For decades, the drum break in Phil Collins’s “In the Air Tonight” has been making listeners reach for their adjectives. The barrage of tom-tom hits, which comes almost four minutes into Collins’s 1981 single, has elicited rock-critic clichés from “bone-crunching” to “iconic.” Complex magazine called it “notoriously brilliant”; the website The Quietus unholstered its hyphens, describing a“Phil-falling-down-the-stairs-with-his-kit explosion.” In 2009, Ozzy Osbourne declared the drum fill “the best ever.”
Then there is the judgment of Tim and Fred Williams, 22-year-old twins from Gary, Ind. The Williamses are YouTube stars who post so-called reaction videos, documenting their responses to hearing well-known songs for the first time. The clip that appeared on July 27, “FIRST TIME HEARING Phil Collins — In the Air Tonight REACTION,” shows them seated at a computer, absorbing the song’s ominous sound. When the big drum eruption finally arrives, their eyes widen, and they rock backward in surprise. “That was cold!” Fred cries. “Yeah,” Tim says. “That was cold.”
“Cold” is indeed the mot juste. “In the Air Tonight” has a chilly glamour. It is the definitive 1980s noir anthem, evoking the spiritual froideur [ed. coolness or reserve between people] we associate with such period artifacts as white linen suits, pink neon light and lines of cocaine on a DeLorean’s hood. It climbed the Billboard charts in 1981, but its place in pop culture was cemented by its later use onscreen — in a racy nocturnal scene in the 1983 film “Risky Business” and in a sequence in the pilot episode of “Miami Vice.” It has hung around ever since, passing through cycles of ironic and earnest appreciation on its way to a place in pop’s golden jukebox.
But the Williams brothers’ reaction has pushed it back to center stage: After the video went viral on Aug. 7, “In the Air Tonight” rose to No.2 on the iTunes charts. It is a familiar modern-day music business story, where a couple of guys in a bedroom can accomplish a job once designated to battalions of marketers. It is also a reminder that the reaction video — staring at a screen to watch people stare at a screen — is a weird, definitively American art form that stretches back at least to the 1990s heyday of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” But the viral popularity of this display of intergenerational sympathy — Black 20-somethings professing love for a white boomer’s pop-rock chestnut — may also tell us something else about the ambient tensions and neuroses that are, you might say, in the air, adrift in the ether of 2020. (...)
Clearly, the Williams brothers understand this dynamic. They begin each video with the tagline “Back with another banger,” announcing a foregone conclusion: The song will be received with wild enthusiasm. Even if we take them at their word that they’ve never heard these songs, even if we accept their raves as genuine, we may still note that exaggerating their guilelessness and throwing a little extra sauce on their wowed responses is good business, part and parcel of the reaction-video gig. A popular YouTube channel can be a lucrative thing; the Williamses sell merchandise and know how to build a brand. Flattering the tastes of your target audience — catering to its insecurities — is Marketing 101.
Then there is the judgment of Tim and Fred Williams, 22-year-old twins from Gary, Ind. The Williamses are YouTube stars who post so-called reaction videos, documenting their responses to hearing well-known songs for the first time. The clip that appeared on July 27, “FIRST TIME HEARING Phil Collins — In the Air Tonight REACTION,” shows them seated at a computer, absorbing the song’s ominous sound. When the big drum eruption finally arrives, their eyes widen, and they rock backward in surprise. “That was cold!” Fred cries. “Yeah,” Tim says. “That was cold.”
“Cold” is indeed the mot juste. “In the Air Tonight” has a chilly glamour. It is the definitive 1980s noir anthem, evoking the spiritual froideur [ed. coolness or reserve between people] we associate with such period artifacts as white linen suits, pink neon light and lines of cocaine on a DeLorean’s hood. It climbed the Billboard charts in 1981, but its place in pop culture was cemented by its later use onscreen — in a racy nocturnal scene in the 1983 film “Risky Business” and in a sequence in the pilot episode of “Miami Vice.” It has hung around ever since, passing through cycles of ironic and earnest appreciation on its way to a place in pop’s golden jukebox.
But the Williams brothers’ reaction has pushed it back to center stage: After the video went viral on Aug. 7, “In the Air Tonight” rose to No.2 on the iTunes charts. It is a familiar modern-day music business story, where a couple of guys in a bedroom can accomplish a job once designated to battalions of marketers. It is also a reminder that the reaction video — staring at a screen to watch people stare at a screen — is a weird, definitively American art form that stretches back at least to the 1990s heyday of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” But the viral popularity of this display of intergenerational sympathy — Black 20-somethings professing love for a white boomer’s pop-rock chestnut — may also tell us something else about the ambient tensions and neuroses that are, you might say, in the air, adrift in the ether of 2020. (...)
Clearly, the Williams brothers understand this dynamic. They begin each video with the tagline “Back with another banger,” announcing a foregone conclusion: The song will be received with wild enthusiasm. Even if we take them at their word that they’ve never heard these songs, even if we accept their raves as genuine, we may still note that exaggerating their guilelessness and throwing a little extra sauce on their wowed responses is good business, part and parcel of the reaction-video gig. A popular YouTube channel can be a lucrative thing; the Williamses sell merchandise and know how to build a brand. Flattering the tastes of your target audience — catering to its insecurities — is Marketing 101.
by Jody Rosen, NY Times | Read more:
Image: YouTube
[ed. Reaction videos? Must be some subset or evolution of unboxing videos. See also: The Addictive Joy of Watching Someone Listen to Phil Collins (New Yorker)]
[ed. Reaction videos? Must be some subset or evolution of unboxing videos. See also: The Addictive Joy of Watching Someone Listen to Phil Collins (New Yorker)]
