The Band Perry - If I Die Young

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Death to the Virginal Country Princesses... literally

The Band Perry
If I Die Young
Hallmark
#33 (HiMid)
Dec 30, 2010
Kimberly Perry
Nathan Chapman
Paul Worley

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If I was having any lingering guilt about not hating Taylor Swift, The Band Perry just expunged it... this Virginal Pop Country Princess thing is excruciating. If Carrie Underwood is there for mother/daughter tears at weddings and George Strait is working on dad mortality tearjerkers, The Band Perry is bleeding sap even more nefarious: dead kids.

Well, dead Virginal Pop Country Princesses, anyway... by measure of subject material alone, Swift looks like a Rhodes Scholar in comparison.

On one hand, this song is a letter to a grieving mother from her dead teenager: “It's okay, mom. I lived enough.” That strikes me as really tacky; I'm sure grieving mothers want to hear that, but cheap platitudes from pop country don't sound particularly genuine. This song can serve as 3:40 of “God just needed another angel. That's why he had to take her.” Thanks, Hallmark. I'm sure you've cornered this market.

A penny for my thoughts
Oh no, I'll sell them for a dollar
They're worth so much more
after I'm a goner
and maybe then you'll hear
the words I've been singing
funny when you're dead
how people start listening

On the other: this song is an extended teenage “They'd miss me if I was gone” moping dressed up in country princess rainbows. I suppose it's nice to know that it's not just the girls with multiple lip rings and tri-colored hair that do this, but there's a lot of creepiness in there. There's no mistaking the intent of “funny when you're dead how people start listening.” 

You never paid attention to me, but now you'll have to listen. Has Trent Reznor's stock sunk so low that The Band Perry can chisel into his market? That's a little sad.

Well, that... and the dollar/goner line is a bigger groaner than anything Taio Cruz could have written... but this song is full of terrible rhymes. That's the one that really stands out, though.

The connotations of the song are that Virginal Pop Country Princesses are, of course, virgins who will be welcomed into heaven (“I'll be wearing white when I come into your kingdom, I'm as green as the ring on my little cold finger.”)  Should I even comment on the song's presupposition of a Christian heaven?  Nah... everyone knows country music isn't for non-Christians.  When we die, the lord has no intention of making us into rainbows ("Lord make me a rainbow, I'll shine down on my mother, she'll know I'm safe with you when she stands under my colors.")

Phew... it must be sign-off time; I keep wanting to beat this song with its own lyrics, even though there's no further point to be made.  It's a sappy, pouty tearjerker... gee, I wonder who's making a song like this climb the charts.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

George Strait - The Breath You Take

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I heard they put the dog to sleep in the extended version for added weepiness.

George Strait
The Breath You Take
Hallmark
#66 (LoMid)
Dec 16, 2010
Dean Dillon
Jessie Jo Dillon
Casey Beathard
Tony Brown
George Strait

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O cruel fate, is this my punishment for disparaging the trivial but unoffending “Aston Martin Music?” To feel the terrible sting of George Strait sappiness? Lo, the heartfelt drama, presaged as it was by the naming of Hallmark as a genre, the tumultuous forces use my own designs to wreak terrible revenge!

Seriously, though, “The Breath You Take” is even more overwrought and dramatic than any corny prologue I could type. It's picking some low hanging fruit, too: like Carrie Underwood bet song sales against mother/daughter wedding dances, Strait's going even wider... everyone's got a dad, right? (go ahead, be a jerk; start listing exceptions) Point is: this kind of thing has a massive, built-in market, especially in family values-friendly country music.

This song deserves some ire for its stunningly uninventive sappiness. Prefect Dad (a new superhero, it seems) comes to your baseball game even though he had a plane to catch and came to your daughter's birth even though he didn't have to. His theory: “Life's not the breath you take, the breathing in and out... but the moments that take your breath away.” That's all fine (though I could mention the importance of breathing in and out), but it seems baseball and a trip to the ER waiting room are the width and breath of Strait's image of Perfect Dad.

The implications of both events are “it was inconvenient for me to be here, but I came anyway,” but they're sung in such a way to evoke a kindly, country gentleman. Both are things a father simply ought to do (if you put your kid in an activity, attend the activity. Oh, and don't skip out on the birth of your grandkids), but they're given maximum schmaltz by making sure Perfect Dad has sacrificed something to do them... and if this isn't bald fiction composed by professional songwriters, I'll be shocked. These scenarios were invented for maximum Hallmark effect: you have to love Perfect Dad, because when Strait kills him in the third act, he wants you to feel it.

Sort of. George Strait didn't write this-- we can blame him for singing it, but he didn't add a single word to the Mortality of Perfect Dad tearjerker.  There's a team of three writers, raised on a steady diet of "Cat's in the Cradle" and loved-one-dies-of-cancer movies, to blame for that.

Musically, it's pretty rote... It's got the exact same structure as any Backstreet Boys song you'll find. Who would have guessed there's be a modulation into the bridge? Or that the following chorus would be stripped down when it returned? On one hand, these conventions have served plenty of good songs, and we should all be thankful Strait (producer and Pure Country icon) didn't squeeze in a drum machine for a dance pop bastardization.  On the other... who composed those strings?  Aaron Zigman?  It sounds like we're watching a Nicholas Sparks adaptation in here, these are the violins that score Mandy Moore's lukemia.

I guess I agree with one aspect of this song: we really should treasure the moments that make life worth living, but none of those moments involve listening to this phony and overwrought treacle.

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Michael Jackson & Akon - Hold My Hand

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Suddenly, the songs not good enough for a Michael Jackson record are being exhumed and sold.  Maybe the quality of the music improved over time.

Michael Jackson
Akon
Hold My Hand
Hallmark
#66 (LoMid)
Dec 9, 2010
Aliaune Thiam
Claude Kelly
Giorgio Tuinfort
Akon
Giorgio Tuinfort
Michael Jackson

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My pop music hermit status informs most of my writing, but no one (not even me) is so much a hermit as to escape the looming shadow of Michael Jackson's legacy. Hell, Off The Wall was the first cassette I ever owned... it was a Christmas present and I was a kid, but still... The problem with reviewing MJ is: his death made him a sudden saint, which is supposed to overshadow many years of his public controversies blotting out his fairly uncelebrated, late-career, musical output. There's no way to win this one.

Me, I've recently spent time with friends watching old videos of Jackson; that guy was an amazing performer, and it's still a little stunning to watch him dance. On the other hand, he was mostly a performer-- he sang the songs and put on a hell of a show, but the songs were mostly written by hitmakers and producers (shades of Quincey); he didn't write “Thriller,” and he didn't write “Hold My Hand.” I tend to respect songwriters more than stars, but I know that the Jacksons come from Motown, where there wasn't much crossover between the talent in front of the mic and the talent composing the music.

It's almost impossible to deal with “Hold My Hand” in any serious way: no matter which part of Jackson's recent story makes you cringe, this song hits it. There's the creepy, breathy sound of Michael whispering “Hold my hand” at the end of the song that had to contribute to the song's suppression (pulled from albums a few years back) when he was alive and making headlines for all kinds of unpleasant allegations. On the other hand, releasing a song that opens with “this life don't last forever” as a posthumous track is tacky, bordering on tasteless. If a reviewer just can't win, this song is born to lose; how can anyone listen to this and not wince?

Then figure in the schmaltzy sentimentality of the song itself: this is a personal taste issue, but the sappy songs are just not my style. I'm not declaring war on love songs-- “Hold My Hand” is less interested la amour than an quick and dirty Hallmark card, and it's the mass-market, universal appeal that smacks of insincerity. The “platonic-or-no?” cheeseball vibe of hand-holding for friendship and warmth isn't helped any by the alleged friendly sleepovers and public, child-at-heart protests; I'm not trying to pick a fight, but couldn't someone dredge up something with more of the dancy, kick-ass funk that people loved about Michael Jackson... and avoid pleading sentiment and weird associations?  If all the writing credits are to be believed, Michael wrote "Smooth Criminal;" why aren't we hearing something like that (or "Billy Jean") instead of this schmaltzy crap?  And Isn't that what Michael Jackson's fans really want to hear?

Here's to the far side of dancing on this line: I don't want to defame or worship this guy: let's post some more Jon LaJoie in here (this blog is only strengthened by increased Jon LaJoie content)-- it's like backing the Patriot Act in 2001 and screaming about freedom in 2010.  You can do both, but one negates the other... no one will believe you on either point once they've seen you endorse two opposite positions.

Even if I shut off the part of my brain that keeps finding tacky ways to associate this song with Entertainment Weekly headlines (hey, I go to grocery stores, too), it's not a very good song: it's cheesy in the extreme, and it sounds like one of those awful late 80s ballads destined for junior high Winter Formal dances.

Even without all the lyrical ways this one seems wrong to me, I still hate it; the release a cash-in tune for people to make money on a star who's more profitable now that he's dead, and the music comes off like an audio greeting card (all synth strings and sap). I thought about naming this genre “Sap,” but Hallmark is more appropriate. Some products are built for The Land of Emotional Make-Believe: they claim operatic heights, provide a Disneyland ride, and are designed for those who don't care to discern between the two.

Aside from all the other problems with this song, there's no way to stream it at the moment, so there's no Play link for this one.  It's one thing to make the tacky decision to cash in on a celebrity's death (it's shitty, but it's smart marketing)... but why make it so difficult for people to hear it?

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

Genre: Hallmark

My first instinct was to call this genre "Sap & Sentimentality" to give it a little Jane Austen flare, but-- like all transparent tape is Scotch and all tissues are Kleenex-- all cheesy sentiment is Hallmark.  My definition of this genre is the transparent tugging of heartstrings: these are not songs that inspire any emotion in me, they're corny greeting cards.