This week we revisit the song that made my guest rip off his Avenged Sevenfold shirt, peel off his fingerless gloves, and stomp on his leather fedora flat: “Bat Country”
We discuss the Guns N Rose-ification of the band on their third album, the time my high school English teacher made me turn their shirt inside out, and their choice to honor Hunter S Thompson with CGI bat wings and weirdly phallic, reptilian stripper tails.
Also: incessant over-the-top drumming, phrase after boring phrase coined in the lyrics, embarrassing listener comments from the Facebook group and an overly supportive stepdad in the youtube comments
Music We Like: Royal Blood’s “Hook Line and Sinker,” Royal Headache’s “Royal Headache,” Lemonheads “The Lemonheads,” Propagandhi’s “Victory Lap,” and Boris’s “Dear”
This week we return to the abundant well of 311, with the much-too-pleasant lead single from their 1995 self-titled album, “Don’t Stay Home.”
Emma has to create a new ranking system to convey exactly how much she loves this band, we feel pity for whatever stoner Nick Hexum is condescending to in these lyrics, we get latin double-time breaks to rival even those of Led Zeppelin, and the video, while boring, contains two elements crucial to the success of this podcast.
We get one of the wildest metaphors yet in these lyrics, discover the 311 section of youtube commentariat, and introduce what I hope will be a running segment: Archived FAQs from 311.com
Music We Actually Like: Dwarr’s “Animals,” 21 Savage’s “Issa Album,” and Protomartyr’s “A Private Understanding”
This week my guest Leigh tells us about being “indoctrinated” into the world of New Kids On The Block by an over-enthusiastic Blockhead cousin, and we discuss the lyrically reprehensible and musically unreasonable “Give It To You” by Jordan Knight.
We uncover Robin Thicke, Alan Thicke, and Donnie Wahlberg's roles in this supremely creepy “forced anthem,” we get an unreliable, secondhand account from Jordan Knight assuring us that his conquest did indeed “want this,” and how his history with NKOTB might've created the sense entitlement we hear in these lyrics.
Movies(?!) We Like: Baby Drive and One More Time With Feeling
This week we’re revisiting “Barbie Girl,” the anomalous, insanely popular European dance song by Danish band Aqua.
My guest Angie remembers associating this song with “evil” and “pain,” Emma relates her thorough knowledge of Barbie and Ken’s anatomy, and together we explore the overall weirdness of this fairly sexual song built around a children’s toy.
We’ve got courtroom controversy, misheard and misunderstood lyrics, an extremely interesting shaved head, lots of misguided rage in the youtube comments, and plenty of terrible parody videos.
“I don’t think anybody liked this song. It just happened to all of us.”
This week we discuss our second Christian song in two weeks (the first of course being OPM’s seminal hit “Heaven is a Halfpipe”), “Pitiful” by Blindside, Christianity’s answer to Refused.
Emma shares her memories of relating to this song despite her secular upbringing, and guest Michael Muñoz describes not recognizing the religious themes of this song despite his Christian upbringing. We dive into amazing lyrics about nails being driven into “beautiful hands,” and try to figure out how a devout Christian band can be filled with so much angst.
Also: we finally get to see whats going on outside of the “rotating room” music video trope, the uncomfortable master/slave dynamic between singer Christian and his namesake, and the lyrical twist that serves as the crux of these lyrics but also doesn't quite work.