You Can’t Handle The Truth

by Chris Feldman
“You can’t handle the truth!” Aside from “Here’s Johnny!” from The Shining, Jack Nicholson’s line from A Few Good Men might be the most popular words he’s ever uttered on film. And over the years the phrase has come up time and again when people refuse to accept something as facts. But in some cases, I don’t think it’s so much that we can’t handle the truth as it is that the lie is so much more comforting.

Over the past few months I’ve noticed a number of Facebook memes making the rounds. One of them showed a house painted red, white, and blue, and the text with it pointed out that the homeowner wanted to raise an American flag in his front yard but his housing commission wouldn’t approve it, so he painted his house to resemble a flag in protest since they couldn’t regulate that. There was a lot of sharing and likes and “Go America!” comments associated with that meme, as people showed their patriotic side. That was all great . . . except the story wasn’t entirely true. The man did paint his house those colors, but it had nothing to do with not being allowed to raise a flag—instead, it dealt with a dispute over his Victorian windows (the full story is at Snopes.com, the definitive site for debunking Internet hoaxes). I’m sure people could “handle” knowing a man painted his house in a unique fashion, but “the truth” didn’t give them the chance to feel patriotic.

Another meme showed a picture of Pope Francis with a quote in which he talked about how it is not necessary to believe in God to be a good person, and that some nonbelievers did great things while many of the world’s worst sins were done in the church’s name. Again, it got a lot of likes and shares, because people wanted to appreciate how welcoming and open the current pope is and that goodness doesn’t have to be tied to a religion, but again, the story isn’t true. There’s no record showing that Pope Francis ever said that quote, and the head of the Catholic Church saying people didn’t need to believe in God would be a major PR blunder. But, it makes people feel good to think the pope holds that view. There are others—the story that Pepsi is putting the pledge of allegiance on their cans but leaving off “Under God,” the story that Tyson Foods is sending their chicken to China to process, the story that President Obama mocked the national anthem on Meet the Press and said he preferred a nursery rhyme—that are equally shared and equally untrue.

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Why do we automatically believe them? Maybe it just ties in to what we personally want to believe. Speaking personally, as someone who grew up listening to Casey Kasem and the American Top 40, I thought I knew how songs became hits—they’d come out and spend a few weeks in obscurity while gaining an audience (unless you had a new song by a superstar like Michael Jackson or an event record like “We Are The World,” which might debut within the Top 40). Then it reached the Top 40 and started climbing (usually bigger jumps at first, smaller as time went on). After a while, it would hit a peak position, stay there a couple weeks, then start slowly falling off the charts. For many years, that seemed to be the “true” way songs became popular—but that truth changed when Billboard magazine stopped relying on record store and radio estimated surveys for their data and actually tracked what was being sold and played. When that changeover happened in late 1991, songs that had fallen out of the Top 40 were suddenly back in the Top 10, songs that had spent weeks climbing the charts disappeared or were on the verge of making their “first” Top 40 appearance based on the new methodology. And then other things started happening—songs would regularly jump from the 30s into the Top 10; songs would enter the chart, drop down, move up, drop down, and move up instead of rising in a consistent upward pattern; songs would debut at #1; songs would spend months on top of the chart, and something in me said, “This just doesn’t seem right.” But in reality, those rankings were far more accurate than the “truth” I knew from my AT40 listening, when the Hot 100 was based on “surveys” rather than actual sales and airplay. But from checking in from time to time on some chart-watcher’s chat rooms, there are others who prefer “the way it used to be” rather than how it is now—even though the current way is a more truthful representation.

Are there lies we hold as DJs, not because we can’t handle the truth but because there’s comfort in denial? Maybe things like: “I’ve always advertised in the Yellow Pages and newspapers, and it’s kept me busy, so why change things up?” The truth is, more and more people are turning to online sources in tracking down their entertainment, so while those print ads may bring in enough business now, that may not be the case tomorrow. “Why spend so much time following music trends? The classics will be the classics forever.” I mentioned something to a DJ friend a while ago about DJ Tools, the CD set that used to be the foundation of a DJ collection. He admitted he rarely played anything off them anymore. What used to be the “go to” floor fillers are changing—“I Gotta Feeling” will probably get a better response than “Old Time Rock N Roll,” and “oldies” have changed from Elvis and the Everly Brothers to Rick Springfield and the B-52s. “I invested so much in CDs and players, there’s not much sense in updating to digital. These will work fine.” I know of a DJ company that used to be the biggest thing in a certain city, but when the 1990s came around they didn’t feel the investment to update all their systems to CD instead of vinyl turntables was worth the expense. Today they aren’t quite the powerhouse they used to be as other companies that did embrace CD technology sooner have evened the playing field. “I can do it myself.” That might be the biggest one. Sometimes we feel doing something ourselves is the most cost effective way to do it, whether maintaining a website or processing invoices. But, if it takes you all day to design a new logo and it takes a design company an hour, what else could you have done in those seven or eight hours that may have been more efficient uses of your time? If you could earn more in those hours than the design company would charge, it’s smarter to outsource.

Until we get a handle on those lies of comfort—whether it’s the necessity of having a way to download songs at an event, or adopting an online presence, or even giving up CDs and embracing the digital age—our truth may not be THE truth.

Chris Feldman is a freelance editor and music enthusiast who dabbles in DJing when time allows. His book The Billboard Book of #2 Singles was released in 2000.