We be Hatin’ on Cher Lloyd’s Swagger

I’m really struggling to understand how being hated is a good thing these days.  Artists who produce terrible music, and are “hated on” for it, claim that jealousy is the reason.  Really?  As I mentioned in my previous music post, the band Blood on the Dance Floor can be known for their catchphrase “Haters make us famous.”  Why is is that artists are under the misconception that bad publicity is better than no publicity?  I’d rather anonymity than to be known as a delusional, talentless imbecile.

The music industry has a lot to answer for having inflicted Cher Lloyd’s Swagger Jagger upon the world.  From what I’ve gathered the term “swagger” refers to someone’s style or attitude and a “jagger” of swagger is someone who steals or imitates it.  The whole song is an obnoxious ego fest from start to finish.  With a generic club beat to the air raid siren noise that seems to be the rage in pop music today, Cher pretentiously declares is so full of “swagger” that everyone is jealous and can’t stop talking about her and wanting to be her.  Really, Cher?  Really?  What maniacal music producer convinced you that acting like a spoiled bitch in your debut single was a good thing?  Not to mention, the chorus is ripped off from the old folk song “My Darling Clementine.”  If every new artist fobs constructive criticism as jealous hate, then the music industry is doomed to spiral into a sinkhole of mediocrity.

Great swagger there, Cher.

The song posted on YouTube stands at almost 3 million views with a staggering 60,000 dislikes and only 25,000 likes.  Comments such as: “She makes Rebecca Black look like Mozart.” and “This has to be a joke, right?”, show just how irritating people find this song.   Cher is clearly upset at the poor reception this song is receiving and yet still hopes it reaches number one.  My advice to Cher would be to ditch the producers that have made her a public laughing stock and perhaps work on that “swagger” she claims to carry.

 

Blood on the Dance Floor: A cold, calculated review

Is music getting worse…or is it just me getting older?  Perhaps both go hand in hand.  For the majority of pop music that I don’t like these days, I at least see the musical merit and understand the appeal to certain demographics.  I have come across certain bands however that have a disturbingly loyal fan base, despite said band’s questionable degree of talent (or rather, lack thereof).  What intrigues me is how these young fans perceive such music as anything but…well…bad.

I must mention a band that particularly annoy me for several reasons.  These guys are called Blood on the Dance Floor and their music is mainly, what I can only describe as, screamo/bubble-gum techno.  If you’ve never heard of them, check them out on YouTube and decide for yourself what you think.  The following points are some of the reasons I resent this particular band:

• They ripped off the title of a Michael Jackson album for the name of their band.
• They recorded a bubble-gum techno cover of Beat It and completely omitted the distinct bass riff.  People, there is nothing good about this cover.
• The lead singer, Dahvie Vanity, (and it pains me to describe him as a singer) is in love with himself.  See below:

Yes, that is a guy...I think

• Mr. Vanity cannot sing.
• Their lyrics make no sense and often consist of a nursery rhyme meter.
• They think that “haters” make them famous (not infamous).

I had recently made it my quest to find out what exactly kids enjoyed about their music.  Upon trawling through comments on BOTDF YouTube videos I came to no conclusion.  My assumption is that kids are dazzled by the band’s style: a mish-mash of gender-confused, colorful attire and bizarre manga styled hair.  Most YouTube comments remarked on how attractive Mr. Vanity was, though personally he is not to my taste.  Another assumption I drew regarded the kids’ giddiness towards the lyrics of most of the band’s songs.  An excerpt from one song, Scream for my Ice Scream, may show you what I mean.

“Got a monster in my pants
And if you ever get the chance
Gunna cram it down your throat
Watch you gasp for air & choke
I’m gunna jizz all in your face
I’m gunna wreck this fucking place
Pull my hair smash the chair
Break the bed & give me head“

I have noticed a sense of smug rebellion amongst the YouTubers in comments such as:   ”My mom walked in on me listening to this song and she totally went nuts…teeheehee.”  except with spelling and grammatical errors.

Now, I didn’t want to have to pull out the “In my day” speech, but in my day, our raunchy, dirty minded music at least had effort put into it.  When I was 12, Bad Touch by The Bloodhound Gang used to be played at our school discos (and our school was a convent by the way); and while myself and my peers did giggle about the context of the song, it was really only because of our nervous curiosity about the subject of sex.  If you thought for a second that I was going to remark on how inappropriate BOTDF’s lyrics were for young teenagers then you’d be wrong.  The lyrics are inappropriate, but so were a lot of things that I listened to when I was young.  My problem with BOTDF is the quality of their lyrics above all else.  Ok, compare the above excerpt with one from Bad Touch:

“Love the kind you clean up with a mop and bucket
Like the lost catacombs of Egypt only God knows where we stuck it
Hieroglyphics? Let me be Pacific I wanna be down in your South Seas
But I got this notion that the motion of your ocean means “Small Craft Advisory”
So if I capsize on your thighs high tide, B-5 you sunk my battleship
Please turn me on I’m Mister Coffee with an automatic drip
So show me yours I’ll show you mine “Tool Time” you’ll Lovett just like Lyle
And then we’ll do it doggy style so we can both watch “X-Files” “  

I think I prefer the monkey outfits to what Mr. Vanity is sporting

Firstly, I’d like to point out that there is a considerable amount of syllables in this song compared to BOTDF’s above.  Secondly, the play on words and references to pop culture of the time were quite clever, though a bit silly.  I sincerely doubt that 14 year olds today would understand what “Tool Time” is.  There is obvious humor in Bloodhound Gang’s lyrics, whereas BOTDF seem to try too hard to be inappropriate for children.  Bad Touch is mainly rapped while Scream for my Ice Scream is just… rhymed …and screamed.  Bad Touch made it to number one in the charts which certainly meant it had a wide appeal, which in turn meant the band had done something right when they wrote this song.  Blood on the Dance Floor simply wrote perverse lyrics, with rhyming akin to the Postman Pat theme song, and spoke or screamed it to catchy techno noise.  Their “haters” may make them (in)famous, but they will never bring them to number one.

“But oh, they are not all perverted,” a defiant fan would declare, “Just listen to the song Believe and it will change your life forever.”    Believe is, as far as I can tell, the only BOTDF song with a video.  The video is set in a small, antique style room.  Girls are strewn apathetically on the floor and furniture, while both band members are seated by a piano with an air of melancholy and despair about them.  As we had been promised, there are no perverse lyrics in this song.  What we can expect from Believe is four minutes of Mr. Vanity trying to convince you that he’s the only one to turn to when you’ve lost a friend, are feeling down, had a bad day, burnt your toast and so on.  Some of the more childish lyrics include “We all die; It’s in our fully big adventure” (who says “fully big adventure”…ever?) and “We all fall down, We’ll pick you up”.  The latter line reminds me of the song Ring Around the Rosie.  In my opinion, these patronizing lyrics are a dirty trick by Mr. Vanity to brainwash insecure kids into liking him and thus stuffing his ravenous ego.  In a way I sympathize with the kids.  I’ve been there.  Puberty is never kind and often it seems like no one understands.  To have someone take advantage of all these insecurities is like a guy trying to get a girl drunk enough to sleep with him… I mean it’s pretty low.

I’m going to whip out the “In my day” card one more time.  In my day, our Believe was a song by Cher, a singer who was big in the 70′s and 80′s.  The song, released in 1999, was Cher’s big comeback single.  People may comment on how unnecessarily auto-tuned the verses were (I say unnecessarily because the woman had a serious pair of lungs on her), and that in the video she wore a nest of glow sticks in her hair (but I think that was just Cher trying to be some sort of hip granny).  This song is very simple but the message is powerful.  I know I’ve made a criticism against the simplicity of BOTDF’s lyrics, but there is a difference between “simple yet effective” and “just plain simple”.  Cher’s Believe doesn’t require much dissecting.  It didn’t need flowery metaphors to convey what Cher wanted to say. This is evident in the following verses:

“What am I supposed to do
Sit around and wait for you
Well I can’t do that
And there’s no turning back
I need time to move on
I need love to feel strong
‘Cause I’ve had time to think it through
And maybe I’m too good for you, oh

Well I know that I’ll get through this
‘Cause I know that I am strong
And I don’t need you anymore
No, I don’t need you anymore
Oh, I don’t need you anymore
No, I don’t need you anymore”

So you see kids, the only person you need to believe in is yourself and not that muppet near the top of this page.

You may have noticed that I have criticized BOTDF mainly from a lyrical point of view rather than commenting on their use of bubble-gum techno.  This is mainly because, as far as actual sound and melody goes, we perceive and appreciate music differently in each generation.  I can hardly criticize when I went through phases from liking the Spice Girls, to Scooter, to Coldplay, to Iron Maiden.  I do have confidence that, as this generation matures, so will their taste in music.  I often find myself discovering classic oldies that I have overlooked in my youth.

 I sincerely hope that bands like Blood on the Dance Floor does not set a trend for the future of music.  I had three more bands to bring to light here but I seem to have rambled on and on about the one.  Oh well, perhaps I will post a few more music blogs at a later date.