3OH!3 - Hit It Again

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Okay everybody: Keytar dance party!  Whee!

3OH!3
Hit It Again
Sleaze
#33 (LoMid)
Dec 30, 2010
Sean Foreman
Nathaniel Motte

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If a song ever conjured the image of guys trying to look cool playing keytars, this is it.

This group seems like they're trying to create Motley Crue-style promiscuity rock out of hilariously chaste and wimpy synth pop. Everything about this song sounds like a middle-school boy bragging about nonexistent sexual exploits. From the tragically autotuned “I'll make you say Ooh!” intro to the “Woah oh!” chorus, this song is using its dad's shaving cream and razor even though it doesn't even have peachfuzz to shave: it wants to show you how grown up it is, but using “fuck” in the chorus can't undo the fact that the little kids named their band 3OH!3.

(note the exclamation point)

This is now, that was then
You broke my heart
I let you in
This is now, that was then
I fucked around
with all your friends
Woah oh, woah oh
Woah oh oh oh
Woah oh, woah oh
Woah oh oh oh
This is now, that was then
Forget all about the past
and let's hit it again

Near as I can make out, the narrative thrust of this song is: our singer is a wanton ass who fucked his way through all of his ex's girlfriends, and the girl in question broke his heart after he “let her in,” so she obviously deserves that kind of thing. Time has passed, however, and the sleazy manchild is up for another tumble because, hey, heartbreaker on not, he'd like to hit it again.

Can't imagine why she'd need so much convincing. Especially since she's definitely real. You just haven't met her because she lives in Canada. This guy's totally had sex before.

I figure that's the gist... but for the life of me I can't decipher how the opening verse fits in. What the hell does “I got the dirty ol' hands of a drummer in a band but I never really hit the sticks. I got the sunburn tan of every working man who spent a minute in a ditch” have to do with the It he devotes the song to hitting again? Is he trying to tell us how tough he is (even though he's neither a drummer nor a day laborer)? More importantly, how does it relate to the Woah Ohs?

That kind of incoherent posturing makes me wonder about our narrator... he's obviously a total badass, and we know he fucked around with all this girl's friends, but I wonder how she broke his heart. Maybe she told him his hair looked silly... that'd be hard on this guy, but it's the kind of heartbreak you have to survive if you want to grow up to be My Darkest Days.

Musically, I suppose I have to give it some credit for doing a little something with rhythm; especially in the verses, someone put some effort into the synths and the beats. When the chorus hits, though... that's when I imagine the keytars coming out: Keytar dance party! Eurodisco bounce, everybody! Wheee!

er... I mean... “Woah oh!” I don't think the guy with the sunburn tan of every working man wants to acknowledge that his chorus is “Wheee!” and sounds like it's meant to be embraced by the mustache and short-shorts crowd.

The first time that chorus broke, it made me laugh pretty hard... but I'm not giving this one a pass for unintentional hilarity. This song's multi-layered bad-- it makes me want to strangle the singer, and musical shift in the chorus only made me laugh because it's so glaringly awful.

RUN!

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

My Darkest Days - Porn Star Dancing

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Is anyone surprised that the Nickelback-supported band fails to rock?

My Darkest Days
Porn Star Dancing
Sleaze
#99 (Low)
Nov 25, 2010
Chad Kroeger
Joey Moi
Matt Walst
Ted Bruner
Joey Moi

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Does no one fucking rock anymore? I suppose I had my hopes up with the band name, and I wouldn't have been surprised if they turned out to be one of those Hot Topic themed bands like Love's Dying Bleeding Love in Dying Bloody Death, or whatever they're called, but this song has Zakk Wylde as a guest guitarist. Even if I never cared for Zakk Wylde, I'm aware that he's an advocate of Rocking... and that's the only time I hear from him: if I read anything Wylde has to say, he's either reflecting on the strength and purity of his rock or disparaging all the girlymen that only pretend to rock (they pale before the power of his awesome rocking!) and should be destroyed.

And yet here we are, listening to the Mighty Rocking Zakk contributing to the sub-basement of post Downward Spiral dance music. I'm not actually going to spend too much time comparing this moronic shit to Nine Inch Nails; it makes me think of a different story...

In the late 60's and early 70's, Alice Cooper wasn't a him but a they-- it was a band name, a Detroit group that hung in the same time and place as the MC5 and The Stooges, but with a psychedelic bent, some baroque instrumental movements, and a tendency for freak out jams. When the band broke up and the lead singer took the name out for his solo act, he did okay for a while, but Alice Cooper was not an A-lister by the mid 80's. Eventually he looked around and saw the rock world was covered in makeup wearing dudes with teased up hair and, since he'd been doing that sort of thing when they were kindergärtners, he said “Move over, kids,” and became a hit again by sounding like Poison. So it goes: Alice's newest album cashes in on his early 70's garage days (so hip now... well, five years ago). It's sort of become a theme: Alice manages to join any trend he helped influence, but he always comes in too late and sounding more derivative of the kids than what he'd originally inspired them with. It doesn't make me love my copies of Easy Action or Love It To Death any less.

Long story not-so-short, the popular rise of Marilyn Manson inspired a me too in Alice (gothic death theatrics! I started that!)... “Porn Star Dancing” sounds like someone in 2010 trying to horn in on Alice Cooper from 2000 trying to compete with the 1996 version Marilyn Manson (which borrowed heavily from the NIN and Ministry push/pull in the early 90's). While I respect that everyone has influences and all artists draw from somewhere, I reserve the right to dislike anything this derivative.

Once again, the devil's in the details-- I can forgive all the derivation in the world for a catchy melody or some energy, fire, or personality, but this song's complete lack of rock doesn't leave me in a very forgiving mood. Throwing a guest solo over the top of the track doesn't do much to cover the fact that this is dance pop; these guys are about as dangerous and rebellious as Pink. It doesn't help any that I've started including writing credits for the music I review, and I find myself unable to ignore the fact a Nickelback collaborator co-wrote this song.

I know that generalizations are the devil (the people who use them should be killed! Every single one of them!), but all right-thinking people hate Nickelback.

Kylie won't kiss my friend Cassandra
Jessica won't play ball
Mandy won't share her friend Miranda
Doesn't anybody live at all?

This may be my punishment for making a joke that I'd like “Strip Me” if it were actually about strippers, ironic penance sent from on high. I suppose “Porn Star Dancing” is more coherent than the Natasha Bedingfield song, because the verses are about girls with standards too high to sleep with this skeezy bastard, or if he could get them interested, he blows it by trying to get the girl to bring a friend (the “doesn't anybody live at all?” line just rubs salt in the wound... listen, guy, it's not because the girls are uptight; it's because you're a slimy douchebag).

Stacy's gonna save herself for marriage
But that's just not my style
She's got a pair that's nice to stare at
But I want girls gone wild

Verse two is the girl who's “saving herself for marriage,” which I'm willing to bet was as honest a refusal of this guy's advances as “I'm a lesbian” or “the leader of my religion won't unlock my chastity belt until I'm 30” or “how many times do I have to tell you to fuck off?” But, hey, she's got a pair that's nice to stare at, brah!

The pole-dancing obsessed chorus, punctuated by reverbed out group chants of “Yeah!” so cheesy they'd have Def Leppard rolling their eyes, is actually sort of depressing: since singer has blown it with every woman in the world, he goes to a strip club, sits right up front, and watches a girl who engages in the titular (ha!) “Porn Star Dancing.” If “a dollar decides how far she'll go,” maybe he should just hire hookers and be done with it. Kylie may not want to kiss Cassandra, but if he's willing to pay their asking price, I'm sure Bambi and Pepper will do whatever he wants.

Gak. This song is my kryptonite, musically and lyrically. It's been a strange week: the “rock” band is the worst thing in the bunch (mostly because it's not rock at all, just hair band lyrics over crappy dance music)... it's well below the quality of the indie pop band and the country starlet.


Typing that made me feel dirty, and I think I need to put on my Black Breath record. (What is it with translucent blue vinyl, lately?)

RUN!

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

Genre: Sleaze

Unlike the Hot Sex genre, Sleaze is less concerned with having sex than with taking pictures of it, or trying to pick up the girls on the other side of the glass at the nudie booth, getting a pair of strippers into a three way, or any other form of sexual expression that is entirely focused on the singer's hedonism and complete shamelessness.

Though I always associate this with glam rockers from L.A, Sleaze no longer owes  allegiance to genre (it's another area where hip hop picked up when hair rock faded) or location (if you're ever in Seattle, head up to Capitol Hill and you'll see what I mean).