You Make Boredom Fun

2nd Grade “Poet In Residence”

The riff in “Poet In Residence” is so familiar but I can’t quite place it, it nags at me a little while I listen to it. But I don’t really want to know what it is because I think part of the magic here is that it sounds like 2nd Grade is just barely getting away with stealing something famous for a tiny lo-fi song. It adds a meta level of stakes to the piece, and the laid back swagger of the riff makes the person being sung about seem a little cooler. But not that much cooler – I wouldn’t say this is a joke song, but the joke of the song is that this is an ode to someone who is a very ordinary sort of cool, and a very mild sort of fun. This isn’t a song set in a glamorous world, but rather one that’s mundane and drab and this person is what qualifies as the poetic rock star in this context.

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