Twenty Years Later, "Permission To Land" Has Been Granted

Not every band is meant to stay with your forever. Sometimes, they are a moment in time where everything comes together in a bit of magic, and the flash paper disappears once the trick is finished. I feel that way about The Darkness, as I sit here to ruminate about the twentieth anniversary of their landmark "Permission To Land". In some ways, it's hard to believe it's been that long since the first time those piercing high notes entered my ears, but in other ways it feels like music from another lifetime.

It took a mix of courage and stupidity to be The Darkness in 2003. Rock of the classic and glam styles was not cool, and littering a record with guitar solos and falsetto vocals was so out-of-place no one should have ever been able to find it. But thanks to charm, a bit of luck, and a video that was perfectly weird for MTV, The Darkness became successful beyond anything I could have imagined.

The band's one enduring moment is, of course, "I Believe In A Thing Called Love", which is one of the most absurd songs to ever become a hit. With three guitar solos, and an almost un-karaoke-able chorus, people laughed at the song just as much as they found themselves wanting to sing it. The lads made rock cool again by making it as uncool as possible. Watching the video, you get the impression the whole thing was a spoof, which is actually the way I like to think about it. They're paying homage to the past, but doing it with a sarcastic bent that tells us they understand how ridiculous the whole thing was. That also explains, at least to me, why I've never cared much for anything the band has done in the ensuing two decades. Jokes only last for so long before they get played out.

I was in college when that song came out, and it quickly became the bane of my existence. For whatever reason, as music played in our dorm, I let slip that I could hit some of the falsetto notes. It was mostly a party trick to pull out when people were sufficiently drunk, and I needed something to amuse myself. At one point, though, I had done it often enough that it caught people's attention. At the regular karaoke night, my name was covertly written on a slip of paper, then pulled out and announced to sing that very song. We had heard others try and fail many times before, and I could see on some of the regular's faces disappointment that I was going to get to the song before they could.

I wanted no part of any of that, mind you, since I was only there to not spend the night alone. I did not then, nor at any point since, want to sing in public. But as I was light enough to easily pick up and move, I was forced to the mic as the song began to play. I couldn't really hear myself, so I don't know how close I came to pulling it off, but it was certainly closer than the others who would endeavor to be so uncooly cool. I've always been under the impression I was a reasonable facsimile, which was enough to keep me from wanting to crack one of their large glasses of beer over their heads for doing that to me.

You would think that would complicate my relationship with this record, but it hasn't seemed to. There's an unbridled sense of fun that comes through the absurdity that few records have ever been able to match. I still love the exaggerated way Justin spits out the word "motherfucker" at the end of "Get Your Hands Off My Woman", and the fact that badminton is on his schedule in "Friday Night". It is so much the antithesis of the old rock and roll cliches that it warms my heart.

Perhaps I've been able to appreciate the record because, as time has gone on, my lack of care for my voice has meant those high notes drift further away from my range every year. I no longer think of it as a record I would stupidly sing along with, but rather an artifact of a past life. Maybe this wouldn't scream 'party record' to everyone, but to me it's a reminder of the good times I had in that place of my life. "Reign In Blood" is too, but that's a story for another day.

In the last twenty years, we've heard a lot of music that pulls from the classic rock of the past, but very little of it does so the way The Darkness did. This isn't trying to replicate the sound of worn out vinyl, or thinking that sounding like the next Led Zeppelin will make it so. No, this is a big and polished record that takes inspiration from the larger-than-life stories of the past, putting them in a context to show how silly it always was. Steel Panther has tried to do the same thing, but they never felt like they revered the music in the same way. Their jokes were more literal, more crude, and unable to sustain.

The Darkness made a record that skewered the past with love, and it's precisely because of that it still sounds this good twenty years later. Bitterness only gets worse with time, but sweetness can develop complexity. "Permission To Land" might not be complex, but my feelings towards it sometimes are. The one thing that never changes is that it remains an indelible record. It probably always will be.