In an act of unconscionable unoriginality, We the Living (the band) lifted their name directly from Ayn Rand's novel. The band claims to be influenced by Ayn Rand; apparently borderline plagiarism is their homage? Unfortunate. Unless the reference is to the novel's setting in post-revolutionary Russia and, like the Red Army, the band thieves and appropriates without consent. In which case, spot on guys!
Seriously, despite the blatant bite, the band name could legitimately have been a well-meaning (but poorly expressed) act of deference. The real question now: is there any pay-off from the band in the form of Objectivism-inspired material?
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| These guys? |
"This is the sound of you falling in love,
Can you feel it?"
Basically, the kind of vague sentimentality that would make even the most inane pop artists roll their eyes.
Then there's the self-pitying whimpering idiomatic to the indie genre where the band seems to have found their fan-base:
"I wanna tell you about me,
Let you know who I am.
But you don't care."
A song about falling in love with a person who doesn't care about you at all? That might actually be the opposite of Objectivist lyrics.
And musically, what're these guys like? No need to describe them. You've already heard this band. Even if you've never listened to a single We the Living song, you've heard every song they've written a hundred times over. So if you're curious about this band just on the name alone, save yourself the time and the disappointment: We the Living (the band) is an uninspired mess of recycled ideas.
If you just can't help yourself, here's a sample:
As luck would have it, the band broke up in 2010 citing a lack of passion to produce music. Burning out after only 3 years of producing generic songs with repetitive concepts, one has to wonder: did they have any passion to begin with?
The bad news is that these guys don't create Objectivism-inspired music in any capacity. The good news is that at least they won't be associating wretched nonsense with one of the finest works of literature any longer.
Do you not see the contradiction between copyrights and patents, and the right of EVERYONE to the product of their own mind? It might seem natural to you, initially, but to tell other people that they are NOT ALLOWED to copy you and reproduce for their own benefit, what you produced first, is an absolute violation of their rights. You don't have a right to tell people they aren't allowed to copy you. If someone else is intelligent enough to copy what you've done, they have every right to do so. Ideas cannot be owned. Especially not sequences of words in a common language, such as "we the living".
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