Rhys’ Hot Summer – Luke Warm?
Andy Warhol predicted in 1968 that the time would come that everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes. Seems to me Rhys‘ Hot Summer is what happens when people try to stretch that to half an hour:
Rhys (one name only, y’know, like Cher) has put out this execrable single, Hot Summer. Cringeworthy rhyme-schemes, a chorus that has little more than two notes and two words. (Hot summer… Hot summer… hot hot summer… ) I think the dancing is supposed to look serious. It’s a cover of a song done by German group Monrose of the same name, which may be even worse (certainly the clip is cheap and nasty, and notice how little the girls dance):
I only express such animosity to Rhys’ song because, loathe though I am to admit it, it sticks in my head. But I can’t decide, is the whole concoction, music, lyrics, etc. a good example of naive, pure Camp, or is it simply bad? As Sontag put it in her near-perfect essay “Notes on Camp“:
23. In naïve, or pure, Camp, the essential element is seriousness, a seriousness that fails. Of course, not all seriousness that fails can be redeemed as Camp. Only that which has the proper mixture of the exaggerated, the fantastic, the passionate, and the naïve.
24. When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it’s often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn’t attempted to do anything really outlandish. (“It’s too much,” “It’s too fantastic,” “It’s not to be believed,” are standard phrases of Camp enthusiasm.)
What do you think?
guess rhys was right it has been ‘a hot, hot summer’