels when you can dance and 
sing along with them. That golden 
drum beat conducts your body 
and moves it exactly how it needs 
to; those audience cues will just 
ratchet up the anticipation and 
make everyone’s hearts that much 
more explosive when you hear 
it live. And Nick Petricca sells 
those lyrics with every molecule 
of air that comes out of his mouth, 
singing like he’s the first guy ever 
to call a woman Juliet and fall in 
love with her at first sight, like 
he’s losing his virginity and falling 
in love and getting married and 
raising children all on that dark, 

crowded, slippery discotheque 
floor. And then that refrain just 
tops it off. There’s no comeback to 
“Shut up and dance with me!” If 
you say anything in response to a 
command that joyful and assured, 
you’re a gutless asshole.

And even though I admit I was 

wrong when I first judged the 
song’s quality in the solitude of my 
car, I still have no idea how “Shut 
Up and Dance” made it to the 
mainstream. This is a song that 
came out last summer that’s finally 
peaking and poised to take over 
2015’s season of sunshine.

And it was an indie rock 

song, of all things, from a band 
with little previous pedigree or 
name recognition. At the risk of 
sounding curmudgeonly, right 
now is kind of a dead period for 
rock bands. Of course, plenty of 
bands are making great music, 
but it feels like ages since rock has 
been a regular on Top-40 radio. 
Hip hop, country and even EDM 
have all earned well-deserved 
greater relevance today.

That said, I still see rock 

poking out here and there. I 
hear it in music ostensibly made 
for kids, like One Direction’s 
“Little Black Dress” or Five 
Seconds of Summer’s “She Looks 
So Perfect.” (In fact, the girl of 
“She Looks So Perfect” could 
very well be the girl of “Shut 
Up and Dance” before she got 
a fake ID and traded in boys’ 
American Apparel underwear 
for a backless dress and some 
beat-up sneaks.) And I hear it 
when our generation’s few alt-
rock classics suddenly surprise 
a room, when “Mr. Brightside” 
comes on and everyone gets 
shocked and disoriented by 
euphoria. I suppose “Shut Up and 
Dance” just had the power and 
resilience to beat at the walls of 
the charts until it was heard, and 
I suppose that even if rock keeps 
getting topped on the pop charts, 
it’ll always be around, waiting to 
be heard. Because as soon as we 
hear it, we know it’s our destiny.

Theisen is now reevaluating 

All Time Low. To reminisce, 

e-mail ajtheis@umich.edu 

ADAM 

THEISEN

‘Gotham’ lacks 
development

TV REVIEW

By MATT BARNAUSKAS

Daily Arts Writer

Picking up in the middle of a gang 

war, “Gotham” ’s Season 1 finale, 
“All Happy Families Are Alike,” 
brought an end 
to the inaugu-
ral season of 
Fox’s 
uneven 

Batman 
pre-

quel. “Gotham” 
shouldn’t have 
gone beyond its 
initial 
16-epi-

sode order, but 
with the show’s initial success, Fox 
ordered extra episodes. This bloat-
ed an already thinly stretched sea-
son and created an underwhelming 
finale.

I’m not sure if there’s a good 

show in “Gotham,” but there are 
solid elements that make its strug-
gles even more frustrating. The 
escalating gang war between Car-
mine Falcone (John Doman, “The 
Wire”) and Sal Maroni (David 
Zayas, “Dexter”) was consistently 
one of the strongest aspects of the 
season. This mainly came from the 
scheming, Iago-esque presence of 
the future Penguin, Oswald Cob-
blepot (Robin Lord Taylor, “The 
Walking Dead”). Cobblepot’s plans 
for power and two-sided dealings 
with the two crime lords grew 
increasingly elaborate and were the 
best-constructed plot lines for the 
new series.

Fish Mooney’s (Jada Pinkett-

Smith, “Hawthorne”) return com-
plicates this conflict, introducing a 
third party. Fish has been a prob-
lematic character for the show, 
personifying several of its issues. 
“Gotham” is a muddled show tonal-
ly — it tries to walk the line between 
serious and campy but struggles at 
several points. The show is more 
successful when it leans to the grit-
tier tone within its gothic film noir 
styling. However, Pinkett’s over-
the-top performance clashes with 
the more grounded characters with 
whom she shares screen time, such 
as Doman’s Falcone.

Furthermore, Fish represents 

“Gotham” ’s biggest struggle: form-
ing strong, independent characters, 
particularly females. Too often in 
“Gotham,” supporting characters 
are merely objects in relation to 

primary characters: They exist in 
a vacuum without any real defini-
tion.

Take Barbara Kean (Erin Rich-

ards, “Breaking In”), Jim Gordon’s 
(Ben McKenzie, “Southland”) for-
mer fiancée. Barbara serves only to 
complicate the life of Gordon. Her 
struggles aren’t her own, but rather 
obstacles placed in Jim’s path. This 
became a glaring issue in recent 
episodes when Barbara became the 
target of the serial killer, the Ogre 
(Milo Ventimigilia, “Heroes”). She 
became little more than a damsel 
in distress for Gordon to save. Fur-
thermore, in the finale, Barbara 
spends almost the entire episode 
talking to Jim’s current girlfriend, 
Leslie Thompkins (Morena Bac-
carin, “Homeland”) about Gordon. 
In fact, Barbara is so defined by her 
relationship with Jim that she tries 
to kill Leslie, in an out-of-left-field 
move that reveals how shallow the 
writers have made the character.

The other issue in “All Happy 

Families Are Alike” was the anti-
climactic feeling it had despite the 
fact that there were big shifts in the 
titular city’s power dynamic. Major 
story elements were introduced 
leading up to the episode, including 
Gordon owing Cobblepot a favor, 
but too many of these were resolved 
with a wave of a hand and little nar-
rative buildup. Take the Gordon 
/ Cobblepot deal — an opportu-
nity to truly test the moral fiber of 
the nearly incorruptible detective 
is wasted on just having Gordon 
not leave Cobblepot for dead. The 
chance to have Gordon aligned 
with “the least worst option,” Fal-
cone, is dismissed because Falcone, 
after a whole season of fighting for 
dominance of the city, decides to 
quit because of a sudden revelation 
that crime isn’t the way to fix the 
city.

If there is one thing “Gotham” 

isn’t, it is subtle. Characters are 
painted in broad strokes and the 
obvious is often overstated. As 
Cobblepot stands on a rooftop pro-
claiming, “I’m the king of Gotham” 
this becomes readily apparent. As 
“Gotham” moves forward, it must 
become defter at developing char-
acters into actual people instead of 
plot points and creating fully real-
ized narrative arcs that crawl to the 
finish line.

C-

Gotham

Season Finale

Fox

