Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy by Big & Rich

 

This next entry is going to be a struggle for me. When I think about this song I become irrationally angry. I feel a deep sense of pain and existential dread. I begin to actively hope for an end to it all for everyone always.

The year this song was released I was working at a hotel bar in very rural Iowa. Seriously, it wasn't even in a town. Just a weird German-themed waterpark/hotel/restaurant surrounded by a few other small businesses, on a quiet stretch of Interstate 80. Because it was local, and fairly inexpensive, there were a lot of weddings held there, and I often worked them as a bartender. And at every single one of them (for two years) I had to hear this lemon-juice-enema of a song.

Two things happened as a result.

1) I understood that mainstream country music had become hopelessly irredeemable.

2) As an expression of regular people, country music was a sort of barometer for where we were at, and it became clear that domesticated humans were also hopelessly irredeemable.

The most obvious problem with the song is just how dumb it is. This is not a statement of personal taste. If you were analyzing popular music over the last century with a baseline for lyrical achievement set by Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Marvin Gaye, Neil Young, D Boon, Sam Coomes, Chuck D, etc. - and then you come across this song, you would thereafter be following a downward curve of literary and conceptual prowess in favor of the dumbest and most materialistic, egotistical, hypocritical and nonsensical bullshit possible.

And it is not like the song tries to hide the shameless genre exploitation and crass commercialism. It tells you right up front that they came to Nashville and started greasing pockets to get a break. Because these guys are not musicians nor artists, they are celebrity-seekers. Vapid, greedy little fugkpeople for whom the world is nothing more than a platter for self indulgence and excess.

And in the twenty years since this shit first went down the entire cultural system has been hijacked by celebrity-seekers, and art has been swallowed whole and spit back out as a term to describe a certain type of potentially profitable commodity. Perhaps this song was not the genesis, as culture has been heading this way since the inception of mass media, but it does mark the point in time when pop stars no longer had to be ashamed of, or try to hide, the blatant opportunistic pandering which is only a vehicle to fortune and fame.

*Frito cheers as his car explodes*

The Devil's Bleeding Crown by Volbeat

 

Volbeat is music for people who think Disturbed are too intellectual. Fronted by a man in ex-convict cosplay who sings like a cartoon drill sergeant, Volbeat are what transpired when a group of suburban heshers who shared the opinion that Load and Unload are Metallica's best albums decided to form a band in order to torture music.

The Devil's Bleeding Crown is a song about...I dunno, the devil, I guess? Its pretty impossible to work out any sort of meaning in the lyrics. It is generically about Satan in a way which seems completely opportunistic, as if they wanted to seem much darker and edgier than they actually are, so they just slapped some words about the devil together without any concern for literary coherence. 

The instrumentation is also a gaudy mish mash of hard rock tropes. It sounds exactly like the sort of music you would hear on radio stations that play this kind of music, but it doesn't stand out in any way. This song meets the criteria to be this song, and that is about it. Fodder for unfaithful fathers to head bang to at the bar on a Friday night as they try to pick up women who share their STD history.

Africa by Toto

 

There is nothing worse than when the internet drags a terrible song out of the past for ironic amusement and turns it into a meme, where it then becomes so ubiquitous that it can no longer be escaped via space nor time. Africa frequently appears in grocery stores, commercials and wherever there are drunken idiots in the vicinity of a jukebox.

This song would have become a footnote in the playlist of classic rock stations had it not been for its meme resurgence a few years back, which was amplified by a cover version from Weezer, a band who made two good albums and then spent decades becoming a self-referential joke.

First of all it is just a boring song. Imagine that half a dozen middle aged high school band teachers got together to form a rock band. Africa is the first song they write. It is lukewarm operatic silliness with unnecessary vocal histrionics atop the most grating keyboard sounds to ever exist.

Don't spend too much time trying to figure out what the song is about, because it is about nothing. It is two or three ill-formed ideas held together with literary duct tape. Even the guitar player in this band has called it a "dumb song".

Also, who the hell does this guy think he is that the rain needs his blessing? What a fugkn dork.

If you had to explain what a dork is to someone, you could just use this song as a reference.

That's Life by Frank Sinatra

 

"Optimistic thinking has long been immortalized in self-help books as the key to happiness, good health and longevity but it can also lead to poor decision making, with particularly serious implications for people's financial wellbeing."
- University of Bath

The ability to acknowledge irreconcilable problems and avoid them is a crucial aspect of species intelligence. Not every problem has a solution. Some must just be avoided altogether.

'That's Life' is a key example of ultra-dumb optimism. Numerous statements assert an ability to just suck it up and move on, but life is not like that. You kinda actually have to deal with shit, not just make believe that attitude can conquer all.

Insofar as music and arrangement, what do I even need to say? This is extremely talented musicians playing boring, predictable music for no other reason than socioeconomic necessity.

Too many critics today would just jump on his problematic misogynist ideas and pretend that is the only problem.  No, fugk that, it is also extreme bore me.

Best Of You by The Foo Fighters

 

Over ten thousand years ago human beings began domesticating and cultivating grass species, leading to our eventual dietary dependence on grains.

At about the exact same time human beings began raising livestock and using their milk to make foods like cheese.

The Etruscans start making a rudimentary version of pasta around 400 BCE.

In the 14th century people begin combining pasta and dairy products in a way that we would now recognize as Macaroni and Cheese. Over the next six centuries the recipe spreads across Europe and to the Americas, becoming a culinary delight and staple of many diets.

In 1937 Kraft releases the first processed, boxed version of Macaroni and Cheese. A food that has been in development for ten thousand years becomes a household staple, but the new version is devoid of any nutritional value outside of providing cheap calories. It tastes like it kinda tastes like macaroni and cheese, but it doesn't taste like macaroni and cheese.

Shake It Off by Taylor Swift

 

Years ago when Jeff Tweedy was just getting started in his band Uncle Tupelo he met Rick Danko from The Band after a show, who gave him some insight and advice:

"'You sound desperate. You should always sound desperate. Don't lose that,'" Tweedy recalled him saying. "It's a weird way of saying something that I totally agree with. I think what he meant is people have to hear that you care — not that you're desperate in your life, but that you're desperate to communicate, desperate to connect. That's why we sing."

From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/jeff-tweedy-rick-danko-advice/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

And that pretty much encapsulates why I hate Taylor Swift, as well as most pop music, and certainly almost all pop music of the past 25 years.

Swift, and her pop music ilk, sound desperate to be adored. They sound desperate for fame and fortune. But their music does not sound desperate in the sense that they have something inside of them which will explode if they do not get it out. The desperation is related to their identity and success, not the their experiences and emotions. It is desperation of desire, not of turmoil and conflict. It is mommy-approved Nerf Desperation.

Or maybe it is. Maybe they just have a very shallow well of existential anguish and dread to draw from. Maybe they are so bad at regulating their emotions in real life that they never build up steam. Maybe they are philosophical zombies with very little, to nothing, in the way of an inner world. I don't know what it is, precisely, but I know it when I hear it.

And I know that music like this song is devoid of any depth. It is desperate, but in entirely the wrong way. It is bland, toothless, risk averse and vapid. It sounds like bourgeoise product, not the sort of art that exposes the artist in the most vulnerable ways. It sounds like its packaging, not like a desperate attempt to purge something that cannot be held in any longer.

But since this is supposed to be about a specific song in particular, let me tell you why I especially hate Shake It Off - it is the talk of "haters". It reduces any criticism to feckless misanthropy. Any musician who shuns all critique by simply dismissing it as "haters hating" has closed the door to perspectives about their music (or personhood) that might help them grow. It is haughty, arrogant and infantile.

"I don't have to hear anything I don't like, because that is just haters, and anyone I deem a hater is rendered irrelevant by the mere fact that I have labeled them as a hater."

How fucking convenient for you to dismiss all criticism with one word, Taylor. How fucking convenient for your fans, arrested in their early teenage mindsets, to be able to shut down any uncomfortable perspective with a single word. How convenient and lazy and fugkn stupid. It is saying, "I am never the problem," and that attitude is the worst possible one you could ever adopt.

Besides, it is okay to hate. We should hate the shallow, vapid, corporate trash culture which dehumanizes us by reducing us to emotional and intellectual children, all for profit. That is a good use of hate. And I will not fugkn shake it off. I will rub it in, deep into the tissue of my very being, and there I will convert it into bile, and that bile I will spit in the face of polyoxiplastiastic NPCs like Taylor Swift, her peers, and her fans. Shake that off, fugkos!

Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf

 

Is there any song that has been as overplayed as this one? I feel like I have heard it a million times if once. Not only on radio and in public spaces, but in about 1,200 commercials, most of them for beer. It has become a sort of signal. It is supposed to trigger visions of good times. Everyone is dancing and laughing and preparing to share an STD with a stranger.

Allegedly the song is about a stereo sounding real good, and for some reason also about getting a wish from a genie, the two ideas having nothing to connect them. Most people believed it to be about drugs, which has been denied by the songwriters. Those would have to be some very boring drugs if it were.

I cannot pinpoint exactly what I hate about it, aside from the baggage discussed above, but it is probably just that it is incredibly corny. It is a vapid exercise in juvenile metaphors.

Musically it might be okay. It incorporates elements of funk before rock music really did that. And in some ways its pretty heavy for its time. But somehow it still feels like music made for polioxiplastiastic pod people having pseudo-fun like they live in a beer commercial, so I am unable to appreciate any positive qualities I suspect it might contain.

Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton

 

This wet fart of a song is the first thing I think of whenever I see picture frames being sold with a contrived sample photo of some couple getting married. You can see there is no real love or joy there. Just the signals of love and joy imitated to sell you something cheap and gaudy.

Clapton wrote this about the woman who he cucked George Harrison for. He had a terrible habit of writing really gross songs about the people he allegedly loved. Just the most opportunistic, insincere, uninspired and insipidly plain songs.

Wonderful, by the way, ain't much of a compliment.

 

"Hey Steve, I emptied the poop bucket like you asked."

"Wonderful, thanks Travis."

Rich Men North of Richmond by Oliver Anthony

 

I don't hate this song entirely. I do hate that it wasted its potential on some dumb conservative tropes that spoiled the core message. Calling out the ruling class on being the enemy of the working class is spot on. And we need more of that, more artistic recognitions that the culture war is a red herring, and that it is really the rich against the rest of us. And that is how the song starts out.

But then we get into the part about Fudge Rounds, a recycling of the welfare queen trope that pundits like Rush Limbaugh thrust into the public consciousness. And it amounts to blaming the poor, which goes against the entire class war call to arms in the first verse. It is also ignorant, since the food assistance, and all other assistance programs, are really just a way to use the poor to funnel wealth into the pockets of the rich while creating a convenient scapegoat.

And then there is the whole pedo island thing, and while it is impossible to deny Epstein's criminal perversity and its connection to those in power, it just drags the song down and turns off half the possible listeners.

I think this dude has a powerful voice, and we sure could use a cultural movement which united the lower classes into a single front against the common enemy, but he fumbled the ball by catering to conservative memes and alienating the liberal meme people. So really I hate this song for failing to be what it could have been.

Mony Mony by Billy Idol

 

Whenever somebody says, "I bet you are a lot of fun at parties," it is always a dumb person scoffing at something above their intellectual paygrade. And I always take a moment to be grateful that I do not attend the sort of parties that they do, because that sounds like a nightmarish room of unhinged stupidity. And they probably all go apeshit dancing to this song when it comes on.

The Tommy James and the Shondells original version isn't quite as bad. It isn't totally hyper-saturated with background vocals and doesn't have the moronic sneering voice of Billy Idol. But it ain't good. It is still a dumb song with dumb lyrics about nothing. A party anthem for people celebrating the intellectual decline of domesticated homo sapiens.

This song shows up at a party wearing a shirt which reads: We've come, we're dumb, get used of it.

Mustang Sally by Sir Mack Rice

 

I have never heard this original version of this song, and I am not about to start now. My contempt for this song has nothing to do with Mack Rice, who I haven't a clue about, nor Wilson Pickett, who released the most popular version. 

I have, however, heard this song performed dozens of times by the most lackluster cover bands and during open jam sessions at music venues. The song is easily performed by hacks because of its simple structure, basic chord progressions and use of repetition; as well as providing a backdrop for guitar (or other instrumental) solos. 

The lyrics are about a woman who likes to ride around in cars, which is both literal and a metaphor for promiscuity. The song is constructed by several basic elements, a gaudy mishmash of rhythm and blues cliches wrapped into one sonic platitude. It is perhaps the most basic song ever written in popular music, and that is why I hate it. It is the Ford Tempo of songs.

It's My Life by Bon Jovi

 

This is one of my least favorite pop song tropes - The Empowerment Anthem (EA). Most EAs appeal to the listener to feel empowered, a trick which works by making the listener feel as though even famous musicians believe in them - so they must be worthy, thus HOORAY FOR ME! - for no other reason than that a pop star just gamed your fragile, gullible ego to fill their pockets. But not Jon Bon Jovi, whose EA is all about how great he is.

JBJ tells us in no uncertain terms that, like Frank Sinatra advised in an earlier terrible self-serving EA, he is doing it HIS WAY. He doesn't care what the haters think. So what if he is the musical equivalent of a romance novel cover, that is his true authentic self, and my friends, he is gonna let it shine.

The problem is that this is what his shine sounds like. It sounds contrived, toothless and catered toward people who don't really like rock music, but will make an exception for this shimmery hoo haw of a song. This is not selling out, this is celebrating having sold out a decade and a half ago, with no plan to ever do anything but sell out. This is music that only exists because it can turn a buck. Nobody would make this shit for free, and the only people who would listen to it intentionally are spoiled suburban preteens who unironically believe that their life is the most difficult ever lived.

All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight by Hank Williams Jr.

 

When I was a kid I absolutely hated this song. It was such a buffoonish attempt to write a party song that even as an eight year old it felt cartoonish and mercilessly contrived. In fact I really couldn’t stand Hank Jr. at all, because his music felt like such a betrayal of the family legacy, given that I was a massive Hank Sr. fan from a very early age. To me this song represented everything I disliked about Jr. - it was silly country-flavored pop sung by a party clown. This is the blueprint from which the unspeakable horrors of bro country were constructed in later years.

Then it became the Monday Night Football theme song, and you could not escape it, even if you didn’t watch televised gridiron football. The song became so ubiquitous and iconic in the US that it might as well have become our national anthem, which I hate to admit, would have been a step up. And while I still hate the song for the reasons listed above, I have matured in ways that have expanded my loathing of it.

Eventually I was able to muster a bit of appreciation for Hank Jr. and my contempt for his musical output lessened to the point where I actually became a pretty big fan of some of his work. Having reached middle age and its corresponding existential crises, I especially came to appreciate ‘All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down’. Having come to appreciate the origin of Hank Jr’s “rowdy friends” trope, I now learned to hate ‘…Are Coming Over Tonight’ for being the worst sequel ever made. Having written one of the perfect songs to illustrate the despair and indignity of aging, Jr. made a mockery of it by following it up with a corny party boy song that felt almost like a retraction of the original. I will say it again - WORST SEQUEL EVER MADE!

Gangsta's Paradise by Coolio

If you have never heard the song Pasttime Paradise by Stevie Wonder, go give that a listen. And now you know that Gangsta's Paradise is entirely a rip off. He doesn't just sample a piece, he steals the whole damn song and puts some bullshit lyrics on top of it, a trend that would appear again and again throughout the end of the 90s as hip hop declined and became a meaningless trope in pop music. Stevie actually approved of the ripoff, being the nice guy that he is, so I am going to be angry for him that his song was done so dirty.

The opening line is a paraphrased line from Psalms 23, perhaps the most overquoted bit of prose in history. From there on it just gets worse. Not just because it is bad writing about already tired rap cliches, but because it is all lies. Coolio was never a gangster. He was an asthmatic nerd who committed a few minor crimes, got rejected by the Baby Crips, and became a crackhead. Sure he grew up poor in Compton, but he was never a gangsta. He was never a tough as nails thug committed to violence. He is appropriating a lifestyle he never lived, which even if he had, would be nothing to brag this much about.

The only thing that keeps this song on its feet is sentimentality. It was so ubiquitous upon its release, immediately working its way into commercials, television and film, that it was force fed into future nostalgia, where it lingers today in suburban get togethers of late Gen X pod people.

Fat Bottom Girls by Queen

 

All of my hated songs so far have been low-hanging fruit, in the sense that they are by musical acts which I also hate, so I figured it was time to do a song I hate from a band that I love. In fact I ain't too wild about half of Queen's songs. They took a lot of risks, which paid off big when it worked, so I can even appreciate that some of their experiments failed. But I cannot so easily justify Fat Bottomed Girls, a completely unredeemable stinker.

First of all we have some extremely blatant misogyny. Freddie channels his best Robert Plant impersonation and talks about women as sex objects, even using the word 'floozy' in an embarrassingly casual manner. This song would probably have been cancelled if Mercury had not been gay. But gay men carry around a lot of misogyny, express it often, and should be called out on it. At least when being objectified by heterosexual men, a woman knows she is being appreciated in some way, and not just opportunistically used to sell a sub par song.

I also hate it for its mention of a dominate physical trait. Like another song I hate, Brown Eyed Girl, the trick here is to reference a common physical attribute so that you have the highest possible amount of people who will identify with the song. It is lazy, cynical and lacks integrity and authenticity.

Finally there is the music. It is as if Queen are trying to write the most boring version of an AC/DC song and still failing. There are no mind boggling riffs or soaring melodies. Just some cliche blues rock progressions. Even the lead parts, which appear in the 2nd verse and in the bridge and outro, feel dialed in. And as low as they are buried in the mix I would guess Brian May agreed when he made this album. The rhythm section is also unspectacular, if not tight as always, and the arrangement is the predictable verse/chorus/verse cookie cutter pop song formula.

I don't get the feeling hearing this song that Queen even believed in it. I think they were just pandering to the arena audiences. They may have even been trying to parody other arena rock bands to take the piss out of them, but if so they never showed their hand. Most of all I hate that a band as talented as Queen would stoop to this sort of soulless, cynical songwriting.

Raining Blood by Slayer

 

This was a much better song when Metallica did it. Every piece of music here is just a shameless rip off of Metallica. Perhaps the only difference is in speed. That was Slayers entire spiel, that more is better. More speed, more loud, more Satan, more squealing guitar solos. Things like melody, composition, hooks or anything else do not seem to matter. It is metal-by-hyperbole. Extremism as self-indulgent, masturbatory flexing. Slayer is music for dumb people. It is music for replacing your carburetor at 2am while high on meth and Busch Lite.

"Fall into me, the sky's crimson tears
Abolish the rules made of stone"

None of the lyrics to this song make any sense. They are simply an attempt to sound scary and evil...without actually saying anything. It is poetry for puberty in a jean jacket. Juvenile angst without meaning nor message. Just a gaudy shit/fugk stack of tropes that appeal to beginner moustaches.

In later years Tom Araya, lyricist and vocalist, would admit to being a Catholic, and say that his songs were nothing but entertainment. Even he knew how fake and superficial this shit was. It was always just a marketing gimmick to profit from the underexploited demographic of bigots, rapists and addicts. It was a put on, and not only do people still take this garbage seriously, it inspired multiple subgenres of extreme metal that are all pointless, infantile nonsense.

Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue by Crystal Gayle

 

While it is almost impossible to like mainstream country music these days, this really isn't anything new. In the 1970s the 'countrypolitan' scene was already watering down the genre with massive overproduction which robbed it of any authenticity. At least the terrible country today (mostly) conforms to some of the signature tropes and styles long associated with country music. During the 70s a massive amount of music was unleashed on country music fans that had absolutely nothing to do with country music, except that this was how the record labels chose to market their "talent". 

This 1977 hit by the kid sister of Loretta Lynn is a glaring example of this phenomena. Don't It Make Your Brown Eyes Blue does not sound like a country song at all, not even in the most superficial sense. There is no twangy accent. No country instrumentation or lyrical themes. The only reason this song was played on country radio was because that is how corporate big wigs wanted it marketed. 

The late 1970s were when mega-marketing finally took over everything. From Star Wars to Crystal Gayle, all media was conceived of as a brand with the potential for cross marketing and excessive merchandising. Arts and entertainment had become nothing but avenues to sell products that were neither artistic nor entertaining. Everything became a brand used to drive mass consumption. And that trend continues to grow like some marketplace Leviathan that swallows everything of any interest up and spits it back out as profit projections.

If this song is not country, then what is it? I hesitate to even call it pop music. It lacks even the minimal dynamics that usually make pop songs get stuck in the ears of their barnacle listeners. This song is more like lounge music - for people too easily overstimulated by actual lounge music. This is a crooning-alternative for people with allergies to crooning. 

I am legit butthurt by the anti-artistry of this song. It has, indeed, made my brown eye blue.

Counting Blue Cars by Dishwalla

 

People complain that AI is going to ruin music. That it will become soulless, formulaic fodder without any heart or merit. Well I hate to break it to you, but that has been happening for a very long time. Many bands conformed to an algorithmic rehashing of tropes, and the second half of the nineties was just overflowing with this garbage. Here is an AI-styled band programmed to sound like Bush/Live/Candlebox, and this is the horror they unleashed on the world. 

"Tell me all your thoughts on god, 'cause I'd really like to meet her."

In the 90s this was how betas, incels and the hopelessly friend-zoned talked around women, thinking that she would be so impressed that she would fall in love with him on the spot.  That is who bought concert tickets for this band, them and herds of future mombies already polishing off their rough edges to secure their future Karenhood.

"...asked many questions, LIKE CHILDREN OFTEN DO."

That is not how people speak. That is how the guy that brings his acoustic guitar to every party speaks, and they are not people. I want to say it is pretentious, but it is really what people who merely want to be pretentious would say. 

I suppose we're just lucky this was 1996. If this song came out today it would no doubt be sung in cursive, or pitch corrected whisper-singing.

And the lyrics and vocals are actually the best part of this song, because the music is so extraordinarily generic that an instrumental version of this would be worse than hearing the happy birthday song with only a cake made of tomato soup and gelatin.

In The Air Tonight by Phil Collins

 

Music for people who don't really like music. 

This is a song held together by nothing but an engineering gimmick. A goofy sound effect on an unremarkable drum part. It is the kind of drum part that any dullard NPC could "play along to" on their steering wheel...to feel like a rockstar for 2.5 seconds, instead of the soulless life-sucking barnacle that they actually are. 

For years Phil, a barnacle in his own right, let it be believed that the song was about a killer. Because killing, cool, right? Phil is so hardcore with his songs about killers! But no, it was eventually revealed it was about an ex wife who cheated on him, because of course. Even though she came right home and admitted to the deed, and begged his forgiveness, his ego was unable to handle the blow, and after divorcing her, he wrote this song comparing her to a killer. Because that is the sort of bitter, unimaginative, Napoleonic twerp that Phil is.

Fooled Around & Fell In Love by Elvin Bishop

 

This song, released in 1976, is a harbinger of some terrible things that would happen musically in the next decade.

1. 50s revivalism. Don't get me wrong, the 50s were full of great music, but the music that came out in the late 70s and early 80s that tried to bring those sounds back failed miserably. They were too polished, too produced and too slick. All the rough edges that made that earlier era great were destroyed by  the musicality and production of later wannabes. The retro rehashings were just a gaudy reiteration of already tired tropes.

2. This is the world's introduction to the guy who sang We Built This City On Rock And Roll, perhaps one of the worst songs of all time, aside from Old Time Rock & Roll by Bob Seger, which is also a shitty rehash of 50s music.

Finally, the lyrics are all based around an awful pun containing grade school level sexual innuendo. The entire thing is just a generic mess of horrific elements. It is a paint-by-numbers replica of R&B and Soul, neither of which deserved this.

Through Glass by Stone Sour

 

Lisa Frank was an illustrator who gained notoriety in the 80s and 90s by adorning school supplies with neon unicorns. This song is the musical equivalent of that. 

The lyrics are a conceptual casserole of mismatched ingredients attempting to sound deep and profound, but failing to raise a single point which makes the listener ponder anything. 

Musically the song may as well have been written by junior high kids. Aside from the quiet verse/loud chorus it lacks any dynamics whatsoever, and is constructed atop a cliche chord progressions. 

The video adds an extra layer of irony by calling out superficiality, but the song itself is nothing but superficial radio fodder intended for the same audience it is attempting to insult.

This song is also the equivalent of sparkly vampires.

Lateralus by TOOL

 

This song doesn't feel like anything but math and the most generic kind of anger possible. If I have to break out a slide ruler, calculator and some geometry equations to fully appreciate your music, then your music is fugkn boring. 

And even though it is aggressive, and Maynard, as always, sounds all aggro, the lyrics are some faux-profound new age nonsense. "To swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human." Come the fugk on, is this music for concerts or weekend spirituality retreats for the upper middle class?

High Hopes by Panic! At The Disco

This song is about as corny and hokey as any song could possibly be. The lyrics throughout are infantile nonsense. It is a song about believing in yourself, but what is the point in believing in yourself just to make songs about believing in yourself? It is a recursive nightmare of self absorbed idiocy. It is the lyrical equivalent of inspirational posters, ones made exclusively for mama’s boys and other milquetoast man-duds. 

The verses are grotesque pop crooning, saccharine sweet, and they cannot prepare you for the ham-fisted attempt at an anthemic chorus sung in a strained, nasally voice that sounds like shopping cart wheels screeching. 

If this song makes you feel good about yourself, you probably don’t deserve to.