“Big TV” by White Lies, Sunday, June 19, 2022 (Updated Post)

 I first encountered White Lies in 2009 on an iTunes sampler. The song was "Farewell to the Fairground," a song from their freshman album To Lose My Life... Their follow up album, Ritual, was unimpressive, and I kind of forgot about this band until I heard their single "There Goes Our Love Again," from their 2013 album Big TV. The album is certainly their strongest to date and plays like a New Wave album, taking influence from the most venerated post-punk acts of the ‘80s but released thirty years late. The song "Big TV" deals with themes of modern city life in regards to alienation, capitalism, and fleeting trends. Its electronic feel sounds like it's the kind of music that would be playing late at night, coming from the blue light of a big TV in a studio apartment downtown.

YOU CAN RAISE A STAR FROM GARBAGE ON THE STREET. Big TV is a concept album, following a woman who leaves a relationship she’s unhappy with to find a lifestyle that makes her feel happy. She leaves the UK to find work in continental Europe. The opening track, “Big TV,” talks about the speaker’s desire to have a small studio apartment in the middle of the city. The only luxury she can afford is a big screen TV. There’s a trend in South Korea, in the villas that I’ve been able to afford. Renters in small one-to-two room apartments buy luxurious German cars—a BMW, Mercedes, or Audi. In South Korea, housing costs are some of the highest in the OECD, with deposits on a family-sized house in the tens of thousands of dollars. So because some will never be able afford the rent of a nice place, much less the mortgage, they decide to show their luxury in  other ways—namely with their cars. Some of these “car-rich, apartment-poor” people hope to give an inflated impression of their wealth. I mean no judgement on the way people spend their money. In today’s song, the speaker sees a big TV as a status symbol, even though others cannot see the status. She comes home from working grueling hours to make the credit card payments, falling asleep in the blue-glow of late-night infomercials. Today’s song makes us question, what is our idol that we sacrifice to in the capitalistic system?

AND YOU CAN GET ME WORK, BUT I CAN'T WORK FOR FREE.  A few years ago, CollegeHumor released a video about Zen Buddhist riddles for millennials. The line that I chose for the sub-header reminded me of the CollegeHumor video. You should live in the city you work, but you can't afford the rent. So why even bother? You're chasing a dream while borrowing money, hoping that your dreams come to fruition. I often think about how service industries don't pay workers enough to live in the region that the workers serve, so service workers have to live in subsidized housing or commute long hours. I think about Seoul. Gangnam has so many English academies with native English teachers. Some English teachers want to live there because of the weekend life they can have. However, the rent is so much and the pay is so little that you wonder what kind of life you can have? As inflation continues to drive up the cost of living and greedy companies try to get cheaper and cheaper labor, how long can it last?

Read “Big TV” by White Lies on Genius.