Akiva Gottlieb considers what we might learn from 1989's playlist.
1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About
Joshua Clover
University of California Press
Dh88
In certain intellectual circles, it wouldn't be outlandish to provisionally designate 2009 as "The Year We Remembered 1989". With more than a few walls collapsing- or, more accurately, being foreclosed upon - the historicising of the fabled End of History felt like an urgent undertaking. Chalk it up to nostalgia for the triumph of capitalism in the year when capitalism went to hell (and back). In the New York Review of Books, Timothy Garton Ash grappled with at least nine new books about the period, but admitted: "I come away dreaming of another book: the global, synthetic history of 1989 that remains to be written."The professor, critic and poet Joshua Clover's 1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This to Sing About isn't that book, but it will at least point historians toward a killer soundtrack.
Packaged as an amalgam of academic dissertation and speculative conversation, Clover's synthesis of pop music and cultural studies throws down the gauntlet on page one: "THIS IS NOT A HISTORY BOOK." His idea is to revisit "1989" the concept (as distinct from the calendar year) through the anglophone popular music of the era: in other words, the most exciting - and borderline frivolous - undergraduate seminar you never took. The book justifies its fascination with the disposable by arguing that, as of 1989, "history is now itself pop, and pop history". To stall the reader's scepticism, Clover emphasises that the superficial is the whole point; he seeks nothing more than "a decisively coherent understanding, a pop worldview, which echoes, and even reproduces, the basic logic of the moment".
Clover's logical gambit is that our historical memory of 1989's upheaval is entirely talismanic: the Fall of the Wall is a spectacle, an infinitely reproducible image-event, a monolithic shared euphoria as potent as a pop song. In pop music at the end of the 1980s, worn-out musical ideas were giving way to newly minted, generally depoliticised forms. The confrontational black nationalism of Public Enemy was giving way to the insularity of NWA's gangsta rap, and in Britain, acid house's Second Summer of Love resurrected the druggy euphoria of the sixties while ditching the politics. Grunge, typified by the psychological interiority of Nirvana, redirected the energy of punk rock into shame and introspection. On mainstream pop radio, one heard about the "wind of change" (Scorpions), was instructed to "listen to your heart" (Roxette), and shared the wavelength of a global community "watching the world wake up from history" (Jesus Jones). The events of the century were reduced to a catalogue of decontextualised headlines in Billy Joel's number one hit, "We Didn't Start the Fire", which rhymed "Communist bloc" with "Rock Around the Clock".
Clover's clearest passion is for lyrical analysis. He can be incisive: the unpacking of Nirvana's "All Apologies" as a catalogue of grunge tropes makes one long for a book-length annotated Cobain. And cheeky: Of the Divinyls' timeless self-love anthem "I Touch Myself", Clover notes the "delight in over-reading the conceptual relation of this figure to the end of a divided Europe; to the reunified Germany once again touching itself". And imprecise: His reading of Nine Inch Nails' 1989 debut, Pretty Hate Machine, as a spiteful rejoinder to acid house's detached utopianism depends on a slight misreading of "Head Like a Hole". "God money let's go dancing on the backs of the bruised" is the actual lyric; Clover mistakenly hears the materialist-tinted "backs of the poor."
Combined with ready access to YouTube, 1989 can be a lot of fun. And Clover deserves points for the earnestness of his endeavour; he really believes that the mass experience of pop music represents a struggle, mirroring that of any historian, to "grab hold of the moment". Sometimes he overreaches, as with his comparison of central Europe's disunification from the Eastern bloc to the acid house genre's own dissolution, or the too-tidy conceit that after the late-eighties legal crusade against hip-hop sampling, "the criminalisation of rap [would return] as the rap of criminalisation". But I was impressed by his revelation that the official death of vinyl on the Billboard charts occurred the very week that German partition ended. In the end, Clover efficiently and entertainingly pins down pop's apparent desire for ahistoricality at a particular historic moment.
That said, pop will always eat itself, and exists to resist all social categorisation. Despite the lyric in Jesus Jones's Right Here Right Now that lends this book its subtitle, Bob Dylan actually did have 1989 to sing about, and did indeed sing about it. Consider his 1989 album Oh Mercy, and especially the present tense anxiety of its opening track: "We live in a political world / Where peace is not welcome at all / It's turned away from the door to wander some more / Or put up against the wall." There it is, hiding in plain sight: a prescient hint that even the end of history wouldn't kill the protest song.
Akiva Gottlieb is a contributor to The Nation and the Los Angeles Times.
Results
2.30pm: Dubai Creek Tower – Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 (Dirt) 1,200m; Winner: Marmara Xm, Gary Sanchez (jockey), Abdelkhir Adam (trainer)
3pm: Al Yasmeen – Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 1,700m; Winner: AS Hajez, Jesus Rosales, Khalifa Al Neyadi
3.30pm: Al Ferdous – Maiden (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 1,700m; Winner: Soukainah, Sebastien Martino, Jean-Claude Pecout
4pm: The Crown Prince Of Sharjah – Prestige (PA) Dh200,000 (D) 1,200m; Winner: AF Thayer, Ray Dawson, Ernst Oertel
4.30pm: Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Cup – Handicap (TB) Dh200,000 (D) 2,000m; Winner: George Villiers, Antonio Fresu, Bhupat Seemar
5pm: Palma Spring – Handicap (PA) Dh40,000 (D) 2,000m; Winner: Es Abu Mousa, Antonio Fresu, Abubakar Daud
The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
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The specs
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
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Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Fuel economy, combined: 6.5L/100km
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The biog
Date of birth: 27 May, 1995
Place of birth: Dubai, UAE
Status: Single
School: Al Ittihad private school in Al Mamzar
University: University of Sharjah
Degree: Renewable and Sustainable Energy
Hobby: I enjoy travelling a lot, not just for fun, but I like to cross things off my bucket list and the map and do something there like a 'green project'.
Ms Yang's top tips for parents new to the UAE
- Join parent networks
- Look beyond school fees
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Arda Atalay, head of Mena private sector at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, Rudy Bier, managing partner of Kinetic Business Solutions and Ben Kinerman Daltrey, co-founder of KinFitz
Fixtures (all times UAE)
Saturday
Brescia v Atalanta (6pm)
Genoa v Torino (9pm)
Fiorentina v Lecce (11.45pm)
Sunday
Juventus v Sassuolo (3.30pm)
Inter Milan v SPAL (6pm)
Lazio v Udinese (6pm)
Parma v AC Milan (6pm)
Napoli v Bologna (9pm)
Verona v AS Roma (11.45pm)
Monday
Cagliari v Sampdoria (11.45pm)
TEST SQUADS
Bangladesh: Mushfiqur Rahim (captain), Tamim Iqbal, Soumya Sarkar, Imrul Kayes, Liton Das, Shakib Al Hasan, Mominul Haque, Nasir Hossain, Sabbir Rahman, Mehedi Hasan, Shafiul Islam, Taijul Islam, Mustafizur Rahman and Taskin Ahmed.
Australia: Steve Smith (captain), David Warner, Ashton Agar, Hilton Cartwright, Pat Cummins, Peter Handscomb, Matthew Wade, Josh Hazlewood, Usman Khawaja, Nathan Lyon, Glenn Maxwell, Matt Renshaw, Mitchell Swepson and Jackson Bird.
Company profile
Date started: January, 2014
Founders: Mike Dawson, Varuna Singh, and Benita Rowe
Based: Dubai
Sector: Education technology
Size: Five employees
Investment: $100,000 from the ExpoLive Innovation Grant programme in 2018 and an initial $30,000 pre-seed investment from the Turn8 Accelerator in 2014. Most of the projects are government funded.
Partners/incubators: Turn8 Accelerator; In5 Innovation Centre; Expo Live Innovation Impact Grant Programme; Dubai Future Accelerators; FHI 360; VSO and Consult and Coach for a Cause (C3)
The biog
Hobbies: Writing and running
Favourite sport: beach volleyball
Favourite holiday destinations: Turkey and Puerto Rico
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Results
2-15pm: Commercial Bank Of Dubai – Conditions (TB) Dh100,000 (Dirt) 1,400m; Winner: Al Habash, Patrick Cosgrave (jockey), Bhupat Seemar (trainer)
2.45pm: Al Shafar Investment – Handicap (TB) Dh80,000 (D) 1,200m; Winner: Day Approach, Ray Dawson, Ahmad bin Harmash
3.15pm: Dubai Real estate Centre – Handicap (TB) Dh80,000 (D) 1,600m; Winner: Celtic Prince, Richard Mullen, Rashed Bouresly
3.45pm: Jebel Ali Sprint by ARM Holding – Listed (TB) Dh500,000 (D) 1,000m; Winner: Khuzaam, Pat Dobbs, Doug Watson
4.15pm: Shadwell – Conditions (TB) Dh100,000 (D) 1,600m; Winner: Tenbury Wells, Royston Ffrench, Salem bin Ghadayer
4.45pm: Jebel Ali Stakes by ARM Holding – Listed (TB) Dh500,000 (D) 1,950m; Winner: Lost Eden, Andrea Atzeni, Doug Watson
5.15pm: Jebel Ali Racecourse – Handicap (TB) Dh76,000 (D) 1,950m; Winner: Rougher, Pat Dobbs, Doug Watson
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
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Engine: 6.4-litre V8
Power: 475hp @ 6,000rpm
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Transmission: Eight-speed automatic
Fuel consumption, combined: 7.7L / 100km
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre flat-six
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Transmission: 7-speed PDK auto or 6-speed manual
Fuel economy, combined: 13.8L/100km
On sale: Available to order now