The Three Stupidest Songs I've Heard Today
Hello friends, Matt here, with very little in comedic content today. I had a great idea ready to go that Eric and I thought up, but he wants to try and turn it into a skit, which leaves me up shit creek without a paddle.
So instead you’ll get a rambling personal entry I thought up just now.
Some background: for those of you who may not know, I work in a gym with a varied clientele. While this makes for an interesting workplace, it does make it difficult, if not outright impossible to please everyone at all times. Most of the time the music in the gym is a tenuous balance between classic rock (straight white guys), hip-hop (straight black guys), techno (gay white guys, women), and disco (gay black guys).
It’s a fine line trying to find happiness between all the various groups and weighing that against who’s going to complain the most/blow the front desk staff the most shit.
Today, while trying to find a balance between all the various factions, I thought I had finally done it. I stumbled upon a satellite radio station that not only claimed to play ALL the hits, but actually did it, regardless of genre.
I began to pat myself on the back for finally disabling the Gordian Knot that was workout music.
Here’s how the Lord punished me for my hubris, in this order.
Sex on Fire - Kings of Leon
- “Your sex is on fire.” -
Here is a truly stupid lyric. I can’t figure out why people like it so much. Perhaps they find it daring, or upfront in a manner that is refreshing; I don’t know for certain, but every single reason is fucking moronic.
It is a clumsy metaphor, making a half-assed attempt at being bold when really it’s just something that someone in junior high would write in their secret notebook to save for their awesome band that they’ll form in college.
This person would be rightfully beaten everyday at school.
The rest of the lyrics are how someone would write about sex in a freshman year creative writing class. Pale knuckles? Check. Something about consuming? Check. Oh, and linking sex to death? Whoa, you just blew my fucking mind. No one’s ever done that. Except the Japanese, when they called the orgasm “the little death” four or five hundred years ago.
I will give it points for referencing road head in the song. Though, it was in a thoroughly blunt, unimaginative manner. It just seems so easy when Notorious BIG or Natalie Portman do it.
I wonder how many people (see also: guys who are unimaginative dipshits) put this on a mix tape.
“Finally a band who understands that I like sex, and I also need to reference her genitals, but without saying the word ‘vagina.’”
Or maybe it’s not a metaphor and the Kings of Leon, who write some decent songs, made the catchiest song about STDs ever. We’ve finally written about everything else, so now all pop songs will be about getting Hep.
Human - by the Killers
- “Are we human, or are we dancers?” -
I actually really like the Killers, so imagine my surprise to find out that the guys who gave us “Mr. Brightside” and “All These Things I’ve Done” also wrote this lyrical abortion.
The first couple of times I heard it, I was convinced it was a song from the 80’s that suddenly got very popular again due to being used in a movie, TV show, or remixed by some DJ. I’d never heard Dramarama’s song “Anything, Anything” until I moved out here, but it gets played all the time on a variety of different radio stations. It’s resurgent popularity is due to a couple of DJ’s whose names I’ve forgotten using the song in their sets. What’s old is new.
And so I thought the same of “Human,” because, frankly, it sounds like something they would have slow danced to at Napoleon Dynamite’s high school. Turns out that song is Alphaville’s “Forever Young,” which is itself getting more play time due to be sampled by Jay-Z on the Blueprint 3.
“Are we human, or are we dancers?”
This is not profound. You are saying nothing about the human condition, let alone music and dancing. It’s just words in a combination no one’s used before.
Apparently the line was written in response to a quote by Hunter S. Thompson that America was “raising a generation of dancers.” On behalf of everyone, fuck you, Brandon Flowers, Hunter’s right. Even if you can prove him wrong using science and math, he’s still right. The man was more of a rockstar than most people making music today, and if that’s what he thinks, that’s going to be the final word on it.
Later, Flowers said that the song was combination of “Johnny Cash and—”
No.
No.
I’m sorry. I can’t finish the rest of the quote.
You leave the Man in Black the fuck out of this. Yeah, not every song by Cash was “San Quentin” or “When the Man Comes Around.” He wrote some hokey family songs, and some of his religious songs were less Gospel and more saccharine, but goddammit, you knew what they were about. It wasn’t just something a drunk co-ed or a rolling hairdresser will hear in a club and to it ascribe some delusional philosophical meaning.
The Killers recently released a live concert DVD “Live from the Royal Albert Hall,” which is a really well-done concert. The stage design is a little suspect, but the band is solid, channeling a little bit of Queen’s energy and overindulgence for a live performance that’s spectacularly shot. The only bad part is, of course, “Human,” where the entire crowd is moved to tears by what is nonsense.
Fucking nonsense.
And not, a dignified slow tear like a vet hearing the National Anthem, or a someone trying to keep it together at a funeral, but long, embarrassing, body-racking sobs.
What the fuck?
This is England, son. They held back empires that conquered the rest of Europe THREE TIMES. Then, after a period of dignified rallying and rearmament, they turned back the tide.
And now they’re reduced to this.
It boggles the fucking mind.
Don’t Trust Me - by 3OH3!
- “Hush, girl. Shut your lips. Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.” -
Look, I get it. Dance music is not about the lyrics. As an English major, this is difficult for me to get. Intellectually I understand it, but, deep down, dance music is hard for me to enjoy unless I’m, you know, dancing.
That’s not true, actually.
I also have to be drunk.
Most of the lyrics in techno music is about being a slave to rhythm, dancing the night away, castles in the sand, or infinity. You can just ignore most of these songs as long as the beat is good, or you have something to distract you, like work, working out, or the actual act of dancing.
This song, however, is so grossly stupid, my brain comes to a screeching halt; like Bugs Bunny hitting the air brakes when he falls from a cliff. So much comes to a crashing stop, that smoke comes out of my ears as my brain gets wrapped up in whether to run away, destroy the sound system, or puzzle out how in the fuck someone, anyone, could write this lyric, and no one in their life, be they business associates or personal friends, tried to stop them.
Do these guys even have friends?
Of course they have lots of friends, because this song is really fucking popular, because of what, though?
Is there a deep-seated desire somewhere in humanity to overly sexualize Helen Keller?
For reference:
Wow. Yes, there she is, the patron saint of booty-shaking and whoring it out on the dance floor.
What’s the thought process behind this song?
Dipshit: “We really need to get across to the listeners that this woman we’re speaking of is such that we have no need for words.”
Asshole: “Yes, the attraction is on a deeper level than simple, rote communication. It’s almost chemical, a way of understanding and connecting on a plane beyond civilization.”
Dipshit: “Primal.”
Asshole: “Precisely. This is beyond culture or language. This is rooted in us spiritually and genetically.”
Dipshit: “So she needs no words?”
Asshole: “Yes, but I don’t want to use the word ‘mute.’ I don’t think it would work tonally or with the rhyme structure we’ve laid out.”
Dipshit: “Is there a cultural touchstone we could reference? Something pre-Babylonian, perhaps? Before written communication was established?”
Asshole: “Perhaps too esoteric.”
Dipshit: “Hmm, according Google, when I put in the search terms ‘mute,’ ‘woman,’ and ‘communication’ this Helen Keller woman comes up.”
Asshole: “Interesting. Are there many sites for her?”
Dipshit: “Yes, actually.”
Asshole: “Excellent, we’ll use her as a metaphor, an avatar, if you will. Any and all women on the dance floor will be able to step into and assume the role of Helen Keller in men’s fantasies.”
Matt: “Helen Keller?”
Dipshit: “Yes.”
Matt: “Helen Keller. But in the club? Grinding into men’s crotches?”
Asshole: “Yes, you tiring little man.”
Matt: “Do you guys even know who Helen Keller is?”
Dipshit: “Does it matter?”
Matt: “No right-minded individual is going to hear this, and like it. No sentient, reflective, human being is going to dance to this.”
Asshole: “I suppose the audience will just have to decide if they are human, or if they are dancers.”
*-*-*
See what I did there?
Matt
