47th Annual Macy's Fourth of July Fireworks (musical performances only) (Brad Lachman Productions, Macy's, NBC-TV, aired July 4, 2023)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night I watched a couple of the Fourth of July specials on TV, including the 47th annual NBC Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks, mostly from New York City but with a few performances cut in from Nashville, and the 43rd annual A Capitol Fourth concert from Washington, D.C. on PBS. I’ve done this double bill a few times before on previous Fourths of July, watching the musical acts on NBC and then changing channels just before the fireworks start to PBS for the “encore presentation” of A Capitol Fourth from 9:30 to 11 p.m. This also had the advantage for my husband Charles in that he was arriving back home from work at 10:30 p.m., in time to see the fireworks on the PBS program. The Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks show was clearly aimed at a younger demographic than A Capitol Fourth, since virtually all the music (if I may use the term loosely) consisted either of electronic dance-pop or rap, a.k.a. “hip-hop.” (I’ve often joked that this is the one genre of music that has two names, depending on whether or not you like it; it’s “hip-hop” if you like it and “rap” if you don’t.) For some reason, 2023 has been hailed as the “50th anniversary of hip-hop,” though just why the form is regarded to have started in 1973 is beyond me. If you define it broadly, rap is as old as the Greek dramas from 2,500 years ago, in which the actors spoke their lines as rhythmic declamation to backstage percussionists – and records from the early 1930’s exist that are rap in all but name, like Louis Armstrong’s “Reverend Satchelmouth” routine on “That Lonesome Road” (1931) and Fred Astaire’s “The Yam Step” (1938). And according to the Fayetteville Observer in 2020 (https://www.fayobserver.com/story/lifestyle/fort-bragg-life/2020/03/07/first-rap-record-didnrsquot-come-from-sugarhill-gang-it-came-from-fayettevillersquos-bill-curtis-and/112372824/), the first rap record wasn’t made until 1979 – “King Tim III” by Bill Curtis and the Fatback Band – and the first that was a nationwide hit was by another Fayetteville artist, “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang, also from 1979.

The musical part of the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks program began with a song called “Feeling All Right” (though as usual, since there were no announcements or chyrons saying what the songs were called, I’m just guessing the title) by Bebe Rexha, a modern-day pop diva who actually has quite a nice voice but it’s wasted on the lousy material she gets. Here and during her later song, “Call on Me” (a title I’m sure of because it was announced), I found myself wishing she could get better songs that would flatter her voice more. Next was a non-singing promotional segment pushing the NBC show Lopez vs. Lopez, starring Latino comedian George Lopez and his real-life daughter Mayan playing his daughter on the show, and citing the Lopezes as exemplars of the “American Dream” in action. Following that the show cut to Nashville for the first song by Jelly Roll, a jumbo-sized tattoo-covered performer whom I suspect saw a TV appearance by Chris Stapleton and figured, “If a guy that homely can become a country star, so can I.” (That’s actually based on a famous story Robert Mitchum told interviewers; he’d seen a movie starring Humphrey Bogart and said to himself, “If a guy that ugly can become a movie star, so can I.”) Jelly Roll’s solo song was called (apparently) “I Only Talk to God When I Need a Favor,” and later in the evening he did a similarly themed song as a duet with Lainie Wilson, “Somebody Save Me from Myself.” Jelly Roll wore a sleazy-looking T-shirt and shorts, and one got the impression he’d staggered home from a bar on Saturday night, somehow made it home all right, then fallen asleep in his cups and woken up and gone about his day without bothering to change clothes. But I loved his two songs and Wilson’s later solo, “Cooking with Grease,” because they were the only songs on the program that sounded heartfelt and offered real emotion. Everything else was just either boring, clichéd EDM or boring, clichéd rap.

Ashanti, displaying huge breasts that made me wonder just how much silicone she’s packing (I even looked closely at her cleavage just to see if I could spot the surgery scars), did a medley of three hits called “Gonna See Me Without You,” “What’s Love?” (once again I’m guessing at the title, but if that’s the real title it’s an insult to Tina Turner’s magisterial “What’s Love Got to Do with It?”) and “Keep On Running Back to You.” One detects a theme here even if it’s the old, sexist one of so many blues songs: “Yeah, my man is no good, but I keep going back to him anyway.” Then rapper Ja Rule did a medley of four songs that projected him as the sort of man Ashanti should have the courage to leave, only she won’t: “This Chick,” “Between Me and You,” “Baby” and “The Game.” Later the two did a duet called “Love the Way You Look at Me.” Afterwards Bebe Rexha sang “Call on Me” sandwiched between two inspirational non-musical segments, one promoting a new organization called “Dance to Unite” whose Web site, https://www.dancetounite.org, proclaims itself as “a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that utilizes dance and guided conversations about values as a vehicle to teach and to celebrate cultural diversity” (which puts them on the other side from the modern-day Republican Party and the current U.S. Supreme Court!) and one featuring Shilene Chiles and other members of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team who will compete in the 2024 Olympics (which, by pure coincidence – not! – will be telecast on NBC). After the Jelly Roll/Lainie Wilson “Somebody Save Me from Myself” there was another promotional segment featuring actor Caleb McLaughlin, who’s in Shooting Stars, the LeBron James biopic on Netflix, though playing one of James’s basketball buddies instead of James himself. Then after the Ashanti/Ja Rule duet came a segment with the show’s co-host, Zuri Hall, chatting with a woman named Faye and her son Arden.

Then came the Lainie Wilson solo song and a segment pushing NBC’s series Quantum Leap and its Asian-American star, Raymond Lee, who made the usual noises about how he never dreamed someone who looked like him could be the star of a major TV series. The finale of the musical segments was a rap ensemble featuring L. L. Cool J. (someone I have a lot of respect for as an actor on the series NCIS: Los Angeles but far less interest in as a rap artist because his work is the usual sexist garbage), D. J. Z-Trip and The Roots, Questlove’s backup band on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show. They performed a medley of songs whose titles seemed to be “707 Is Best,” “The Force” a.k.a. “We Got a Lot of Power,” “Gots Gotta Get It,” “I’m On the Top” a.k.a. “1-2-3-4-5-6-7,” “I Need a Runaway Girl” and “Rock Your Bells.” All the rappers were Black men and all were spewing the usual sexist crap; oh, how I wished that Queen Latifah had been there to chew them out for the attitudes their songs express towards women the way she did at the 2023 Grammy Awards (https://moviemagg.blogspot.com/2023/02/65th-annual-grammy-awards-national.html)!