This Semester Will be a “Good Time”, According to Owl City and a Certain Ms. Jepsen

The year is 2009.  Minnesotan Adam Young has risen from obscurity, gaining fame as the introverted, basement-dwelling force behind Owl City and the hit single “Fireflies”. Music snobs like me consider Owl City a poor man’s The Postal Service and mock its overwrought, childish lyrics.  The meek mewlings of Young sound like something out of a picture book.  “I get a thousand bugs from ten thousand lightning bugs”?  Seriously?  (Side note: if 90 percent of lightning bugs refuse to hug you, you might be doing something wrong).  By the end of the year, Ke$ha’s glitter catches the eyes (well, the ears) of America’s radio audience, and “Fireflies” slowly flickers out of vogue.  I breathe a sigh of relief.

Fast forward to 2012.  The Democrats have lost the House, Osama bin Laden is now dead, and Prince William of England has wed Kate Middleton in front of millions.  More importantly, a new suddenly-ubiquitous popster has infiltrated the Internets and airwaves of America.  Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” is the number one single for weeks and weeks on end.  I attend a party where it’s playing on repeat; everyone yells at me when I put on anything that isn’t Carly Rae.  Sometime in August, I hear “Fireflies” in Nordstrom and remember how much I don’t miss the song.  Soon after, Boston radio introduces me to a new tune.  The DJ identifies the performers as Carly Rae Jepsen and Owl City.  Surprise! Two artists who I hadn’t expected to chart a second time, simply because their breakout hits had mostly novelty appeal, have done so with “Good Time”.   I listen on Spotify out of morbid curiosity.  I listen again. I listen more times than is probably acceptable for someone who self-identifies as having quality musical taste.

If Dave Matthews Band and Carbon Leaf are the musical equivalent of oatmeal—comforting and universally inoffensive, but not particularly exciting—then “Good Time” is vanilla ice cream with sprinkles; though unoriginal, it’s appreciably fun and there is little excuse not to like it.  The synths and beats are like those of any song you’d hear in a club—definitely danceable for the frat-hopping population.  The lyrics are goofy and a little scatterbrained—CRJ’s phone ended up in the pool again, and Young has a Prince song stuck in his head—but the couplets are neither complex nor imaginative; lines like “good morning and good night/I wake up at twilight” are clearly chosen for the sake of rhyming.

The picture Young paints of himself in 2012—sleeping in his clothes, hitting up the Carly Rae Jepsens of the world to chill together in the P.M.—is a departure from his bashful, self-professed “insomniac” persona of three years ago.  Just take a look at the music video for “Good Time”: in the clip, Young has escaped the basement and ditched his emo glasses to go camping with his musical accomplice and a throng of smiley, smiley friends.  The sunny, G-rated video clip is derivative, but fun.  The song, while not ingenious, doesn’t feel overwrought or contrived.

“We don’t even have to try.  It’s always a good time.”

Sounds like a perfect anthem for freshman year, to me.  Enjoy, newly matriculated undergrads.  Even you shrinking violets—even you Adam Youngs—can get down tonight, if you’re down.

P.S. The song of my freshman year was “I Gotta Feeling”.  If nothing else, we should all just appreciate having a party anthem unrelated to the Black Eyed Peas.