Kenny G is an icon of ’90s tenderness, his mane of curly hair and almost invisible-sounding smooth-jazz schmaltz the sound of Christmas dinner at your aunt’s house where you have to take off your shoes before doing pretty much anything. Even in his heyday, he was something of a punchline, churning out music that was theoretically embarrassing to listen to even as he sold album after album after album. At 75 million records sold, he’s one of the best-selling musical artists of all time, but he seems content with himself, as anyone who has sold that many records probably should be.
But no one is exempt from loneliness. Kenny G still hurts, as anyone who has ever listened to his music, which is tender, romantic, and yet still pulsing with a quiet sense of melancholy, can attest. But you don’t need to listen to classics like 2002’s Paradise or 1996’s legendary The Moment to understand that; you can simply log onto Twitter, where he is firing off updates like this:
Yes, like Wesley Snipes, Kenny G has become self-aware on the internet, at once playing off his corny image and updating it into an almost surrealist riff on himself. There are a lot of puns about the word “sax”:
And puns about his name:
His best stuff conjures a weird character obsessed with saxophones and playing smooth jazz.
Some of his more internet-specific attempts at virality seem to suggest there is a savvy social-media expert behind these tweets, which sort of ruins the joke.
But sometimes the stars align to create a perfect tweet like this:
Smooth jazz and yacht rock remain evergreen, their gentle textures aging like, well, Kenny G himself, his locks remaining virile and flowing even as his hairline recedes. His arms remain strong, lithe, ready for extended sessions of sax-playing, even as he moves into the twilight of his life on this planet. And yet he, too, knows what it is to be alone, offering a glimmer of hope for us all.