Cultural Cul-de-Sacs

I’ve been thinking recently about cul-de-sacs.

The term is French (évidemment), translating roughly to ‘the bottom of the bag.’

We stole it as a way of describing those post-WWII residential streets that sprang up at the terminal edges of suburban housing developments.

The cul-de-sac, as we all know, represents the end of the line—a dead-end road. The only place to be in a cul-de-sac is here.

I’m not hugely interested in urban planning, though.

What I’ve been thinking about are cultural, and especially musical, cul-de-sacs—places where culture went before discovering there just wasn’t anywhere else to go. Places where culture stopped for a while, made some interesting stuff, and then had to circle back to find new avenues to explore.

Cultural cul-de-sacs aren’t extinct parts of culture—we still inhabit and enjoy them—but we’ve collectively decided they’ve gone as far as they can take us.

Let me take you on a leisurely drive down a few of them, and you’ll hopefully see what I mean.

And don’t worry—if you’re already fed up with this analogy, I’ll ease off the gas a little now.

Or will I?

The Christmas Carol

Christmas carols have a long and storied history.

‘Carole’ is another French word, meaning to ‘circle’—I think the earliest primordial cousins of what we now know as Christmas carols involved pagans dancing around fires at the winter solstice, probably drinking human blood or something else that never stood a chance of making it into the lyrics of Silent Night.

They became churchier in the 13th century, along with the rise of the nativity play.

They were then (obviously) banned by Cromwellian Puritans before eventually being repopularized by the Victorians.

It was William Sandys’ Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern that brought us the truly hardcore greats—O Come All Ye Faithful, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, etc., in 1833.

Hollywood and 20th-century, golden-era Americans gave us the newer ones like Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but as far as I can tell, nobody has written a real Christmas carol since the dawn of pop music.

And yet, for about three weeks every year, we hear them in a strange festive loop—like we’re lost inside a John Lewis advert forever.

The Power Ballad

There used to be a club night in Manchester called Ultimate Power—it was my favorite alcoholic experience.

Every other month, the Ritz would be given over to a bunch of blokes who would literally press play on a four-hour mix of classic power ballads—Bryan Adams, Meat Loaf, Aerosmith, Bonnie Tyler—and mime along with inflatable guitars.

There were glitter cannons, smoke machines—it was unbelievable.

When I say power ballad, I’m talking about a Wagnerian rock/musical theatre opera piece, at least five minutes long, with something beautiful on the piano surrounded by iconic guitar parts you can sing every note to, and lyrics about falling in love or falling apart (nothing I can say, total eclipse… you get it).

As far as I’m aware, nobody’s writing these anymore.

Someone needs to reanimate the corpse of Jim Steinman, grab Adele—I think she’s about to begin the Cher/Celine Dion mid-late stage of her career—recruit Justin Hawkins or the bloke from Greta Van Fleet, and make some magic.

It’s long overdue.

The Wedding Dance-floor Filler

We all know what I’m talking about here: Come on Eileen, Walking on Sunshine, December 1963, Young Hearts Run Free, New York, New York…

Those songs you almost never hear anywhere else but, when the wedding DJ sticks one on (and, believe me, he will), even the most reticent uncle will be helplessly drawn to the dancefloor for his bi-annual act of traumatising self-expression.

I think this probably has something to do with the end of shared music—they’re all just great pop songs, after all, and we do still get plenty of those.

These have crystallized, for me anyway, into their own cultural cul-de-sac: mainly because I can’t see the classic wedding DJ playlist ever evolving beyond them.

It’s something I’ve written about before, but I still think that in fifty years these will still be the songs that span the generations; despite anyone who actually remembers their release being mostly vegetative.

Music isn’t consumed en masse anymore via zeitgeist-funnels like national radio, MTV, or Top of the Pops.

As such, it’s almost impossible for anything new to become a shared cultural artefact.

And if there’s one thing a wedding DJ simply has to have, it’s a playlist with universally broad appeal.

That, and, in my experience (having worked with hundreds), terrible breath, very few social skills, and a strange way of talking on a microphone like they’re an American hospital radio presenter.

The Orchestral Pop Song

I'm picturing that classic Neil Diamond, Glen Campbell, late Elvis Presley pop icon, in full tuxedo (or even a glittery cat-suit, for the enjoyment of the ladies), in front of a symphony orchestra.

It’s a very late ’60s–’70s niche—I suppose it represents the grand excesses of pop music before punk and electronics took over in the ’80s.

I’m sure there have been pale imitations since—I can imagine Robbie Williams has had a go, probably Sam Smith (tragically), and, of course, there’s Bublé and Josh Groban.

I’m not talking big band or swing, though, which the above-mentioned are more likely to have delved into—I’m talking major key, anthemic pop songs—I Am, I Said; Rhinestone Cowboy; American Trilogy.

(And if you haven’t watched Elvis sing American Trilogy at 3 a.m. on a repeating YouTube loop, you haven’t lived.)

So, these are my cultural cul-de-sacs.

I know genres and styles tend to ossify, and it’s hard to find new ways of breathing life into old ideas, but writing this has made me more than a little nostalgic—mostly for things I was never around to experience in the first place.

I probably won’t bother trying to write a Christmas carol: I’d probably need to find God first, or remember how to enjoy Christmas.

Finding God in a cul-de-sac does have a certain sense of bathos, though—there’s probably a lyric in there somewhere.

Leave it with me.

And keep dreaming,

Rob