“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more.'”

-Friedrich Nietzsche

How would you show up on this day, in this moment, if you knew you were destined to relive it, in slow but infinitely repeating cycles, again and again, inescapably, forever? 

This thought experiment, eternal recurrence, serves as a core concept in the work of the proto-existentialist 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who likely intended it as a hedge against nihilism in the absence of the God he famously conspired to murder. It requires taking responsibility for one’s actions and legacy with no possibility of forgiveness, salvation, or escape from life’s requisite struggle and suffering. 

For as the book says, “We might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.” 

On its face, it’s a cruel heuristic to apply to the fleeting, ephemeral pleasures of pop music. And yet, such are the relevant considerations in a time haunted by outmoded kitsch we thought was biodegradable, when the most painfully brilliant new music is in large part a bleak consideration of the inescapability of yesterday’s tinsel and trash.

Here, then, are six songs from different genres, carrying different grocery lists of pop’s stock passions and pathologies, sharing the title “Round and Round.” Which one would you choose to listen to on repeat, forsaking all others, forever?

“My formula for human greatness is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the face of what is necessary—but love it.”

Somewhere, there’s a portrait of Steven Tyler in which he looks like the old soul he could have become had he stayed on the trajectory of Aerosmith’s first hit “Dream On,” a bummer of a midlife-crisis divorce jam he wrote in his 20s. The real Aerosmith, of course, became better known for cheeseball ballads, insidiously catchy songs about blowjobs, and selling out to MTV with an aggression worthy of Starship. However, over 50 years, the Boston ham-rock institution has also built up enough goodwill that many who don’t identify as fans nonetheless have a particular interation of Aerosmith they can get into.

A churning rumination on heroin addiction, “Round and Round” is the second-to-last track on the the 1975 album Toys in the Attic, an early-career peak in terms of swagger and commercial appeal, and it feels beautifully out of place there. Ensconced in an almost Sabbath-like haze-and-grind, “Round and Round” is one of a handful of Aerosmith songs metalheads can love without shame.

In the eternal recurrence, it would age better than “Walk This Way” (although “Sweet Emotion” will always be a bop). 

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful.”

The Buddhist concept of karma is so unbelievably intricate and complex as to make the eternal recurrence look like a Word Jumble. Any non-Buddhist who talks about it with confidence might be thinking about something closer to reciprocity, but is probably just self-soothing with a bit of “what goes around comes around.” Things happen for a reason and work out in the end, at least if you’re a good person, deep down.

This seems to be closer to what Ratt is talking about on their “Round and Round,” easily the best known on this list, easily the dumbest, and almost certainly the one that will prove most enduring.

The gloriously stupid lyrics are the perfect complement to the music, the platonic ideal of ‘80s Sunset Strip hair metal. It’s a clean rocker that’s sticky, catchy, complex enough to hold up to repeated listens, and anthemic in the most chipper, populist fashion. It’s not sexy or scary, and it lacks the personality of your Van Halens (or even Van Hagars), which makes it even more the case that, if you put it in a time capsule, alien archeologists will perfectly understand the culture that produced it. 

In the eternal recurrence, the narrator’s naive, do-nothing optimism will cause headaches for everyone involved, but they’ll love him in spite of themselves.

“In every true man, a child is hidden that wants to play.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uWYLdILFAY

At the dawn of the ‘90s, in the wake of his MDMA-fueled destruction of The Black Album and the success of the Batman soundtrack, Prince Rogers Nelson seemed to be casting about, artistically speaking. The 1990 film and soundtrack Graffiti Bridge, a sequel to Purple Rain in story if not in spirit, encapsulated the desperate, sprawling eclecticism of a notorious shut-in afraid of losing touch with popular currents, particularly hip-hop, which he had foolishly dissed on The Black Album’s “Dead On It.” (“Cindy C,” a celebration of supermodel Cindy Crawford, proved more prescient.)

Despite (or perhaps as a function of) his once-in-a-lifetime musical, aesthetic, and erotic genius, Prince was always too selfish to pick hits from other artists with any consistency. However, for all the Carmen Electras, he occasionally stumbled on a Tevin Campbell, who enabled him to plug into new jack swing, one of the most underappreciated genres of all time in terms of technical sophistication and irresistible body-moving power, in a way he continued to capitalize on with his underappreciated early-’90s records with the New Power Generation.

Although the teenaged Campbell’s vocals steal the show on the standout single “Round and Round,” it’s also a great example of Prince meeting a genre halfway and defiantly making it his own. It’s a rare grand slam in terms of appropriating a then-dominant trend but with an eccentric funkiness and quirky-but-sinister minimalism that make it unmistakably Prince.

In the eternal recurrence, “Round and Round” would keep getting more cleverly soulful at a similar trajectory to the escalating horniness of “Gett Off.”

“The future influences the present just as much as the past.”

Despite the Nevermind-like shadow cast over the ‘90s by his 1992 solo debut The Chronic, the mainstream dominance of Dr. Dre’s music was rather short-lived. His paradoxically soothing and disturbing (and unbelievably sonically rich) brand of nihilistic G-funk had worn out its national welcome by the time the Notorious B.I.G. dropped Ready to Die and brought rap’s center of gravity back to New York in 1994 (although 2Pac’s All Eyez on Me was a late-in-the-game outlier in terms of artistic and commercial success), and there was significant trouble in paradise at his infamous label Death Row. (If you’re understandably fascinated with this musical epoch, Ronin Ro’s Have Gun, Will Travel is a hell of a read.)

Of course, that didn’t stop LA rappers and producers of the time from leading with loced-out lyrics, paranoid, hypnotic bass grooves, and hooks from Nate Dogg. Dogg Pound associate Warren G had a massive hit with “Regulate” by taking the sound in a more outwardly commercial direction, and there are tons of G-funk deep cuts that are still ubiquitous in my adopted hometown, particularly on the pioneering and impressively durable ‘80s-and-’90s throwback station KDAY.

Of all those G-funk regional hits and also-rans, “Round and Round” by Warren’s proteges Twinz is one of them. The Nancy Fletcher hook remains instantly captivating, but Warren’s lavish production overshadows the Twinz’ personalities, a fatal flaw on a hip hop debut. That will never stop it from getting played at LA BBQs, at least until the Big One hits.

In the eternal recurrence, “Round and Round” by Twinz wil forever represent the W less stalwartly and substantially than DJ Quik and less distractedly than Snoop Dogg.

“The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”

Ay, this is a tough one. The publisher of this fine online magazine once asked me which canceled artist I regretted losing the most. I shot back R. Kelly, whom I still consider a visionary despite the fact that his music nauseates me to listen to now. But I could have just as easily named Ariel Rosenberg, a one-time Animal Collective protege and an artist with an iron grip on glam-pop fundamentals and a warped charisma reminiscent of Ziggy Stardust-era Bowie who, as if trapped in an infinitely repeating cycle of shame, continually fucks it up for everyone by being a heartless rich-kid jerkoff in his public utterances. After he was credibly accused of domestic violence in the wake of his attendance at the January 6th insurrection against the US government, there’s a good chance my goal of seeing him live, which I’d narrowly missed on four occasions, will never come to pass.

If you’ve got the stomach to relive Pink’s good times, his 2010 critical and creative breakthrough Before Today is the place to start. After releasing several albums’ worth of his ramshackle adolescent bedroom recordings through the aughties, Before Today and particularly its standout single “Round and Round” indicated the embarrassment of glam-pop riches he could produce when he was in the zone.

Pink’s “Round and Round” contains enough hooks and digressions for most people’s entire albums, as if to say, “fuck it, there’s always more where that came from” in the justifiably arrogant manner of yet another 21st Century musical wunderkind whose profoundly damaged personality will not allow you to enjoy his records in peace. (Seriously, it’s got traces of everything, from ‘70s yacht-rock AM gold to T. Rex to new wave to… is that a Ratt influence I hear? I could be imagining that…) It also captures the atomized melancholy of a superficially enviable and profoundly lonely life in Los Angeles with a dude who got so edgy he fell off the map.

In the eternal recurrence, Ariel Pink’s “Round and Round” will remain somewhat less touching and brilliant than it is thoroughly canceled. RIP.

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

If you were a maturing Disney kid in the golden age of poptimism, it was hardly necessary to undergo a Scott Walker-like avant-garde transformation to earn a modicum of critical esteem.

Before Barney and Friends child star Selena Gomez archly played up her relatively wholesome image as the weakest link in a violent criminal conspiracy in Harmony Korine’s transgressive 2012 cinematic mindfuck Spring Breakers, she’d already made herself easy to like. Her albums with the Scene, especially the commercial smash and sonic bat mitzvah Kiss & Tell, released in 2009, were glossy and catchy but also unfashionably intelligent and self-aware.

In Gomez’s “Round and Round,” the self-destructive drug of choice is not heroin, but limerence, that incredible, maddening simulation of romantic attachment confined to partners forever just out of reach. I, for one, would like to hear the other party’s side of this story—”we never get where we’re going” is an odd complaint that seems to equate a sexual-romantic relationship with a cursed day-trip to Big Bear, one of several distinct reasons dating this narrator sounds like a pain in the ass.

In other worse, it ain’t perfect (except in the way that these sorts of NASA-engineered pop singles are required to be perfect, rather than perfectly imperfect), but Gomez is damned near impossible to dislike.

In the eternal recurrence, “Round and Round” by Selena Gomez and the Scene would be repeatedly eclipsed by the 2011 single “Love You Like a Love Song,” a deeply weird form-follows-function ode to an insidiously catchy and hypnotic pop jam.

The Winner: Ratt, of course. Have fun taking full responsibility for your actions, galvanizing your will to power, and revisiting yesterday’s cultural embarrassments over and over again until long after you’ve died and been reborn a practically infinite number of times.

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