Best Day of My Life by Tom Odell | Album Review

The symptom of our time.

Usually I would work my way through the tracklist from top to bottom, following the track order set by the artist, but this time I will instead devote myself to the weakest, one might even say the least important track (I believe it’s the most important from an ideology critical standpoint) on this album. “Giving A F***” is a track in which the lyrical self deals with his self-doubt, only to blame the critics in the very next breath. What makes this title so interesting?

Exactly, it is meaningless to the core. The chorus does tell us that from now on the lyrical self will no longer listen to the critics, etc., but at the same time it makes this track, which of course means that the lyrical self cares about what the critics have to say and will always care. If the lyrical self really gave a “f***”, then this song wouldn’t exist in the first place. To a certain extent, we can speak of a self-generated victim role here, which is of course intended to prevent a serious discussion of the work, or to give the critic a guilty conscience. Of course, we are not impressed by this. In the end, it’s just an empty, contentless threat anyway.

The album begins, we hear a piano, then a fragile voice whispering “I think today is the best day of my life” into the microphone. That is the concept of this album, which consists only of a voice and a piano, i.e. a minimalist structure that is primarily intended to create a particularly personal, close, tangible mood. At first glance, this works for some people, but that doesn’t change the fact that appearances precede reality and thus inevitably deceive. So we must not be deceived by the minimalistic and artistic cover of the album or the general musical aesthetics. This album offers enough ideological dynamite, which is especially evident in the following line of text:

“Am I in a dream? Crazy as it seems” (Best Day of My Life)

According to Slavoj Žižek, we use our fantasy to escape from the Lacanian Real (that part that is intangible to us; that eludes us and is responsible for our desire), but since our fantasy is part of reality, this also means that reality itself can function as an escape route from the Real:

“[I]f fantasy serves as the screen that protects us from being directly overwhelmed by the raw Real, then reality itself can function as an escape from encountering the Real.” (SZ2, 192).

We realise that not only the direct confrontation with the real world itself already hides the real, but also our fantasy, which in its parts itself springs from ideas of reality. From this, Slavoj Žižek further concludes that the critique of ideology does not have to start with reality, but should rather focus on the dream:

“What this means is that the critique of ideology should not begin with critiquing reality, but with the critique of our dreams.” (SZ2, 193).

We conclude, then, that in order for an actual confrontation to take place, we need to look not only at reality through ideological glasses, but also at our dreams in particular, in their dual function: once as our desire (American dream, etc.) and once as their actual function, namely to delay waking up. We must not, then, pay too much attention to the implied confrontation with oneself, otherwise we will be looking for something that is not actually there, namely the one fragile artist identity that lies behind the work.

But that is precisely the common thread of this album. It tries to get as close to the listener as possible and does so primarily by merging happy activities with depressive thoughts, happy chords with static rhythm, but in this way hides the fact that there is nothing behind it. One could also say that the album tries to hide something that doesn’t exist in first place. The individual (the artist) does not exist in this case, because through his authenticity (first independent publication, etc.) he distracts from the fact that it is actually about pure culture-industrial consumption (a created narrative combined with a framing, is one of the simplest definitions for ideology). In Adorno and Horkheimer’s brilliant work “The Dialectic of Enlightenment” we can find a great passage that can help us to better understand the above process:

“Everyone can be like the almighty society, everyone can become happy, if only they surrender themselves with skin and hair, cede the claim to happiness/luck” (TWA, 162).

And isn’t that what we find in the track “Sad Anymore”? Doesn’t it say:

“Look at all the happy people
What are they doing that I ain’t doing?” (Sad Anymore).

And right after that in the chorus:

“I don’t wanna be sad anymore” (ibid).

Of course, one could now argue that Tom Odell is merely proclaiming his own sadness here, but that is not the case (simply because of the context, after all, he is writing this text in the context of an album and not for himself privately). If we look closely, we realize that Tom Odell is only formulating his own claim to happiness/luck without a level of abstraction. It’s as if he’s saying, “Look, I’m a successful musician, but I’m miserable too, what am I doing wrong? Where is my happiness”. Now one or the other ordinary worker would most likely reply: “Nothing at all Tom, you’ve already had your luck/happiness”. Of course, it is clear to everyone that money and happiness have nothing to do with each other, but it must also be clear that artistic success does have something to do with luck (in German luck is “Glück” and happiness is “Glücklichkeit” which is why I prefer to use both words as if they are synonyms) and privilege.

Just as, it is a privilege that I can write this text here. Our origins, the socio-economic contexts, are pure coincidence. And it is not the case, as is often proclaimed in neoliberalism, that everyone can achieve everything. No, there is a clear distribution of opportunities. In Germany, for example, only 1 in 100 non-academic children manages to get a doctorate. Among the children of academics, this value is ten times higher. The IQ normal distribution, however, suggests that there are equal numbers of gifted people distributed in all social classes. The difference is that some don’t make it because their parents never studied, while others do because their parents did. Adorno and Horkheimer already recognized this, and state a little later in their work:

“This is how tragedy is abolished. Once, the opposition of the individual to society was its substance.” (TWA, 162).

Neoliberalism has blurred out all tragedy from everyday life, the individual is getting lost in the masses, whereas it was the oppositions between the individuals that constituted society in the first place. Tom Odell shows himself to be the exact opposite on his album. The “opposition of the individual” (ibid) is completely absent; instead, almost as if on Instagram, we learn once again how important our own Mental Health is (which is not the point at all; Tom Odell is not concerned with educating listeners about Mental Health, but with creating a relationship with them that is as “authentic” as possible). It’s true. Mental Health is indispensable, I am the first person to witness it first hand, but the question is whether we are actually dealing with a profound engagement with the subject or whether this is just a “void semblance of the tragic” that is only “glimpsed” (TWA, 163). Whenever a deeper engagement with the subject could take place, the work changes the subject, proving that an actual engagement was never planned from the beginning. The opposite is the case, this lack of a final step also negates all previous ones and thus renders them meaningless and void.

We cannot help but only listen, hearing is denied from us directly from the start. I think this is best shown by comparing the individual lyrics with each other. For example, in “The Blood We Bleed” Tom Odell sings about his mistakes, which he reveals on stage (this is particularly interesting because in a musical context, the stage must be understood more as a dividing line between the audience and the performer. So it is a one-sided relationship, where fundamentally a certain intimacy and interactivity is feigned, but one side remains mute and is sprinkled). In “Flying :))”, however, he sings: “I don’t wanna tell another lie”. How does that fit together? Exactly, in the first case he is not talking about his lyrics, which he sang live, but about his performance. The lyrics are, as he himself admits, a lie. Diana Taylor has an interesting take on the concept of performance that can help us at this point (especially if we take touring into account) (as the author herself notes, there is not one definition of the term, it is rather a whole collection of meanings):

“Performance — as reiterated corporeal behaviors — functions within a system of codes and conventions in which behaviors are reiterated, re-acted, reinvented, or relived. Performance is a constant state of again-ness.” (DT, 31).

And isn’t that exactly what Tom Odell does in the song “Enemy”? Another iteration of the lie, as he says himself. A lyric passage in the song states:

“So f***ing full of jealousy
Will you ever let me be happy?
Happy” (Enemy).

This passage leads us back to Adorno and Horkheimer. If we now connect the new knowledge about performance with the knowledge of Adorno and Horkheimer, we see a clear pattern. According to Tom Odell, everything he has done so far has been a lie. Only his live performance was real, as real as a performance can be. Then he protects himself from criticism by saying he doesn’t care about criticism from now on, which he now clearly revises in “Enemy”. That would be enough to realize that it’s not about authenticity. But no, it goes even further. He blames us, those who ultimately listen to his music and potentially criticize it (and pay for it in one way or another), for his own “claim to happiness/luck” not being fulfilled. Since Tom Odell himself notes that he is telling the truth, and only the truth, on this album, and even “The Telegraph” speaks of it as being authentic, this means Tom Odell is showing his “true face” at this point.

Except that he never hides it in the first place. On the contrary, he presents it openly, but no one hears it, because everyone is only looking for what is hidden, they overlook the fact that there is nothing hidden at all (see SZ1, 77). Blinded by a closeness previously proclaimed by the intimate piano, we overlook the cold fact that Tom Odell is a businessman who presses the right “buttons” to seem particularly “real” in this contemporary age. This works, because everyone wants the “real”, the unvarnished truth of personality, even if sometimes there is none at all.

What we have left? The realisation that we live in a time when authenticity is wanted, but just not authenticity. In a time in which we are exposed to so many sensory impressions every day that we can no longer feel anything for ourselves. We want to be understood, but much rather we don’t really want to be understood. On the surface, one could ascribe a certain nihilism to Tom Odell, but even this appearance is deceptive. For true nihilism, the artist would really have to give a “f***”, but he doesn’t. There is a beautiful Nietzsche quote that fits so well in our time, one might think it was made for it:

“And, to conclude, what I said at the beginning: man would rather want nothingness than refuse to want it …” (FN, 737, from: On the Genealogy of Morals).

Whoever blocks out the reception of art also inevitably blocks out art itself. It is therefore no wonder that everything heard, which fades away plaintively with the last note, is already forgotten in that very moment. Almost like a dream that is only present in fragments of memory after we have opened our eyes again. We only listen, but we do not hear, because we are not supposed to. A discussion is not desired from the outset, and we only scratch the surface without realizing that there is actually nothing behind the surface we are scratching. The authenticity presented here turns into the exact opposite, and thus prevents real authenticity from emerging. What remains is merely the symptom of our time.

Citations:
DT: Diana Taylor: Performance. From: Framing [Performance]. Durham, London: Duke UP 2016.
FN (*): Nietzsche, Friedrich: Friedrich Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke. Enthält u. a. Zarathustra, Antichrist, Ecce Homo, Anaconda Verlag, 2012.
SZ1 (*): Žižek, Slavoj, Das erhabene Objekt der Ideologie, Passagen Verlag, Wien, 2021 (1989, Originalausgabe bei Verso).
SZ2: Žižek, Slavoj: Trouble in Paradise: From the End of History to the End of Capitalism, Penguin (E-Book), 2015.
TWA (*): Horkheimer, Max und Adorno, Theodor W.: Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente (E-Book), Fischer E-Books, 2010.

* Translation from German by myself.