by For James Murphy, he was all but resigned to the fact that his ambitions of stardom and being regarded as cool were over at the age of 32, releasing his first single as LCD Soundsystem with more than a hint of sarcasm in its delivery.
‘Losing My Edge’ is a bizarre statement to make as a debut. In it, Murphy laments the fact that he is doing as the title says: “the kids are coming up from behind” and dominating the scenes that he was once seen as a cultural tastemaker within, and he’s not ready to pass the baton over to them and allow them to have their fun. He was “there” for Can’s first show in Cologne, Suicide’s first rehearsals, and for Captain Beefheart’s first band. He wants you to know that he and his contributions to underground culture are of more note and worth than anything that the young upstarts are offering. He wants you to know about him.
Of course, these are all the rants of a jaded and elitist hipster who feels threatened by a new generation coming along and stealing his thunder, getting into all of the records he used to spin at famous nightclubs and gaining recognition for something he believes he was there first for. It’s the gatekeeper’s anthem, and the sort of thing that the snootiest old dude at your local bar would unironically say to your face when he sees you invading the spaces he once believed he ruled over. These things are not who James Murphy is.
I ought not to have to explain to you that half the things Murphy claims in the lyrics to ‘Losing My Edge’ are impossible for him to have achieved. Born in 1970, he would have had to have been kindergarten age attending the first Suicide practices, and both Can and Beefheart’s first shows predate his existence. What Murphy is doing is satirising the feelings of being a has-been, an egotist, and a fragile man who can’t bear to fade further into insignificance than where he started.
The thing is, at the age of 32, he did have intrusive thoughts about all of these things. He’s right in that once you leave your 20s behind, people are going to start treating you like a senior citizen, and someone who can’t speak about modern culture with authority. Murphy knew that he was still in touch enough with what was going on at the trendy Brooklyn clubs in the early 2000s, but he felt defeated by the fact that people probably wouldn’t take him anywhere near as seriously as he felt he deserved to be.
In an effort to lighten these feelings of dejection and becoming an outcast, he chose to satirise them by creating the most ludicrous parody of someone who felt as though they were experiencing this cultural changing of the guard. None of his references to Pere Ubu, This Heat or Althea and Donna are going to mean anything to the new cool kids of 2002. None of the unsubtle brags about having witnessed rock history first hand are going to impress someone half your age on a dancefloor. None of the sneering comments about their bands switching their guitars for turntables and back again are necessary.
However, it’s not all in good faith or self-deprecation that ‘Losing My Edge’ emerged as LCD Soundsystem’s debut offering. According to Murphy himself, he wasn’t ever a fan of the disco, techno and dance music he was aping on the track until shortly before he recorded it, owing his sudden enlightenment to using ecstasy for the first time.
He also supposedly wrote and recorded the song after encountering an up-and-coming Pharrell Williams at a show, feeling a sense of embarrassment about how much this younger figure had waltzed onto the scene and instantly become cooler than him. By his own admission, as revealed in Lizzy Goodman’s Meet Me in the Bathroom, “I was not cool. I wasn’t going anywhere. I wanted to, but I wasn’t. And, oh god, I was aggressive.”
The difference between Murphy and the people he is satirising in this song is that he at least had the grace to admit that he wasn’t above these feelings of jealousy, self-consciousness and wanting clout for something he felt he’d contributed to, but at the same time, perhaps that’s part of why the song ended up appealing to so many people. These are ugly feelings set against dance music, ultimately creating a sense of catharsis where it’s acceptable to feel this way due to being in an uninhibited space.
The true irony is, Murphy hadn’t lost his edge; he was about to acquire it. From being a lowly studio engineer who occasionally played in punk bands in his 20s, he’d suddenly found his means of breaking through when he least expected it. ‘Losing My Edge’ might not have been the catalyst for LCD Soundsystem’s explosive introduction to the scene, but it’s certainly a bold way of kicking things off on a quest to launch a massive career.
