Spare me the histrionics and hand wringing, please.

I very honestly do not understand the criticism of Owl City (a.k.a. Adam Young). Okay, dude’s Christian and he’s less adept at integrating his faith into his music than Nathan Burke, but then again, that’s pretty high bar to clear. This guy wrote what a lot of people believe is a reasonable facsimilie of a Postal Service record in his basement. Given that Give Up was something people enjoyed, what’s the problem?

A major label signed an artist that sounds a lot like another one in the independent music scene. This is not news. This is business as usual. This is standard operating procedure. In short: Yes, poaching and exploitation are some of the avenues through which major labels find artists. No shit, guys.

Hell, I’ll go further. Why didn’t Sub Pop sign him? It’s not like Ben Gibbard and that other guy that is not Ben Gibbard in the Postal Service have a patent on bubbly, electronic-tinged, unthreatening pop music. And if they did, there would be a line of electronica artists out the door saying “not so fast.”

Let’s face facts. If Adam Young, on his own, while unloading delivery trucks, can write an appealing, unassuming electro-pop disc (which most listeners find the closest touchstone to be the Postal Service), imagine what he could do if he focused on music full time. You don’t have to be a Fred Perry-wearing, I-leave-a-slime-trail-wherever-I-go A&R guy to want to make that happen. Having the ability to make that happen doesn’t make you evil either. So long as everyone’s honest about what Owl City is, where his influences (Imogen Heap, the Postal Service, Boards of Canada and Armin Van Buuren) are and how much he’s taking, wholesale, from the Postal Service (and he is), then I want him to write more.

His lyrics aren’t as thoughtful or vivid as Gibbard’s, but then again, he was 22, 23 when he wrote it. He will grow, mature and find more interesting ways to talk about the things he sings. “Fireflies” is four minutes which, lyrically, can be boiled down to “I like looking at pretty things, of which you are one.” He’s not reinventing the wheel, but no one’s claiming he is.

On a personal level, the guy’s shy and afraid something he says is going to taken out of context. Within the conservative view of the mainstream media, that’s not terribly surprising. The guy’s a year older than I am, for heaven’s sake. If I knew I was going to have a New York Times profile on me, I’d be shitting bricks too.

In short: Owl City sounds like the Postal Service at a time when it’s been a while since the last Postal Service record; a major label found him and is now promoting the hell out of him, using “grassroots” things like putting him in TV shows, not dropping him ass-end first on the radio without building up a core fanbase. This is not evil, it’s intelligent marketing on a talent that can reasonably be expected to grow and bear further fruit in the future.

And honestly? That fruit isn’t quite as rotten as they think.