1993 country hit by Joe Diffie / THU 2-4-21 / People who believe that all natural objects have souls / Post-human race of sci-fi

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This was really disappointing, in that it was promising, but then never came together. Got "PAINT IT [BLACK]" early and thought there was just going to be a BLACK rebus (you know, for BLACK History Month ... somehow). I know the Michael Jackson song "[BLACK] OR WHITE" but at that point was not expecting to see a second rebus square in the same song, and so didn't get the BLACK cross. Eventually got to the Lorde song and thought "It's called 'BLACK Light?" I really thought it was ... oh, I see it is, it's 'GREEN LIGHT'." And thank god I knew that song because what on god's GREEN earth is "JOHN DEERE GREEN" and moreover who is Joe Diffie?? You'd think that if DIFFIE were really famous his name would've appeared in a puzzle at least once in the nearly 30 years since this "hit." You notice that his is the only one of the theme clues that has a genre qualifier in it ("country"). The rest are just "hits." I guess GREEN is an iconic color for John Deere products and so you're probably expected to infer the color that way? In terms of general well-knownedness, that answer is the mother of all outliers, wow. ("The song peaked at number 5 on the country charts"—wikipedia)

So at this point, after the GREEN square, I've got songs ... and colors ... and the songs cross at the colors ... so I'm looking for something to make it make sense. Are these flag colors? I was thinking about the Pan-African colors, but those are red, gold, and green. Maybe black and green will be involved in some other, as yet unknown flag. Or maybe there's some kind of wacky A-side / B-side gag going on with the two songs involved in the rebus squares, and I'll figure it out as I go along. I thought "well there must be a revealer somewhere to explain what's going on." But no. None. The explanation never came. The trick never came. The thing to tie it all together never came. Or, it had already come, and I just didn't know it. It's just songs that cross at colors. The colors ... are meaningless. The crosses ... are just crosses. There's no payoff. The payoff is ... I guess, finding the rebus? Or appreciating that the rebus squares have songs in both directions? I really wanted the colors (or the songs) to do something, to mean something. But they're just songs. And they're just colors. So the puzzle is very interesting from an architectural standpoint, but there's a giant "So what?" hovering over the whole endeavor. I finished feeling I must've missed something, only to find out later that I hadn't. It's not a great feeling to have at the end of a puzzle.

The puzzle was very easy for me. Almost no resistance. I knew every song except the country one, so I was lucky in that respect. My condolences to the less pop culture-savvy of you; this can't have been much fun. The puzzle really does rely on you having broad knowledge of this one aspect of pop culture, so if it's not your bag you are Really left out. "BODAK YELLOW" was a huge song and absolutely puzzle-worthy, but I can see people who haven't heard of the song looking at "BODAK" and going "What ... is a BODAK? Surely I have an error." (Sidenote: Have we seen BOJACK in a puzzle yet?)

The fill seemed a little on the crosswordesey side (when you've got ELOI ACAI IVEY filling an entire row, that's a sign. PED WII. ATOB. ANEG. Even the longer stuff leans into crosswordese (ONE IOTA, IN SITU, LAO-TSE). Would've been nice to see some more MAJESTIC stuff (VERA WANG is nice). Is EYEWINKS redundant? (12D: Secret-indicating gestures) Because it feels redundant. What are you winking with if not your eye? Do I even want to know? Is it your Tiddly? What is a Tiddly, anyway!? I don't have many specific grievances in the fill. Mainly what I feel about this puzzle is a. it was easy, and b. it was a letdown. Again, I admire the construction, but the lack of clear unifying premise, the lack of an emphatic Aha at the end, made the solving experience less than satisfying.