Hey, John: Why the so serious of tone in much of Seattle’s music? And, then on the other side, why when it’s not serious, it’s just ironic? — Anonymous

Seattle is a songwriter’s town, rather than a musician’s town, which means the focus is on individual “geniuses” rather than chops or jams. This alone doesn’t mean it has to be so deadly serious—there are some great songwriters who write happy, or at least merry music—but Seattle was profoundly influenced by two factors: the Scandinavian conviction that celebration is unseemly, and the Punk Rock belief that raw emotion is the source of unvarnished truth.

These two unfortunate misconceptions combined in Seattle to make a culture where multiple generations of kids whimper about the time their babysitter almost touched their pee-pee, while dozens of other kids smirk and/or weep. This has been so ingrained that the only way for kids to have fun is by pretending that “fun-having” is a massive art prank.