Innocent Abroad

I loved you once, when I was seven and you were just that faceless redhead with the sculpted mullet opposite Fred Savage in The Wizard. Twelve years later, a little trick of fate via the internet brought you back into my awareness and I realized that I still loved you, albeit for different reasons. In those days it was “The Frug” and “Papillon” and “Glendora” that made me clap and smile and find excuses to put Rilo Kiley songs on mixtapes. Part of the appeal then was a girlfriend who hates you; my passive-aggressive nature and the papier mache foundation of our relationship dictated that I could only love you more as her and I loved each other less.

Later came a girlfriend who worships you: looks like you, sings like you, and does many other good things that I imagine you would do just as well. Then the double whammy of More Adventurous and your stunning solo album with the creepy twins made you a permanent part of my psychic landscape. Meanwhile, Blake was stepping his shit up with The Elected, and Me First ranked right up with More Adventurous in my Best o’ 2004 list, alongside The Dresden Dolls’ debut, The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come For Free and, of course, the ever-amazing-Tim’s Album of The Year.

Fast forward to mid-2007 and I’m dangling off a cliff at the far edge of this exhaustive planet when word of a new Rilo album reaches my ears. That news sparked in me a unique and peculiar joy, which I could only describe as being struck by lightning only to find electricity made of cotton candy and orgasms. But then I saw this and my heart tried to flush itself down the toilet.

I was speechless for one hot minute, completely numb from the tongue down. Then what words did come could only be directed towards you: Don’t do it to us, Jenny. Don’t do it to the people who have stood by you for years, paid to see you in shit clubs with shit bands and tried to convince everyone we knew that you and Blake were geniuses who deserved all the fame and accolades of every MTV-ready singer-songwriter put together. Don’t get me wrong—this isn’t a case of ‘I loved them first’ fame-jealousy, and before you label me as some indie-elitist who’s always whining about Bright Eyes and Sony and ‘selling out’, let me say this: I could give a fuck about that. Sign to whatever label you like. Let Satan distribute your records to Wal-Mart and Starbucks. Tour with Christina Aguilera and Metallica. By all means, run your music career as you fit, but I humbly entreat you to not do it at the expense of everything that was so refreshing about you. Don’t trade in subdued anonymity and beautifully crafted songs for a hot video and lyrics such as:

“You are the money maker
She is yours for the taking
You know you wanna make her
Show her your money maker”

followed by about a thousand sexy moans, over and over for 4 minutes. In terms of lyricism this song ranks somewhere between Eiffel 65’s coma-inducing “Blue” and Raffi’s timeless power-ballad “Bananaphone”. Rilo Kiley has never seemed or professed to be all about writing bland songs, filming hot videos, and making them singles. Jenny, the world has enough so-so songs sung by pretty mouths. You’ve proven dozens of times that you can do more. Why aren’t you doing more?

(**This is the point in any argument where I sigh and begin to capitulate…**)

Maybe you’re just going in a ‘new direction’. Maybe you’re writing exactly what you want to write and presenting it exactly as you want to, which is all any of us can do as artists. If this is the case then I grudgingly applaud you for having the courage to do so. And if this is the case I can only wish you the best of possible luck. But you must understand that this confuses and enrages we who have known you for the better part of a decade as anything but the girl in this video, singing lyrics that a nine year old could jot down on a napkin between courses at The Sizzler. If Joanna Newsom suddenly ditched the harp, discovered make-up, added a Neptunes beat and sang as something other than a Muppet crack-baby, I would be just as confused and suspicious. If I wrote a series of books about a girl wizard named ‘Sally Cotter’ and changed my initials to include a K, I would expect everyone I know to be just as miffed.

Yet despite all my reservations, I really look forward to the new album. I hope you absolutely smash my expectations and expose me for the cynical, raving snob that I am. I hope your album is worthy of selling a million copies, and then I hope it sells ten million. But if “The Moneymaker” is what you’ve permanently traded in “The Absence of God” for—I’d rather just convert to the Cult Of Green Day now and save myself the pain of watching you fill arenas with pre-pubescent boys desperate to say you “showed them your money”, as you so aptly put it.

Yours, Shakily,

A.K. Finley

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