"I like to party" sang Oliver Cheatham in his relentlessly played illiterate hit Make Luv a few years back, which I still hear with aggravating frequency. "I like to party" he began, "everybody does". And that's what always bothered me about it. Because I don't like to party. I don't like large congregations of people, I don't like alcohol, I don't like music being played merely as a background to inane blether, I don't like music being played so loud that it's impossible to maintain a conversation without screaming, in fact the only way I like the combination of music and people is when all of them are sitting down listening to it, and that's not a party, it's a concert. So by any conventional interpretation of the word party, I don't like to. That doesn't stop Oliver Cheatham blithely including me in his all-encompassing assessment of the entirety of mankind though. It's one of the great disconnects of modern society, people's inability to appreciate that their own experience can not serve as a template for all of humanity. If everybody were able to empathise more then we would find the increased level of understanding between different groups of people leading to more peace and tranquility around the world. But that's not what Oliver Cheatham wants. Oh no, for Oliver Cheatham everybody had damn well better like to party or else. He's essentially a funky fundamentalist, determined to impose his worldview on those of us who happen not to share it.
Apart from which, if everybody likes to party, why is he telling us anyway? What kind of insight is that with which to open a song? He might as well be singing "I breathe in oxygen, everybody does". In fact the song would be greatly enhanced if when he sang "I like to party" a massed crowd of backing vocalists responded with "Well DUH, Oliver". Because everybody does.
