In a development that has sent seismic shudders through the hallowed halls of the British Phonographic Industry, teen-pop overlord Olivia Rodrigo has selected a wedding song, despite the crushing irony of it being a paean to romantic devastation. The track, "Good 4 U" (a song about, as she might say, 'total and utter devastation') has been chosen for a nuptial dance. Yes, you read that correctly. A song about spite, betrayal and a boyfriend who moved on with alarming alacrity will now accompany the first dance of some star-crossed lover. It is enough to make the ghost of Tennyson sob into his port.
The subtext here is that the British music industry, which has built its entire reputation on the back of emotionally overwrought teenagers, is now slapping itself on the back for producing a cultural export so versatile it can soundtrack both a mental breakdown and a marriage. The British music press, a collection of gentlemen who once called the Arctic Monkeys 'geniuses,' have already begun to write think-pieces about the 'global reach of British songwriting.' Which is to say: an American girl wrote a song about an American boy and chose it for an American wedding. But by God, the PR machine will make it ours.
Now, I am not saying this is a bad thing. In fact, it is the perfect metaphor for the utter insanity of modern love. We take a song about being left in the cold, about having your heart shattered into a thousand pieces, and we set it to the ritualised celebration of eternal union. It is like serving cyanide in a wedding cake. It is like hiring a clown who tells everyone they are going to die. It is the most honest thing I have seen in years.
But let us talk about the elephant in the room. Why do we, as a culture, insist on fetishising heartbreak? Why is a teenage girl's emotional collapse the thing we hold up as our greatest cultural achievement? Because, quite simply, we have nothing else. The British music industry has been running on the fumes of nostalgia for twenty years. We have no new ideas. We have no new bands. We have just a rotating cast of sad girls and their acoustic guitars. And we love them for it. We love them because they remind us that our own lives are a series of small, manageable tragedies.
And so, Olivia Rodrigo chooses her wedding song. And the British music industry celebrates. They celebrate because they have a product to sell. They celebrate because they can now attach the phrase 'British songwriting' to a wedding. They celebrate because they have, once again, turned a person's pain into a commodity. And we will all clap, and we will all dance, and we will all pretend that 'Good 4 U' is not a song about wanting to die.
But it is. And that is the point. That is the beautiful, grotesque, wonderfully absurd point of it all.
