The Profit In The Pain

As children, when things make us cry, we go out of our way to make a huge Kelly Ripa of a deal out of things. We kick, scream, and shit ourselves like Amy Winehouse at happy hour. But somehow, at some point in our lives as we get older, we decide that the things that slip us into a mildly depressive state are pretty damn cool. And not just remotely satisfactory, we're talking "The Notebook" blockbuster worthiness. I'm talking "Dear John" stardom (this list is going to be as predictable as Sparks' own movies in another sentence or two).

Maybe it's to remind us that we're still human.
That we can still bleed.
That maybe even in our cold, technologically sound but emotionally distant cyberspace, there remains a glimmer of beating heart.
Maybe it's just to shed water weight post-P.F. Chang's, I don't know.

Factually, I don't care enough about you guys to get introspective, but one thing's for sure, if you're making money out of making people other than yourself experience some falsetto'd form of heartbreak, then that's an industry you shouldn't be rewarded for.

This is where Stars comes in.
After a few albums of you guys bitching and complaining, I was really holding out thinking that maybe sometime between your financial comeuppance and celebrity status, SOMETHING good was bound to happen. Well, forgive me for my obviously ignorant assumption. It just doesn't end for you does it? You're like the Bluths of the music industry.
Sure you've thrown in some synths and a few sightly poppier choruses but the fact is, the moment I start bobbing my head to the beat, your sorrow creeps up on me like ED at Band Camp. "The Five Ghosts" feels a lot less like eerie hope and a lot more like genocide with Depeche Mode driving the tanks.

Forgive me for not groveling at your grief-stricken feet, but somehow I feel like you're already down there in the fetal position weeping abstractly about some catastrophic relationship gone apocalyptic. Which raises the even bigger question: How the hell do any of you have the time do date and fall in love that often? Is this a kinky Big Love sort of situation or are you just milking an old relationship like an abusive farmhand?

Either way, I've stopped caring, which is something all of you could learn to do a little better.

On a more positive note, your curiosity as to what a musical version of the Hills would sounds like has been quenched.
You're welcome.