Shortly after its release in 2019, Dance Monkey, by the Australian artist Tones and I, became the biggest song in the world. If you passed a radio playing music, you probably heard it. Its lilting, simple piano-and-beat loop had a rapid, whiplash-inducing rise to the top. The statistics around it are so large that they blur into an immeasurable mass: YouTube views and Spotify plays are well into the billions and it is the most Shazammed song of all time. (You’d think, given its ubiquity, people wouldn’t need to Shazam it any more, but it remains in the top spot.) Tones and I had been a busker not long before Dance Monkey came out and, for her, its success was life-changing and then some.
But, as is often the way with songs that become far bigger than their performer, the artist has a complicated relationship with it. “I loathe that song a lot of the time,” she told the Australian station Nova FM. “A lot of the time, I don’t want to sing it. I’m not going to write another song like it.” She was talking about working with songwriters who were aiming to recreate the magic of Dance Monkey. “I was like, I don’t wanna go there any more,” she said.
Elsewhere in Australia, a presenter on morning TV asked Bryan Adams to explain the albatross around his neck, Summer of ’69. I watched the clip because, having done a fair few of them myself, I am helplessly drawn to awkward interviews: I can’t resist the painful wince of witnessing a ropey question followed by a rude answer. “I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about the new album, that’s why I’m here,” he said, curtly. That new album is called So Happy It Hurts. Perhaps the title is ironic.
Both Tones and I and Adams are part of a long tradition. Madonna reportedly despises Like a Virgin. Radiohead didn’t play Creep for years. Michael Stipe is scathing about REM’s Shiny Happy People. Liam Gallagher says he hates Wonderwall, but then again, Gallagher strikes me as a man whose words should be taken with a fistful of salt. Kanye West wrote Gold Digger because he knew it would make money, but says he never really liked it. This complicated relationship with the hand that feeds is so common that it’s practically a pop star rite of passage. For all of the chart successes and the number ones and most-played accolades, rejecting your biggest hit is a sign you’ve really made it.
Elise Loehnen: when ‘wellness’ requires a detox from detoxing
Elise Loehnen, who until 2020 was Gwyneth Paltrow’s second-in-command at Goop, has revealed that when she left the “wellness” company she decided to “forswear any cleansing”, claiming that she has eaten like a teenager in the two years since. This announcement, made on Instagram, is not a rejection of personal hygiene, but an important point about the toxicity of cleanses and detoxes. “To me, it had become synonymous with dieting and restriction,” she said. “And I felt like I was not in a healthy relationship with my body, where I was always trying to punish it, bring it under control.”
I remember once sitting down with someone who was on the third day of a “cleanse” – and I apologise for the quotation marks here, but this is the wellness industry, and it deserves it – who had been surviving on cayenne pepper, maple syrup and lemon juice and barely had the energy to talk. The science debunking even the idea of a detox is plentiful and widespread and I am glad to hear a prominent figure in that world explaining the problems she had with it. Even if it is a bit like Jeremy Clarkson swearing off cars.
Richard Curtis: it’s funny, but comedy doesn’t cut Oscar gold
In Los Angeles, as the film world geared up for the Oscars by hoping that people would actually watch the ceremony, the director and Academy member Richard Curtis talked about the historic lack of recognition for comedic films and comic actors. Will Ferrell should have been nominated for Elf, he said. “I think it’s a real issue that comedy isn’t respected as much... but I do try and push for comedy performances whenever I can,” he added.
I try to watch as many of the best picture nominees as possible each year, but this is rarely an uplifting experience. Of course it is stunningly beautiful, and brilliantly acted and directed, but it took me several run-ups before I managed to muster the enthusiasm to watch The Power of the Dog. There is a lightness to Licorice Pizza, but the only film nominated for best picture that could be considered a straightforward comedy is Don’t Look Up, a movie about the imminent end of the world. The funniest thing about it was how many heated family arguments it caused over Christmas. Insightful masterpiece or patronising, self-satisfied waffle? There were a lot of opinions.
Curtis pointed out that comedy films tend to make more money and that is their reward. It’s true that there is far more critical snobbery around comedy, though there is a strong argument to be made that it’s harder to be truly funny. It is also harder to agree on what makes people laugh, because humour is simply much more divisive. The same humour/drama imbalance is just as true for novels and for television. What I’m saying, I think, is that Jackass Forever was robbed.
• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist
