This fella has a blog where he's writing about every REM song. I thought that was a really cool idea so I'm going to attempt the same, but for the band Pavement (my favorite band of all time). This could be challenging since Pavement's songs tend to be aloof and dadaistic, but what the hell.

Cut Your Hair

"Cut Your Hair" was the first Pavement song I ever heard. I caught it on Alternative Nation one evening on MTV. My first two thoughts were: 'that man can't sing' and 'this is the greatest band ever.'

The song comes from the album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, released in 1994 when "Alternative" music was all the rage. Lyrically, the song seems to be about that place where art and commerce meet, that fine line between artistic integrity and "selling out." Though, as usual, it's hard to tell if singer Stephen Malkmus is mocking bands that place looks ahead of their music, or the whole spectrum of the rock and roll "lifestyle" (or "anti-lifestyle") embraced by bands and fans alike.

UPDATE: In Rob Jovanovic's not-so-great book Perfect Sound Forever: The Story of Pavement, Malkmus descibes "Cut Your Hair" as a "metaphor song," about how people change their appearance to get people to like them, and how in much the same way the music industry focuses on outside appearances, rather than the music itself.