Must I Evolve?
BY JOEY SWEENEY
Summer jams come in all flavors of meaning, from the utterly frivolous to the deeply philosophical, with the sweet spot being both at once. From the first time I heard it a few weeks back, I knew that Jarvis Cocker’s "Must I Revolve? (Must I Evolve? Remix)" was the summer jam I needed. This is because it doesn’t just ask the central question of me — it really addresses the central question of our time:
Must I evolve?
Yes, yes, yes, yes
Must I change?
Yes, yes, yes, yes
Must I develop?
Yes, yes, yes, yes
Can I stay the same?
No, no, no, no
Like the best all-time summer jams (say, “The Locomotion” by Little Eva, for example), the song also sets itself up as a funky art school Greek chorus that’s giving you both a context of kindness and momentum of encouragement whenever it appears. But that question — must I evolve? — and that resounding answer — yes, yes, yes, yes — well, that’s pretty on the nose in this life right now.
Last week, we threw this party that started 15 years ago, and it’s part of this website that I started 15 years ago and am also now doing again. All of it has been a wild time warp to be going through this summer, because in some ways, it’s been phantom-limb familiar, but in other ways, it’s been this endeavor to evolve, to create something that is tonally new, that is missing from this clickbait media scene that drove me mad years ago. I mention this not to share my personal cosmic funk with you, but to suggest that this is really just another version of what everyone is going through: You go to work, you do your thing, you know some things are working, but you also know there is a greater striving that is calling you. That is difficult but that is beautiful, too. So when this tune comes on, and you get that funky handclap vibe, and when the question gets answered, boy does it ever resonate. Boy, it is ever true.
Must we evolve? Yes, yes, yes, yes.
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