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Showing posts from December, 2018

Tame Impala’s Love/Paranoia is a Shakespearean Tragedy in Three Parts

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The informality of the slash in this title initially threw me off. It casted a shadow over the track’s first listen as being a slur of ideas or emotions, without a cohesive train of thought. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Rather, in being so blunt the title displays exactly what the work discusses without a flashy or derailing sling of words like I have done for this piece. Love/Paranoia represents the two sides of a theatre mask, without being traditional opposites. Love/ Heartbreak, for example, might make more immediate sense as one of the oldest cycles of time. But that isn’t what Tame Impala's mastermind Kevin Parker is talking about. He depicts a three part tale of infidelity, potentially over the course of an extended amount of time. By titling the track Love/Paranoia, Parker tells listeners the narrative theme from the get-go, identifying the intended meaning of the verses rather than just explicitly saying. In doing so he creates a story. Or, rather a tragedy. Lik...