'We Are Rockstars' by Does It Offend You Yeah? is the worst song ever committed to master tape. It's also the most idiotic name in the history of music next to The Ting Tings, but let's not get into that and let's just solely deal with this one song, as if I extend this post to their entire existence I'm going to choke on my own bile and be found tomorrow morning dead in a puddle of my own vitriol, so let's get on with it.
I don't know if you've heard this song, but if you haven't, it's the one that was in the trailer for the new 'Fast and Furious' film. You know that two-second loop over and over again? That's the entire song. All of it. For four minutes. Having had the thing blasted into my cranium at about the same decibel level as standing next to a comet re-entering earth's atmosphere, I'm going to skip any amount of musical analysis or observation and instead dismiss the entire thing as, scientifically speaking, piss fucking awful. A song, clearly, for those who either have no ears to speak of or for some reason hark back endlessly to a time when their Sega Mega Drive would crash and get stuck playing an atrocious two-second loop of discordant sounds, only at fifty-seven thousand decibels. Absolutely hideous in every way, it is less a song and more a collection of obnoxious noises; a four-minute all-out assault on the senses. It rapes the aural canal with all the care and finesse of a prison gang and the vocals, while atrocious, are sweet relief from the aural onslaught in the same way some heavy ball-torture would be sweet relief from six hours of someone trying to push a dog up your arse.
I am not adverse, as I'm sure some of you now believe, to electronic music provided it's actually music. One of the highlights of any evening for me is Pendulum, which I'm led to believe is Australian drum and bass, even though it's actually quite nice and has a trumpet instead of someone talking unintelligibly about having something called riddim which is, from casual observation, a complete lack of rhythm attempting to be made up for with a silly voice and gratuitous misplaced faith in one's own musical ability. I've criticised The Ting Tings in the past for making heroically trite and awful music, but at least it still vaguely passes for music, in that even though he never stops banging that one big fucking drum, we should probably give him some points for trying.
This song, however, does not. If it is trying to do anything, it is, as the band's name suggests, trying to offend people. This must be their aim, it simply has to be, simply because I cannot believe that anyone with any love for the world would willingly create something so absolutely despicable and not immediately burn their Korgs to destroy it. The same two-second loop of awful deliberately discordant noise over and over again for what feels like an hour and a half is enough to drive any rational man to delivering vicious blows to his own face in a desperate bid to make it stop and, if the rumours of Guantanamo Bay blasting awful music at suspected Taliban prisoners are true, the only reason this wouldn't be on the playlist is because exposure to it would probably drive any suspect irretreievably insane far beyond any chance of extracting information.
I'm a rational man, and I do, in all things, try to apply logic and reason to what I see and hear around me. I'm not one to hate, honestly, and definitely one to look for the good side, the merits of whatever it is I'm looking at. Not this. I hate it. I hate it with every fibre of my being. My soul burns and crackles with wicked green flames at the very thought of it. It is a hate that consumes me. Somehow, this song has tapped into a part of my primal sub-brain that had lain dormant for millennia and, much as our cave-dwelling ancestors were likely driven to stamp out and destroy rival tribes, I am possessed with a great need to, upon hearing the very first chord, slam the jagged neck of a broken bottle into both ears and give the subwoofer a good shoeing. I firmly believe that, somehow, this band have discovered the sound that simply switches off our higher brain functions, turning us into dancing, seizing idiots or, like me, into flailing, hateful gibbons. It is aural brain damage, neuron death in musical form, and prolonged exposure would likely reduce rational men to beating the earth with sticks. I hate it, and you, I hate you for liking it.
Now I'm going to have a lie down until I'm all back to normal.
Goodnight.
I don't know if you've heard this song, but if you haven't, it's the one that was in the trailer for the new 'Fast and Furious' film. You know that two-second loop over and over again? That's the entire song. All of it. For four minutes. Having had the thing blasted into my cranium at about the same decibel level as standing next to a comet re-entering earth's atmosphere, I'm going to skip any amount of musical analysis or observation and instead dismiss the entire thing as, scientifically speaking, piss fucking awful. A song, clearly, for those who either have no ears to speak of or for some reason hark back endlessly to a time when their Sega Mega Drive would crash and get stuck playing an atrocious two-second loop of discordant sounds, only at fifty-seven thousand decibels. Absolutely hideous in every way, it is less a song and more a collection of obnoxious noises; a four-minute all-out assault on the senses. It rapes the aural canal with all the care and finesse of a prison gang and the vocals, while atrocious, are sweet relief from the aural onslaught in the same way some heavy ball-torture would be sweet relief from six hours of someone trying to push a dog up your arse.
I am not adverse, as I'm sure some of you now believe, to electronic music provided it's actually music. One of the highlights of any evening for me is Pendulum, which I'm led to believe is Australian drum and bass, even though it's actually quite nice and has a trumpet instead of someone talking unintelligibly about having something called riddim which is, from casual observation, a complete lack of rhythm attempting to be made up for with a silly voice and gratuitous misplaced faith in one's own musical ability. I've criticised The Ting Tings in the past for making heroically trite and awful music, but at least it still vaguely passes for music, in that even though he never stops banging that one big fucking drum, we should probably give him some points for trying.
This song, however, does not. If it is trying to do anything, it is, as the band's name suggests, trying to offend people. This must be their aim, it simply has to be, simply because I cannot believe that anyone with any love for the world would willingly create something so absolutely despicable and not immediately burn their Korgs to destroy it. The same two-second loop of awful deliberately discordant noise over and over again for what feels like an hour and a half is enough to drive any rational man to delivering vicious blows to his own face in a desperate bid to make it stop and, if the rumours of Guantanamo Bay blasting awful music at suspected Taliban prisoners are true, the only reason this wouldn't be on the playlist is because exposure to it would probably drive any suspect irretreievably insane far beyond any chance of extracting information.
I'm a rational man, and I do, in all things, try to apply logic and reason to what I see and hear around me. I'm not one to hate, honestly, and definitely one to look for the good side, the merits of whatever it is I'm looking at. Not this. I hate it. I hate it with every fibre of my being. My soul burns and crackles with wicked green flames at the very thought of it. It is a hate that consumes me. Somehow, this song has tapped into a part of my primal sub-brain that had lain dormant for millennia and, much as our cave-dwelling ancestors were likely driven to stamp out and destroy rival tribes, I am possessed with a great need to, upon hearing the very first chord, slam the jagged neck of a broken bottle into both ears and give the subwoofer a good shoeing. I firmly believe that, somehow, this band have discovered the sound that simply switches off our higher brain functions, turning us into dancing, seizing idiots or, like me, into flailing, hateful gibbons. It is aural brain damage, neuron death in musical form, and prolonged exposure would likely reduce rational men to beating the earth with sticks. I hate it, and you, I hate you for liking it.
Now I'm going to have a lie down until I'm all back to normal.
Goodnight.
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