"The Shade" by Metric (Partial Repost), Sunday, November 27, 2022

Metric isn't a household name for alternative rock music, even though they have been around forever. They had some success with their fourth album, Fantasies, and they saw Top 20 singles in the U.S. Alternative Rock charts, but mostly the band has been confined to the Canadian charts. Lead singer Emily Haines, though, is an American-Canadian duel citizen, born to American parents in New Delhi, where her mother started a school. Haines collaborated with fellow indie rock band Broken Social Scene, singing on several albums, though Metric was her main gig. Metric's music varies from album to album both thematically and musically. Haines often writes about feminism, war, and dreams. On their sixth album Pagans in Vegas, the music is synth-heavy, taking influence on British New Wavers. 

I'M FOLLOWING THE SUN THAT'S SETTING IN THE WEST. Speaking about the first single from Pagans in Vegas, "The Shade," Emily Haines wrote: "When you feel yourself becoming a coward, the best thing to do is force yourself to get out of bed and be willing to feel everything, including rejection and confusion, all over again." The song and video seem to have a dual message. The first is what Haines writes about courage to succeed. The other theme is a little more implicit. The video has many images including beautiful scenes of nature, but there are some off-putting images as well. There are the melting ice caps, a scene of civil unrest, an overflowing landfill, massive flooding, and finally a skeleton. There are subtle reminders of climate change and the impact of humans who "want it all." As a rock mid-tier rock band, Metric may feel frustrated that they aren't as successful as the American rock bands. The band mostly opens for the big names like Paramore, Imagine Dragons, Arcade Fire, and the 1975, to name a few. At some point, it seems like there should be some payoff for being faithful in the scene. Maybe when the guitarist burns the "Hot 100 Bored" songs magazine, this is showing frustration at the band's limited success on the American charts. Although there are more and more problems (flooding) there are new technological advancements (the robot arm), constantly shifting our attention away from the crisis at hand. When the music video shows Hollywood and Haines bathing on the roof with a glass of champagne, we get an idea about the decadence that this rock band is due. Yet, this decadence plays a role in destroying the planet.

WE GOT REWARDED, WE GOT REFUSED. One of the themes of “The Shade” is manifest destiny, a popular idea in the nineteenth century as the United States set its eyes upon new territories in which to expand. But what was just once a political philosophy expanded into a personal one. Today, manifestation is a popular practice. Manifestation is a practice of meditating upon something a person truly desires, and if followed correctly, is said to lead to obtaining whatever that thing is. But what many of us products of manifest destiny rarely think about is that expansion for me means taking from you. The first time I thought about this was in my World Geography class when reading the book The Paradox of Plenty. One of the questions asked in class was how many earths would we need if everyone—then 6.8 billion, not today’s 8 billion—lived like me? Years later I wondered what if everyone lived like Donald Trump or a Kardashian or even like a celebrity I like such as Taylor Swift? What if everyone lived as I want to live?

Read the lyrics on Genius.