Verizon (a telecommunications company) is partnering with Mashable (a website) to bring you an EDM musical called Pulse, presented in 12 episodes on its free go90 video app.
The series will be available sometime this fall, Playbill reports, but you don't have to wait until then to know what the series will be about. It will be about Americans lost in the German club scene, lost in drugs, and lost in boning each other. Here are some select phrases from the plot summary of the musical series: "seductive club scene," "lush and provocative," "music is everything and sex and drugs are as vital as water."
Now that we know the facts, the burning question: is Verizon's go90 EDM musical going to be good? [SPOILER] No, it's going to be terrible! And here are two reasons why:
Kaitlyn Tiffany: Verizon lassoed two musical theater "experts" into this project: Kyle Jarrow, who is currently working on a Spongebob Squarepants musical, and Duncan Sheik, who is terrible. Sheik is responsible for a popular pop-rock musical Spring Awakening, which is loathsomely exploitative and very boring! It begs teenagers to say, "Wow I relate to that," in response to a story in which all sex ends in death. Every song in this musical sounds exactly the same, having the effect of taking the diverse emotions of adolescence and painting them all in the same shade of extremely male angst. It is marketed very explicitly toward young girls, which makes this even more infuriating. His most recent project, a musical adaptation of American Psycho, tanked.
very cool youth organization verizon has done it again!
I am wholly unsurprised that he has discovered a way to make even more money off of being mediocre, as that seems to be his only talent. I am sort of surprised that he got this particular money gig because he seems to only write weird, Tumblr poetry-infused rip-offs of Green Day songs (no club bangers so far), but I suppose Spring Awakening was set in Germany?
Jamieson Cox: I have no personal beef with Duncan Sheik — in fact, the sum total of all the thoughts I've ever had about Duncan Sheik is "Wow, that dude's name is cool." And yet I still think this is a terrible idea! It's not like EDM can't serve as the backbone for compelling drama: We Are Your Friends, one of this decade's best American movies (don't @ me), used contemporary dance music to tell a fascinating story about friendship, classism, and Millennial anxiety. Was it preposterous and ham-handed? Did it value style over substance? Did it star Zac Efron? Yes! All of those things are true, and it worked because of them, not in spite of them. You came away thinking the people who made the movie had a deep and abiding love for all of that silly music and the silly people who loved it.
Kaitlyn: Jamieson, you haven't given a reason that this musical is going to be terrible yet! Stop saying rational, completely correct things about a (THE?) great Zac Efron movie!
Jamieson: There are several great Zac Efron movies, actually — Okay! Yes! Why will this be awful? I don't think the people behind Pulse are going to have the same love for their subjects, a feeling I'm basing entirely on the description quoted out of the press release. Read that again: "a crowd where music is everything and sex and drugs are as vital as water." Sex and drugs are as vital as water. Can you imagine someone making a show and then thinking, "Yes, these words describe the world in which this show takes place?" It may describe the environment within a Berlin club with some accuracy, but it's still an unbearably corny thing to write, say, or think.
This is going to be terrible. They could secure the rights to the entire Kompakt catalogue and film the whole thing inside Berghain and there would still be a zero percent chance of me ever watching it, and not just because I have no idea how Canadians are supposed to watch go90 exclusives.
There you have it. Two reasons, when probably there are many, many more.