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Hey, it’s Pop Scene! Our monthly feature in which Mike Conklin and Mark Asch climb out from under their indie-rockist, um, rock, to find out what regular people all over the country are listening to. This time, though, Mike was out playing golf and couldn’t contribute. So, we’ve once again called on The L’s newest editor, Edith Zimmerman.
Title: ‘You Are the Music In Me’
Artist: Gabriella & Troy
Edith: This song is so bad it’s confusing. The sound of teenage boys “singing beautifully and with emotion” makes me want to be a cutter. Is this from a J.C. Penney commercial? But at least their love is real, and you can tell because their music is inside each other, like tapeworms. Also, isn’t there another song that has the same title? Like, “Don’t. Let. Go — you’ve got the music in yo-ou.” I don’t want the music in me. Get it out, get it out, get it OUT.
Mark: People are whispering in my ear that this song is from High School Musical 2. I really like high school, and I really like musicals, so I would probably like High School Musical, right? Or at least I would have liked my own high school experience more if it had been a musical — if this song is anything to go on, I’d have had an entire chorus and string section to validate the depth of emotion involved every time I got past first base. Really, it’s totally healthy how Disney is teaching kids to put so much stock in their adolescent crushes. Maybe there’ll be a scene in High School Musical 3 where a grown-up “Gabriella” (Tia Carrere) is looking through her yearbook, and she stops on “Troy”’s picture, spends five minutes trying to remember his name, then gives up.
Title: ‘Stronger’
Artist: Kanye West
Edith: This song is awesome, it makes me want to dance like a funky rapping robot up and down the halls. Aaaaand is it just me or does it look like I just typed “funky raping robot”? Anyway, all of a sudden I’ve noticed that everyone loves Daft Punk and apparently they have for years and everyone freaks out about their concerts and assumes that everyone else goes to them too. “Oh man, the Daft Punk show last night CHANGED MY LIFE! Were you there?” No, of course I wasn’t there. I was reparking my car. Why doesn’t anyone tell me this stuff? I wish there were somewhere on, like, the Internet where I could find out about new music.
Mark: At the risk of, well, thinking like a high schooler, the chorus of this song is about blue balls, right? “That don’t kill me [presumably a reference to le petit mort — “the little death” — a French euphemism for orgasm]/Can only make me stronger/I need you to hurry up now/’cause I can’t wait much longer...” Right? Sorry, everyone. Anyway, I like Kanye West because I get all his references: Klondike Bar ads... Purple Rain-era Prince... the Bloody Glove... Daft Punk songs from 2001...
Title: ‘Ayo Technology’
Artist: 50 Cent
Edith: Good old Sexy Rabbit Face. This song bores me. What is it about 50 Cent that sometimes seems borderline retarded? If it turned out 50 had a disease where he was trapped in the brain of a third grader I would be unsurprised. But I had a really deep, mature crush on someone when I was in third grade, so I know for a fact that third graders are capable of a lot of feelings, so when I run into him in a bar I will still try to hug him.
Mark: I want to think that the inexplicable chorus — “Aaayooh, I’m tired of using technology/Why
don’t you sit down on top of me” — is a roundabout attempt at starting a beef with Kanye over his sampling a song with a vocoder; but in the context of a song that, like ‘Stronger’, appears to be about becoming progressively more desperate for release — the first verse is all about watching a dancer and getting more and more excited, until she’s going to “Dance in your lap till you’re ready to pop” — it makes me think the chorus is about how all of Fiddy’s solo sex toys are out of batteries. Also, “when you want it, she want it/Like a nympho...” Um, if you’re both getting all horny for each other, how exactly does that make her a sex fiend? Fucking sexist prick.
Title: ‘Me Love’
Artist: Sean Kingston
Edith: This song is not as good as ‘Beautiful Girls’, but that’s like complaining that a cool rock you found on the ground isn’t as hard as diamond. It can’t be. Diamond is as hard as it gets. Unless it’s a new rock from outer space that we don’t know about yet.
Mark: Edith was unfamiliar with this song’s origins as ‘D’yer Mak’er’, a reggae workout from
side two of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. So I had to explain it to her. I felt like a real tool for knowing that much about Led Zeppelin. Thanks, Sean Kingston!
Title: ‘You Are the Music In Me’
Artist: Gabriella & Troy
Edith: This song is so bad it’s confusing. The sound of teenage boys “singing beautifully and with emotion” makes me want to be a cutter. Is this from a J.C. Penney commercial? But at least their love is real, and you can tell because their music is inside each other, like tapeworms. Also, isn’t there another song that has the same title? Like, “Don’t. Let. Go — you’ve got the music in yo-ou.” I don’t want the music in me. Get it out, get it out, get it OUT.
Mark: People are whispering in my ear that this song is from High School Musical 2. I really like high school, and I really like musicals, so I would probably like High School Musical, right? Or at least I would have liked my own high school experience more if it had been a musical — if this song is anything to go on, I’d have had an entire chorus and string section to validate the depth of emotion involved every time I got past first base. Really, it’s totally healthy how Disney is teaching kids to put so much stock in their adolescent crushes. Maybe there’ll be a scene in High School Musical 3 where a grown-up “Gabriella” (Tia Carrere) is looking through her yearbook, and she stops on “Troy”’s picture, spends five minutes trying to remember his name, then gives up.
Title: ‘Stronger’
Artist: Kanye West
Edith: This song is awesome, it makes me want to dance like a funky rapping robot up and down the halls. Aaaaand is it just me or does it look like I just typed “funky raping robot”? Anyway, all of a sudden I’ve noticed that everyone loves Daft Punk and apparently they have for years and everyone freaks out about their concerts and assumes that everyone else goes to them too. “Oh man, the Daft Punk show last night CHANGED MY LIFE! Were you there?” No, of course I wasn’t there. I was reparking my car. Why doesn’t anyone tell me this stuff? I wish there were somewhere on, like, the Internet where I could find out about new music.
Mark: At the risk of, well, thinking like a high schooler, the chorus of this song is about blue balls, right? “That don’t kill me [presumably a reference to le petit mort — “the little death” — a French euphemism for orgasm]/Can only make me stronger/I need you to hurry up now/’cause I can’t wait much longer...” Right? Sorry, everyone. Anyway, I like Kanye West because I get all his references: Klondike Bar ads... Purple Rain-era Prince... the Bloody Glove... Daft Punk songs from 2001...
Title: ‘Ayo Technology’
Artist: 50 Cent
Edith: Good old Sexy Rabbit Face. This song bores me. What is it about 50 Cent that sometimes seems borderline retarded? If it turned out 50 had a disease where he was trapped in the brain of a third grader I would be unsurprised. But I had a really deep, mature crush on someone when I was in third grade, so I know for a fact that third graders are capable of a lot of feelings, so when I run into him in a bar I will still try to hug him.
Mark: I want to think that the inexplicable chorus — “Aaayooh, I’m tired of using technology/Why
don’t you sit down on top of me” — is a roundabout attempt at starting a beef with Kanye over his sampling a song with a vocoder; but in the context of a song that, like ‘Stronger’, appears to be about becoming progressively more desperate for release — the first verse is all about watching a dancer and getting more and more excited, until she’s going to “Dance in your lap till you’re ready to pop” — it makes me think the chorus is about how all of Fiddy’s solo sex toys are out of batteries. Also, “when you want it, she want it/Like a nympho...” Um, if you’re both getting all horny for each other, how exactly does that make her a sex fiend? Fucking sexist prick.
Title: ‘Me Love’
Artist: Sean Kingston
Edith: This song is not as good as ‘Beautiful Girls’, but that’s like complaining that a cool rock you found on the ground isn’t as hard as diamond. It can’t be. Diamond is as hard as it gets. Unless it’s a new rock from outer space that we don’t know about yet.
Mark: Edith was unfamiliar with this song’s origins as ‘D’yer Mak’er’, a reggae workout from
side two of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. So I had to explain it to her. I felt like a real tool for knowing that much about Led Zeppelin. Thanks, Sean Kingston!
