A kung fu fighter in a disco

This wins all hate contests, by the way. As pointed out by Lex yesterday-

I don't think that really needs words to attempt to explicate its hatefulness.

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celentari.livejournal.com

OH MY FACE, I HADN'T SEEN THAT. W- w- words are not enough.HORROR HORROR HORROR.
I go cry now.

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It's just so very appalling and depressing. D:

Not least because as I type this there are indie hipster kids seeing a point to Biggie/Umbrella because "this version really brings out the emotions" or "gives it such a meaningful twist" since a white man in a "trendy scarf" has done that. *facedesk*

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yuxonomei.livejournal.com

I don't want to look after reading your comment.

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hoshuteki.livejournal.com

Agreed re the awfulness. And yet I find it very difficult to get worked up about such transparent nobodies. Who is this man, and will he even be here tomorrow? Surely not. (The shock will be if you tell me he's actually a highly respected artist of great popularity in whatever-the-fvck-genre or scene he's part of.)

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He's the former lead singer from reasonably-well-respected electro band The Servant, so relatively established. He's on the sort of 'big in 2009' lists but that rarely means anything of course.

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andthatisthat.livejournal.com

Why does this exist? It hurts. D:

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katstevens.livejournal.com

I'd managed to expunge this from my memory until now but ARGH ARGH ARGH. I would post this as 'worst video of 2009' on my blog but I don't wish to sully said blog with its existence...

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boyofbadgers.livejournal.com

Oh Jebus, that's appalling. How on earth could anyone think that this was a good idea?

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I nearly put 'Love Story' as one of my most hated things this year but Dan Black's neatly managed to eclipse almost everything else.

WHY I HATE LOVE STORY-
1. Taylor is a wet and a weed and I cannot empathise or even sympathise or romanticise all this wishy-washy girlish EMOTION
2. Her annoying dress in the video
3. The fact it's got one of those really bad, predictable tunes
4. Annoying cliche Romeo'n'Juliet lyrics
5. Man who looks like Joe Jonas in the video
6. URGH that line about I talked to your daddy, go pick out a white dress AGIKDHKJFSHJSUKKGUHKJSD this fills me with rage not on a gender politics level but just on an 'IS THIS LEVEL OF DELIBERATE QUAINTNESS STRICTLY NECESSARY?' level.

Hate doesn't have to be a consensus, of course. Taylor beat the vastly preferable (IMO) T.I. into a hat in our Chartpoll last week but that doesn't mean I have to sit here and take it, etc.

Edited Date: 2009-04-02 09:35 am (UTC)

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Is it just me, or have there been far more TOTAL ATROCITIES this year than normal? Even leaving aside Katy Perry and her endless wacky look-at-meeee antics, we have:

Lady "It's fashion! I'm an artist!" Gaga. Evidence for the prosecution: endless terrible pantslessness, endless terrible refusal to stop talking about her pantslessness as though it's a Warholian art form, endless invocations of Warhol, Madonna, Grace Jones &c as though she's fit to lick their boots, the disparity between that and the mediocre, utterly unexceptional electro that she peddles, each and every one of these quotes (http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/02/lady-gaga-inter.html).

La Roux. We have covered her recently, I believe. Even apart from the stupid name/hair/opinions/facial expression, her music is basically unlistenable. People can really enjoy listening to that shrill, charmless harpy voice over the 80s preset button on her keyboard? Really?

Asher Roth. Frat boy stereotype raps about how he loves college. Even worse than that sounds.

3OH!3. Warning: do not watch if you value your peace of mind:

"Shush, girl, shut your lips, do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips." I can't believe that's a lyric. I can't believe he REPEATS IT. TWICE. When I watched this, I physically flinched and backed away from the computer each time. I actually want to commit acts of violence on him.

AND HE'S NOT EVEN THE WORST. This is basically the most repulsive piece of music I have ever heard in my life. It's just totally WRONG in every way. I mean...'singing' the lyrics to Biggie's 'Hypnotize' in an obnoxious, passive-aggressive indie-boy whine, while the 'Umbrella' instrumental plays tinnily in the background from two rooms away. What? HOW IS THIS AN ACCEPTABLE THING TO DO? It's even worse with the video. Look at his face, people. Look at his smug, pasty face bobbing up and down. Look at his clothes. I want to strangle him with that fucking keffiyah.

You know what's the worst thing about the last three, even worse than their existence in the first place? Even worse than the fact that they got signed (can't blame anyone for their desperation to make a buck from the ashes of the music industry)? It's that they appear to HAVE FANS. There are people out there who believe in the artistic merit of 'Hypntz'. And you just know that all of them come with a load of patting-ourselves-on-the-back-for-being-so-clever baggage.

If anything links these people, it's that they all push their personalities loudly and obnoxiously to the forefront of what they do. And they all go out of their way to make some Statement About Art. It's impossible to ignore what total dickheads they are, because it's inextricably bound up in the music - with the exception of Gaga, you can't listen to the music without buying into Black, La Roux etc as "artists" - clever, funny people/personae who are doing something worthwhile on a wider cultural level. Which...does anyone want to defend any of them? Really?

The other thing linking them is, of course, that they're utterly devoid of any actual talent, and stripped of all the ~baggage~ (insofar as that's even possible), their product is just unremarkable. None of them can sing. None of their songs are particularly well-structured or well-crafted. The production is rudimentary. In fact, you NEED their personalities to carry their music - which is precisely what makes them so intolerable.

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is there a case for a once-and-for-all public takedown of this meme

it's the bastard descendent of the original 60s white-kid response to 50s and 60s black music, but that (a) introduced and mixed in stuff that wasn't in the original* and (b) actually was a first populasation and presentation of music that was REALLY HARD TO FIND AND HEAR in 60s white-kid-land

*including elements introduced by people strugglng to learn to master stuff they hadn't grown up with -- fruitful misconcpetions blah blah

but this is (i) no longer remotely a valid excuse and (ii) a product of active refusal to engage with stuff that's readily available, a censorship born of smug laziness

(caveat: i haven't heard hypnotoadz* and as usual lex's rage makes me kinda want to!)

*BETTER NAME ALERT

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if i didn't have ten million other things on* i would do this, it would be good for me

*why hullo "the state of rock", you seem to be no more than 10 million pages of scribbled notes!

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I would try to do it but Lex or Martin would be much better at it. The whole meme makes me furious, from Girl Talk to Dan Black to fucking Kanye West. GJHSDHJFSFSGSGJGFSKDSaaaaargh.

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koganbot

For the sake of your research, here's Asher Roth's "I Love College," though I don't know if it fits your takedown because, (1) it's not really going on about its cleverness in what it's appropriating, and (2) it's powerful, delivers its sensibility, is currently in my Top 20. (It ain't crunk, but I bet Lil Jon is a fan.)

(If that embed doesn't play in the U.K., here it is on Dailymotion.)

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there's no general reason why this tactic -- cover a song in a rather different mode -- shouldn't make for stuff that's really interesting: but what's become pertinent is that it so relentlessly now produces bad work (with the good stuff the exceptions proving the rule)

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koganbot

But Asher is not covering a song in another mode. That's only Dan Black. The crew upthread are misleading you.

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koganbot

"Exception that proves the rule" originally was using "prove" in the archaic sense of "test," but now means either, (1) when you examine the exception it turns out not to be an exception, or (2) you're just saying "the exception proves the rule" because you don't know how to explain the exception.

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yes i just like to use it to bug people -- it drove my logic tutor mental

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koganbot

But usage (1) is really good, when you can pull it off. (I did it in my John Conlee review, where I said "Conlee generally chooses to wallow rather than dissemble. His basic theme is not getting over it (the nuthouse song being the apparent exception that very much proves the rule); this can mean being true to a true love, but more often it means not letting go of a lost love" (the nuthouse song has him confined to a mental institution because of the amnesia by way of which he manages to forget his lost love).)

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koganbot

The British Invasion bands had to write their own songs, since they weren't going to find music biz professionals who knew how to write them. (Exception that proves the rule would be The Animals' "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place," written by Brill Building pros Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Weil's lyrics have the protagonist desperate to break out of poverty; Eric Burdon sings them as if he's desperate to break out of the world.)

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/archive/2007/aug/02/the-rules-of-the-game-no-9-the-teens-are-cool-but-

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'I Love College' isn't going on about its cleverness but it IS going on about its craziness, which is even worse. It may deliver its sensibility but that counts for nothing when said sensibility is utter bullshit - students going on about their crazy, wacky antics are intolerable at all times - and in any case literally every line is such a hackneyed cliché that it doesn't deliver much of anything.

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well, it engages with it, but from a distance; and the way it engages, it makes the arm's length seem more the point than the source material. And the arm's length consists of fear, awkwardness, mockery, distaste, openly revelling in one's own half-assed lack of skill - what all of these things are essentially saying is "we don't think hip-hop culture is worth anything more than being the butt of an ineptly executed joke". UGH.

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anthonyeaston.livejournal.com

is it possible that hypntz is saying something interesting about hipsters, brooklyn, and gentrifaction?

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Nothing that we didn't already know, surely? Or more to the point, nothing that we needed to see/hear. The Hood Internet already exists and this awful, awful dude has decided to personify it :(

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anthonyeaston.livejournal.com

it is just badly done.

not nearly as awful as this though:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdJ_wsm_4E0&feature=related

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but he's French?

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byebyepride.livejournal.com

that would explain the scarf then. I believe it is possible to wear a scarf and still get laid in France.

(deleted comment)

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Idk, he lives in France for sure. I only know this from watching the Month with Miquita to perv on the purple one out of the Saturdays but still.

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OH GOD. Excellent call by

martinskidmore re: Lil Wayne "goes rock." I'm sure I don't have to write the reasons 'Prom Queen' is NOT VERY GOOD AT ALL but will anyway-
1. It is not "rock," it is nu-metal if it's anything
2. URGH VOCODER when has that been a rock instrument
3. Lil Wayne's rap generally rocks at least a little bit; what he's created here is the IDEA of rock which is interesting (especially since it's not just his idea but probably a lot of rock's own idea of itself) without actually managing to harness his own rock.
4. V bad, no tick.
5. Altho I did once listen to it five times in a row and it holds a certain fascination.

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vocoder went rock with PETER FRAMPTON

From:

chezghost.livejournal.com

presumably he's still just using auto-tune thingy not actual vocoder (which would be and is always better, not that it would save 'prom queen' tho granted)

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True. Also true: I rarely have any idea what the hell I'm talking about in this area.

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autotune is the heart of irano-pop hence = awsumz x a trillion

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koganbot

Here's my Jukebox review of Lil Wayne's "Hot Revolver," which I gave an 8.0. Wayne is trying to reverse the ratio in Edison's dictum about genius's being one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. In any event, the guy is doing something new with the notion of freestyle, in that he's improvising melody but not in any theme or variation sense nor even the harmolodic let's improvise off of melodies rather than chords, much more like let's wander around the apartment humming abstractedly.

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