If you are a semiregular reader of this magazine, you are probably aware of the Darkness, the British neo-cock-rock band who sing about believing in a thing called love, contracting genital warts, and playing ping-pong on Wednesday nights. The group's excellent debut album, Permission to Land, has sold more than 600,000 copies in the United Kingdom (in other words, one out of every 100 U.K. citizens owns a copy). However, as of this writing, it hasn't even cracked Billboard's top 200; here, they can't even sell 6,000 albums in a week. That may have changed by the time you read this, but even at their biggest they'll never sell the number of records they deserve to. The Darkness cannot succeed in America, because Americans are not comfortable with art that works on multiple levels. Which is not to say Americans are especially dumb or especially single-minded -- it has more to do with how we are conditioned.
The problem with Permission to Land is that musically it's a sincerely good rock album (in the same way Def Leppard's High 'n' Dry is a sincerely good rock album), but lyrically it's entirely satiric (the same way a Spinal Tap album is satiric). This combination does not resonate with most Americans, and I'm not sure why. People have no problem liking Tenacious D because they're ostensibly a joke (even though Jack Black is a compelling singer), and some people love Slayer because they're ostensibly serious (even though Slayer lyrics are hilarious). But Americans don't like things that express both postures simultaneously, and that's pretty much the Darkness' whole aesthetic.
Now, there are some who would argue that the British have a more sophisticated sense of humor than Americans, but that's not accurate; a lot of British humor is built on the premise that it's uproarious to see men wearing dresses. Benny Hill was not sophisticated. However, it does seem like the English are more comfortable with the juxtaposition of extreme absurdity and aggressive intellect; this has always been clear on British TV shows like Monty Python's Flying Circus (and more recently on The Office), and with British comedians like Eddie Izzard (who dresses in drag for no apparent reason and makes jokes about arcane European history). This has nothing to do with sophistication. It has to do with not needing clear definitions of what art has to be. Americans have become convinced that everything they want is supposed to be obvious: Sitcom humor is always broad; radio is dominated by music that is instantly accessible; the film industry is generally unwilling to produce movies that cannot be placed into established genres. What is good about the Darkness is not obvious. They play anachronistic music as if it's the biggest thing in the world. They seem like a joke, but they rock with sincerity. As a consequence, their U.S. audience is minuscule.
"But what about irony?" you may ask yourself as you read this. Aren't we supposed to be a generation of ironists? And isn't irony all about being self-aware and knowing? Well, yes. Except that irony is no longer used as a way to describe the distance between the literal meaning of an expression and its intended meaning; irony is now a quality in and of itself. You see this all the time in book reviews: If a writer is deemed ironic, that term inevitably refers to the author's presumed sarcastic voice and self-reflexive sensibility, as opposed to what he or she is actually writing about. In a vacuum, irony has a neutral connotation; in its current cultural context, it's almost always a criticism. For some reason, there is an American belief that nothing can be really funny and really important at the same time: Someone who's profoundly intelligent can be amusing, and someone who's hilarious can be sporadically insightful -- but you always have to choose.
This is why the Darkness will struggle. The best compliment that any Americans can give them is that they play "ironic heavy metal," which isn't true. They play earnest hard rock, and they sing earnestly comedic lyrics. They are not funny enough. But they're too funny.
