Category: Musical Musing

The hills are alive…

I’m Sick of Hotel California

May 24, 2010

We all get sick of the newest, popular songs get the living shit played out of them on practically every radio station. That new Train song. That Lady Antebellum song. Just about anything by Taylor Swift. And if I hear Kelly Clarkson’s “Already Gone” or whatever it is one more time, I will scratch someone’s eyes out.

But songs don’t have to have come out within the past two weeks for you to get sick of their constant, constant, mindnumbing play. Hell, they don’t even have to have come out in the past two decades.

That’s right, this is about even classic rock songs that radio stations play the living shit out of. While any one of these songs might get fewer plays on a given day than any of the aforementioned brand new pop stuff, it’s also worse in a way because many of the overplayed pop songs will disappear without a trace in a month or so, while Fleetwood Mac’s “Rhiannon” and Steve Miller’s “Joker” and Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” have been getting played sooo much consistently for many many years.
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Can Hardly Wait

December 21, 2009

Goodness, how many Christmas songs am I going to criticize?! 😀

The one of the moment is “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”. It’s an okay song as a whole, if a bit dated. But there is one line in it that just sticks out like a Mormon on SnipeMe.

“And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again.”

Wow, WTF? I mean, I’m not blaming the song for this line, because it can’t help, well, speaking the truth. Line comes right after listing what some kids hope to get for Christmas. I guess like a whole this-is-what-these-people-are-thinking during the Christmas season. Kids are eagerly anticipating their gifts, and the parents… wish the kids would STFU and go back to school already.

Ah, those mature responsible adults. :irked:

Christmas Voyeur

December 14, 2009

Some Christmas songs are so terrible they are worth being griped about multiple times. I speak again about the entity responsible for horrid neuron-genocide known as “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”.

Really, it does the same thing that “Santa Baby” does, in that it actually sort of implicitly sexualizes Santa Claus. In the case of “Santa Baby”, it’s about some chick wanting Santa to hurry down the chimney and bring her presents, and it’s sung in such a tune that those “presents” could be just about anything and certainly not all she wants (giggity). Which is messed up when you figure Santa Claus is like 1700 years old, and unless the singer is supposed to be Mrs. Claus, we’re talking a girl with some major daddy issues.
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Geography FAIL

December 11, 2009

Have you heard the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid? That collaborative bit from the ’80s all about how poor Africans are starving and to think of them at Christmas time? That goes “Feed the world… let them know it’s Christmas time!” Sounds nice on the surface, and Lord knows idiots like my mom eat it up without a thought. But when you really look at it, the song is rife with profound ignorance about the place they are singing about.

Alexander Cohen covered this one well a couple years ago already, and I have to agree with everything he says there.

Look at these lyrics: “And there won’t be snow in Africa at Christmastime/ The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life./ Where nothing ever grows, no rain nor rivers flow./ Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?”
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Grown Up Christmas List

December 3, 2009

Now for a festively ageist version of…

YOU SUCK!!!!

I’ve griped about certain Christmas songs many times before, and will surely continue to do so even long after I’m dead. So here’s another whose creator I’d like to throw screaming into the middle of the ocean.

This song is “Grown Up Christmas List”. Just the title threw up some red flags to die-hard pro-youth me. Then at some point I actually heard the song and listened to the lyrics. Yup, I’d say those red flags are quite warranted. :irked:

Basically, the song is about someone asking Santa for wars to never start, for everyone to have a friend, for love to never end. Hmmm… that sounds very nice actually. I can get on board with that. It’s a very nice song.

However! One little problem which completely ruins it and makes it not the lovely song it could be but downright objectionable. Remember that title? Yeah, the idea is that this person is asking Santa for all these nice things, as opposed asking for toys or other material things. In other words, material items are things kids ask for, but adults want nicer things like peace and love and whatnot. Because, naturally, kids are inherently selfish and just want lots of toys.

Oh, boy, yet another example of yuletide hatred of children.

Go fuck yourself with a crucifix, Amy Grant.

Stigma of a Preteen’s Preference

August 18, 2009

So this morning I was driving to work and a song came on the radio that I’d heard a few times. Thought it was a cute song, so when I got to work I went to the radio station’s website to check the list of recently played songs to see what the title and artist were. And for a moment there I felt I had to cleanse myself, repent, confess my sins, and go into shameful exile. For that cute song, I was horrified to discover, is sung by *gasp* Miley Cyrus!

Of course, that horrified dirty feeling lasted all of half a minute before I realized, well, so what? Sure, I, a 26-year-old, am “supposed” to hate everything about her, as well as the Jonas Brothers and Taylor Swift and whoever else. They, along with Twilight, are a favorite thing to mock by everyone from long-time comedians to the contributors at ROFLrazzi. It has long since gotten stale, though, save for ones that are actually cleverly done. But it doesn’t matter because they’re making fun of something everyone already hates so that right there is apparently what passes for comedy.
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Die Hippo!

December 22, 2008

It is one of my sincerest wishes that whoever came up with that awful song “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” should be tied down and stabbed in the ears with a long sword. That way, they’ll know how the rest of us feel whenever the song comes on the radio. I wish a similar penalty for whoever decided to put it on the air to begin with.

I mean, what the hell? It’s a horrid thing to hear and it’s just trying to sound all “cutesy” because the little kid is saying the whole word “hippopotamus” and that it sort of rhymes with Christmas. Not to mention it’s a ridiculous thing to want as a gift. On all counts, it’s right up there on the annoyance level of “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”.
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Tell It Like It Is

December 17, 2008

That is one overused phrase.

“Oh, yeah, he’s tellin’ it like it is!”

Heh. Cute.

On NYRA and similar places, it’s a nice substitute for, well, actually saying something substantial.

Then I heard it during the ending of the Eurythmics’ version of “Winter Wonderland”.

I don’t know. Winder Wonderland doesn’t strike me as a “tell it like it is” moment.

Margaritaville

July 7, 2008

I hereby decree…

The live bar performer will play Margaritaville.

Without exception, without fail. Or no, very much with fail. This song is way overplayed. Some loser with a guitar who got fortunate enough for some Saturday night bar gig where he’ll spend the evening badly covering various popular songs will soon enough stumble upon this Jimmy Buffett ballad.

People eat it up, as they often do with the most tiresome, clichè acts. “ZOMG, awesome, he’s playing Margaritaville while we’re in a bar, he’s liek sooo kewl!”

What other gems shall we hear? “Closing Time” perhaps? Maybe even “Tub Thumpin'”. Or, perhaps not, those are too recent. Still bar songs. Even if played, not the least bit creative, but with Margaritaville, shit, song’s old so everybody knows it and you don’t piss off the older bar goers who want to pretend the year 1980 has not yet come.

All I wanted was to go to a restaurant on some evening, but in the restaurant’s bar they have some dumb live band or whatever. Margaritaville will be played. That train is never late. I mean, the song stops being clever after the second or third time you hear it, if it ever was. Playing it over and over just speeds up the brain damage the bar people are already on the verge of with their copious alcohol consumption. Ugh.

(Speaking of stupidity, prepare yourself for like 500 comments all saying “ZOMG, finally, a new entry!”)

This has been Day 45 of the 100 Days of Summer, Round 8.