POSTCARD FROM BARCELONA: ‘Purple Rain’ in Spain

BARCELONA—Everyone complains about the McDonald’s, but what I noticed most was the music. American music is everywhere in Europe. More than just youth culture tuning into rap and boy-bands, the phenomenon greets you in cafés, clothing stores, and train stations.

Some bemoan this Americanization of the world, the decline of cultural diversity. Go to Europe, eat a Big Mac and watch Scary Movie 2. Can’t we get away from ourselves anywhere?

But at times, for this weary traveler, it was nice to have a little bit of home so far away. After an uneventful summer at home, I took off for Europe to meet my friend Susannah and see a little of Spain, Italy and France.

Travel was not without complications: getting a train ticket from Barcelona to Italy proved much harder than we had anticipated. We forgot that Europeans go on vacation too, and that they tend to go at the end of July, just when we were trying to leave.

After spending an hour in the ticket line to find that our train was sold out that night and the next two, we spent another two hours waiting just to get information about other possible routes. Theoretically, you didn’t need to stand in line. You took numbers, like at a deli counter, and sat down until yours flashed on the screen. Unfortunately, the paper numbers ran out and the ticket area became chaos.

After another hour in a sort-of line, having shoved a few pushy Italians out of our way, we reached the ticket counter again. There, we faced the yells of a disgruntled employee telling us that we couldn’t buy tickets for international travel now and would have to come back at 7 a.m. the next morning. Never mind that next to us, two other Americans had just bought their tickets to Paris. Exhausted, despondent, without a hostel for the night, and faced with the thought of returning to these same lines in only eight hours, we collapsed onto chairs.

Out of the din of arguing customers, harried workers, and whiny children, we heard the strains of a lilting melody. It was Barbara Streisand, there to comfort us with “Send in the Clowns.” We sighed, relaxed, and toughed it out until morning.

At 4:50 am, we were still in the train station. As I slept, or attempted to, on hard plastic seats, Susannah stayed awake and listened to the music: “From a Distance,” “Sarah,” “Only You,” “Purple Rain,” “Natural Woman,” “Toy Soldiers.” The list was long and horrible.

At 6 we awoke and saw that, contrary to the yelling angry worker’s information, ticket sales were beginning at 6:30 and a line had already formed. By 7 we had tickets booked, although for about 24 hours of travel, since all of the express trains were full. We were jubilant.

As we whipped out our credit cards, the familiar stylings of Marvin Gaye streamed from the loudspeakers: “And when I get that feeling, I want sexual healing.” And we were healed. We danced, sang along, induced stares. But it just made us feel so fine. It was a transcendent moment.

The thing about bad American music is that we like it because it’s bad. I don’t appreciate Marvin Gaye because of the soaring harmonies or intricate rhythm, but because he’s so... sexual. Generally, I find Babs cheesy, but cheesy can be fun. *NSync and Britney Spears are awful, but I know every word.

Because it’s simple, because it’s catchy, this is the music we export in mass quantities. Why should that be surprising? It’s the music we consume in large quantities at home. What we often forget is that despite all the high culture from other countries, they produce their share of bad stuff too. I’m traveling around Europe to sample good food, see fine paintings, and examine classic works of architecture. Even back in the 16th century, before America was a country, I’m sure that for every masterpiece by Michelangelo there were hundreds of campy, tasteless paintings of naked cherubs and grapes.

The Spanish music I heard, interspersed among the American, was pretty awful. And you can only blame so much of it on us. Americans may have liked Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” back when I was in elementary school, but I don’t think that, after so many years, you can blame us for its current popularity in Spain. At dance clubs in Barcelona you can dance to a new version: “No rompas mi corazón, mi pobre corazón.” “Achy breaky heart” is at least a slightly more novel phrase than “poor heart.”

Yet I am just as susceptible to bad Spanish pop as bad American pop. One of my favorites is a song called “Me Gustas Tú,” whose verses are repetitions of the general phrase “I like [X], I like you,” with X ranging from airplanes to dinner to chestnuts to dreaming.

My reaction in the train station was more than just a yearning for the comforts of home, where everyone speaks English and buying a train ticket isn’t a journey into purgatory. In part it may have been nostalgia; I hadn’t heard most of those songs in years. They were, after all, the bad songs of past decades.

Most of all, however, I think that I just responded to their wonderful badness. Now that they are outdated, their awfulness is perhaps even greater than it once was, making them even more wonderfully horrible than today’s pop crop, Spanish or American. Maybe the Spaniards recognize this too, which would explain the playlist at the train station.

At any rate, I’m thinking about buying a few new Spanish CDs, or I’m sure I can find some mp3s on the Internet. Globalization is now allowing bad Spanish music to seep into the States. But my cultural revelation is that bad music isn’t about homogenization. It’s about universality.

Zoë K. Epstein ’03, of Eliot House, is associate design chair of The Crimson.