4/ Fall Out Boy:
Patrick Stump has a stupid name, and a
nice voice. It's smooth, and spit shined, he'd make a good guest
vocalist on a Mark Ronson album.
Quite apart from that, Pete Wentz (like
Chris Martin) seems to be going out of his way to be disliked, but
unlike Martin, he seems to be doing it on purpose. F.O.B are the
‘chosen rejects' (a term the Pete-Wentzabees appropriated from
Kurt Cobain, deliberately to make steam pour from your ears). Their
image doesn't work if all the cool kids don't hate them; so if
you really don't like them, please just be indifferent, or else
they win.
Having said that though, I have a soft
spot for artists that construct an image that well. To their fans
F.O.B are (Joy Division + the Cure) x Duran Duran squared. That takes
some delicate P.R.ing. Which is all the more admirable in a time when
bands have to hide their desire to be liked.
3/ Amy Winehouse
If rock stars have taught us anything,
it's that drugs make you cool. Unless that drug use leads to you
cracking the top 10, in which case you're a drug addicted sell-out,
whoring your meagre talents for drug money. So Amy, there's two
ways you can turn that dwindling pool of apologists back into the
rabid mass of tight panted hipster fans it once was: either put down
the crack-pipe, or better yet, stop selling records by the truck load
(dying, and becoming the next rock ‘n' roll martyr, might also
help, though that boat may have sailed, still, good on ya for
trying).
Actually, unlike the other acts on this
list, who aren't bad, but not great either, Amy Winehouse is
wonderfully talented. Male rock stars would get away with taking
twice as many drugs before the backlash began. Also, being popular
brought it on extra quick.
2/ My Chemical Romance
M.C.R was the biggest band of 2006/07,
so I felt obliged to see them at that year's Big Day Out; it kinda
sucked (not entirely the band's fault). When I told people that,
they cackled like Bond villains, and I felt bad for them, and their
schadenfreudistic ways. The way I see it M.C.R are before their time
-literally. Future generations will love them for their gothic
high-camp kitsch appeal. Whereas, right now, we have this strange
urge to assume everything's po-faced, and dead serious, unless
explicitly told other wise.
In the mean time, even for those fans
who do take them seriously, they're a gateway band, their fans will
discover Bauhaus, and T-Rex soon enough. But you never forget your
first love, even if it is embarrassing, as my water damaged 1st
Strokes album will attest.
1/ Soulja boy tell ‘em
The nonsensical name, the songs that
are barely songs, the anti-intellectualism, where do I begin. The
video for his self titled song (yes, self titled song, add that to
the list too). Features a man dressed like superman, because
"superman" inexplicably replaces a censored lyric, except
superman's S logo is blurred out to prevent law suits. At this
point, it's way past the point of lazy, and pointless, and it's
downright surreal, especially since the rest of the video is a bunch
of youtube videos cribbed together. I could be reaching, but I think
there's something subversive going on here, the next single was the
hilariously incompetent R'n'B ballad Soulja girl nothing
could be this bad by accident. Is Soulja boy tell ‘em the Johnny
Rotten of Hip-Hop?
Yes, yes he is. I offer the
following evidence:
"Man when somebody be in your face
/ on your nerves just talkin / and talkin and you don't wanna hear
it / just be like YAHHH TRICK! YAHHH!"
How is that not the punkest lyric ever?
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