Tweet Like A Pope

Wire “Blogging”

It’d be so easy for this to be a cranky song about the internet written by a guy in his 50s, but that’s not quite what this is. Colin Newman sings words like “Google Maps” and “Amazon wishlist” in a way that highlights their strangeness – just odd product names for things that didn’t exist too long ago – but puts them in the context of Christianity, something just as contrived that has existed for much longer. In “Blogging,” they go hand in hand as man-made devices for understanding the world. The two things sound ridiculous when smashed together – “blogging like Jesus,” “I’m YouTubing hope” – but Newman’s point seems to be that both are artificial, but are both are so essential to society that it’s hard to imagine life without them. There’s almost no hope in this song. It’s cold and sterile and harsh, just an expression of nihilism and vague contempt for the very idea of trying to make sense of world, or attempting to create order out of chaos.

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