Before they were messing around with your gym equipment and wasting time in abandoned warehouses, Chicago-based alt rockers OK Go were doing something very pedestrian by their standards: Imploring some wanton audience to put things in perspective.
An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song (or AICLOS, for those of you acronymically inclined) has always been about exegesis of the trivial: Those nonsensical lyrics you just can't get out of your head from a ditty no one cares about. OK Go has rendered that mission difficult, as it is quite impossible to divorce the band from their ingenuity in crafting visual representations of their music that stun and get people talking. Don't believe me? Walk into the next bar you come across and ask the patrons about OK Go's debut album, and they'll sit there, mouths agape. Ask them about those guys that made that music video on a treadmill, and you'll get laughs and pats on the back.
OK Go has taken an era where the music video has been rendered pointless, thanks to MTV's constant marathon of teenagers doing awful things, and embraced the viral nature of today's video content. One could imagine them shooting themselves out of cannon at bullseye comprised of vials of infectious diseases, if only for a couple thousand more hits on YouTube.
"Get Over It" is the band's first official music video, and its nod to the band's future half avant-garde, half bored Americans at work audience is a super slow-motion ping pong game in which the melody halts entirely. Seriously. That's it. The rest of the time they're playing their instruments and having random objects thrown at them.
Like OK Go's other songs, the visual representation has nothing to do with the lyrical content of the song, which is ostensibly a rant to a friend of either gender for complaining about things that are beyond your control and to simply enjoy what pleasures you have in life. Whether one of those pleasures is a ping pong game or a faithless wife is something you'll have to decide for yourself.
Of course, without reading the lyrics and instead simply reading the title of the song, one could surmise that OK Go's been pulling a fast one on us for the last several years. Their nonsensical videos could simply be a commentary on how seriously the music industry was taking itself, though considering these guys shortly postdated things like this, it's hard to take that position seriously.
Maybe I shouldn't be reading too much into the music of a band that named itself after the thing you say while impatiently waiting in line for the waterslide.
Showing posts with label music review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music review. Show all posts
Monday, July 1, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song: "Summer" by Sum41
So I've been doing a bit of warm weather inventory here at the Shallow End, which invariably leads me to that list of oft-repeated tunes — the ditties you just can't escape — iTunes' collection of my "Most Played" tracks. The top 10 is nothing to write home about and encompasses about everything you'd expect. The 57 seconds of brilliance that is "Stu's Song" from "The Hangover." A melange of '90s One Hit Wonders, and the world's most perfect love song and best with the word "Wanna" in the title (eat it, Spice Girls): Hootie's "Only Wanna Be With You."
But #2 is an entry I simply can't get my head around. It's the eighth track off of the unfortunately titled "All Killer No Filler" by Canadian punk band Sum 41, whose only real claim to fame in 2013 is that their lead singer, Deryck (that's not a typo, apparently they enjoy consonants up North) Whibley's fling with Avril Lavigne. I have to give the boys credit, though. A Rockstar (video game company) sticker is has a conspicuous cameo in the video for "Motivation," one of the few angst-ridden tunes of my teens I still return to from time to time without wanting to travel back in time and punch a hole through my own skull.
As we all remember from early 2001, Sum 41 hit it big with "Fat Lip," that song you sang in your bathroom mirror because clever lyrics like "The doctor said my mom should have had an abortion" seemed incredibly edgy at the time. Sum 41 became the third most popular punk band with an unexplained number in their name that summer, and made the rounds of TRL and whatever subsequent noise VH1 was throwing on the air. All Killer No Filler went platinum, the Warped Tour was cool again and swimming pools everywhere emptied for impromptu skate competitions.
Why, then, did an unreleased track find its way onto my Most Played list?
Unlike Fat Lip, "Summer" is a bit of a conundrum lyrically. Gone are the references to trashing house parties and unsupervised El Camino binges, replaced with what reads like verbal overflow in which our narrator admits he's "awkwardly speaking with nothing to say."
One could argue the entire period of "punk pop" from 2000 through its fiery death in 2005 could be described this way. These were the years when Blink 182 was still writing about prank phone calls and some band that looked like Incubus felt compelled to tell us they weren't perfect. Yellowcard was signing about sunny California while trying to recreate Groundhog Day and the second incarnation of the Cure was trying to confuse teenagers with overwrought allusions and fancy adjectives.
What did it all mean? In the end, a whole lot of nothing. And that's what "Summer" is. It's a nice upbeat song that perfectly encapsulates the "whoa!" of everything speeding around you, and just as quickly you realize the time is up and it's been wasted. We find ourselves, as fans of this music, admitting vicariously to our former favorites: "The worlds not learning from you."
Or maybe I'm just looking a little too closely and being a little too harsh. Here's to summer, you fans of that late 90s/early 2000s punk sugar. The rush will end someday, but replay "Summer" and live in it for just a while longer.
But #2 is an entry I simply can't get my head around. It's the eighth track off of the unfortunately titled "All Killer No Filler" by Canadian punk band Sum 41, whose only real claim to fame in 2013 is that their lead singer, Deryck (that's not a typo, apparently they enjoy consonants up North) Whibley's fling with Avril Lavigne. I have to give the boys credit, though. A Rockstar (video game company) sticker is has a conspicuous cameo in the video for "Motivation," one of the few angst-ridden tunes of my teens I still return to from time to time without wanting to travel back in time and punch a hole through my own skull.
As we all remember from early 2001, Sum 41 hit it big with "Fat Lip," that song you sang in your bathroom mirror because clever lyrics like "The doctor said my mom should have had an abortion" seemed incredibly edgy at the time. Sum 41 became the third most popular punk band with an unexplained number in their name that summer, and made the rounds of TRL and whatever subsequent noise VH1 was throwing on the air. All Killer No Filler went platinum, the Warped Tour was cool again and swimming pools everywhere emptied for impromptu skate competitions.
Why, then, did an unreleased track find its way onto my Most Played list?
Unlike Fat Lip, "Summer" is a bit of a conundrum lyrically. Gone are the references to trashing house parties and unsupervised El Camino binges, replaced with what reads like verbal overflow in which our narrator admits he's "awkwardly speaking with nothing to say."
One could argue the entire period of "punk pop" from 2000 through its fiery death in 2005 could be described this way. These were the years when Blink 182 was still writing about prank phone calls and some band that looked like Incubus felt compelled to tell us they weren't perfect. Yellowcard was signing about sunny California while trying to recreate Groundhog Day and the second incarnation of the Cure was trying to confuse teenagers with overwrought allusions and fancy adjectives.
What did it all mean? In the end, a whole lot of nothing. And that's what "Summer" is. It's a nice upbeat song that perfectly encapsulates the "whoa!" of everything speeding around you, and just as quickly you realize the time is up and it's been wasted. We find ourselves, as fans of this music, admitting vicariously to our former favorites: "The worlds not learning from you."
Or maybe I'm just looking a little too closely and being a little too harsh. Here's to summer, you fans of that late 90s/early 2000s punk sugar. The rush will end someday, but replay "Summer" and live in it for just a while longer.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The Shallow End Presents: An Inexplicably Close Look at an Obscure Song "Every Other Time" by LFO
Today we take a look at that band from the "Always Save" tier of the late '90s boy band boom, LFO. As is custom on the Inexplicably Close Look, we're not interested in the group's megahit "Summer Girls," or even that entry on Jennifer Love-Hewitt's resume that just has to be screaming do-over, "Girl on TV" (though I've seen a few episodes of "Ghost Whisperer," and I must say perhaps Ms. Love-Hewitt would be better served returning to the realm of staring meekly into the camera as some has-been croons in her face...).
No, today we cast our gaze on that third and perhaps least entry in LFO's 15-minute oeuvre, "Every Other Time." While "Summer Girls" performs the perhaps forgivable feat of sending the mix between pop culture, hip hop and white guys in untucked dress shirts back fifty years ("Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets"? Really? There's no method in that madness...), "Every Other Time" performs the much more impressive feat of sending women's rights back to Susan B. Anthony days.
Let's take a look at the relationship dynamic that is explored in the song. Its title comes from the singer's admission that he's in love with his significant other on odd-numbered occasions. So, at the very least, we're dealing with an individual who's remaining with his partner either out of convenience, or a sincere lack of knowledge about what the phrase "so in love with her" actually means.
And these other occasions are not marked by indifference. Oh no, that would almost be forgivable. The give-and-take between these two is downright reprehensible, and the lack of lyrical talent only makes their dramatization in verse more painful for the listener.
"Keep it up home girl, don't you quit, you know the way you scream is the ultimate"
Yep, that sounds like a physically healthy relationship.
"Sometimes she's wrong, sometimes I'm right"
Dr. Freud would agree.
"But then I think about the time that we broke up before the prom and you told everyone that I was gay, OK"
Who knew that a girl who exclusively dresses herself in ridiculously marked-up clothing from a certain retailer would react in such an immature way?
You know, when you come to think of it, the entirety of this group's library reflects some kind of incompatibility to connect with women on a fundamental level. "Summer Girls" is about a girl that stays about just long enough to wallpaper the closet before moving on, and not having the bad sense to bring Chinese take-out to chow on after sex. And "Girl on TV" is perhaps the finest sonnet to objectification I've ever heard in a pop song (OK, I take that back, my mind intentionally skipped over that classic "Back that Ass Up" from Juvenile).
What you're left with, after all of this, are a trio of glossy, cartoonish prep-boys that fear commitment on a very fundamental level. I mean, if you can only love some one "every other time," and you think that's a sufficient way to connect with another individual (I believe they use the wonderfully trite image of two dolphins swimming around in each other's hearts), well — perhaps you're well suited to that bubble-gum sheen of the late '90s. Or you'll sound like one of those curmudgeons from the early '20s, too.
Or maybe I'm looking too closely.
No, today we cast our gaze on that third and perhaps least entry in LFO's 15-minute oeuvre, "Every Other Time." While "Summer Girls" performs the perhaps forgivable feat of sending the mix between pop culture, hip hop and white guys in untucked dress shirts back fifty years ("Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets"? Really? There's no method in that madness...), "Every Other Time" performs the much more impressive feat of sending women's rights back to Susan B. Anthony days.
Let's take a look at the relationship dynamic that is explored in the song. Its title comes from the singer's admission that he's in love with his significant other on odd-numbered occasions. So, at the very least, we're dealing with an individual who's remaining with his partner either out of convenience, or a sincere lack of knowledge about what the phrase "so in love with her" actually means.
And these other occasions are not marked by indifference. Oh no, that would almost be forgivable. The give-and-take between these two is downright reprehensible, and the lack of lyrical talent only makes their dramatization in verse more painful for the listener.
"Keep it up home girl, don't you quit, you know the way you scream is the ultimate"
Yep, that sounds like a physically healthy relationship.
"Sometimes she's wrong, sometimes I'm right"
Dr. Freud would agree.
"But then I think about the time that we broke up before the prom and you told everyone that I was gay, OK"
Who knew that a girl who exclusively dresses herself in ridiculously marked-up clothing from a certain retailer would react in such an immature way?
You know, when you come to think of it, the entirety of this group's library reflects some kind of incompatibility to connect with women on a fundamental level. "Summer Girls" is about a girl that stays about just long enough to wallpaper the closet before moving on, and not having the bad sense to bring Chinese take-out to chow on after sex. And "Girl on TV" is perhaps the finest sonnet to objectification I've ever heard in a pop song (OK, I take that back, my mind intentionally skipped over that classic "Back that Ass Up" from Juvenile).
What you're left with, after all of this, are a trio of glossy, cartoonish prep-boys that fear commitment on a very fundamental level. I mean, if you can only love some one "every other time," and you think that's a sufficient way to connect with another individual (I believe they use the wonderfully trite image of two dolphins swimming around in each other's hearts), well — perhaps you're well suited to that bubble-gum sheen of the late '90s. Or you'll sound like one of those curmudgeons from the early '20s, too.
Or maybe I'm looking too closely.
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