Does this beard make me look fat

Friday, March 25, 2011

Throwing pop grenades and rubbing doesn't help.



My friend Adam likes to throw what I call pop culture grenades in my lap then retreat. And maybe it speaks to the tick-like burrowing that bad pop music does to innocent bystanders and how that translates to commerce. I'm very much the old man next door who occasionally steps outside with his bathrobe sometimes regrettably agape, always wearing black socks with sandals, smelling of turkey soup and guessing how much a Spree scooter costs on the Price Is Right. My figurative lawn is my sanctity of musical travesty proof existence. And when I hear something like Rebecca Black's "Friday", my only course of action is to yell at someone to get off my lawn. Namely just the songs. But they won't and they don't and therein lies the prowess and cruel nature of pop music, both good and bad.

When something is popular for all the wrong reasons, like cancer or the NRA, then you know evil abounds and only then need to know how to exorcise the demons. I suppose what makes this song terrible is the refrain of "Friday, Friday, kicking it on Friday", adorned with copious amounts of auto tune. But consider that grown men write these songs before placing the blame on the mouthpiece. All those songs Avril and Brittany and Christina and now Rebecca assail your earholes with? All penned by men. Very wealthy men, who spend their money on furs and exotic cheeses and their time in clubs with other men who write for teenage girls.

But sweet Jesus, is this song terrible. And there's no glory in taking shots at a 13 year old girl, I'm sure she just wants her slice of the Fluff Pop pie, and its hers for the taking now. But now I find myself watching her video, along with the millions of other victims, and I'm still wondering what makes it so damn terrible. And all I can say to my friend that enlightened me to this unfortunate song is I hate you, I really hate you. Well I don hate him, he's just doing a variation of "wow, this stinks. Hey buddy, you gotta smell this." It's like he re-gifted something horrendous to me. Or passed along a disease that's not leaving my body for a few weeks. Oh it burns, it burns. There's no real moral or witty way to tie this one up grasshoppers, I think it was Abe Lincoln that said "When bad pop music is emitted from the phonograph, many things happen. An angel loses its wings. The Indian in those anti-littering commercials cries one additional tear. A man stuck in traffic in Los Angeles on the hottest day of the year finally snaps and goes on a rampage across the city where no one actually dies, except him and the Nazi, but everyone he meets is impacted for better or for worse. Wait that was Falling Down. Where was I...Oh right, but mostly, when bad pop music is created, everyone loses."

Oh it burns, it burns.

1 comment:

Adam said...

I feel so accomplished.