Terrible fucking music from the summer of 2009

It pains me to admit that the summer is officially over.

In many ways, Chicagoans were cheated this year.  June was cool and rainy, so summer weather didn’t begin in earnest until early July.  Due to the fact that Mother Nature is a vicious raving cunt, Chicago residents enjoyed a total of approximately six and a half weeks of summer weather.

Before I finish writing this post, the leaves will have turned to warm colors and the city will begin salting the streets.  Due to the abrupt change in weather, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the summer of 2009.

Music plays an important role in defining my memories of past summers.  Each year, certain “summer songs” become definitive reminders of the specific year. 

For me, the Dr. Dre songs Nuthin’ but a G Thang and Dre Day evoke memories fond of the summer of 1993.  The summer of 1997 is marked by I’ll Be Missing You, a silly tribute to the Notorious B.I.G by Diddy (nee P. Diddy, Puff Daddy.)

Usher dominated the summer of 2004 with three singles: Yeah (with Lil John and Ludacris,) Confessions Part II and Burn.  Rihanna owned last summer, receiving incessant amounts of airplay with four platinum singles.

This year, I have been far more in tune with pop music than previous years.  I attribute this in part to my relationship with boqueen – when she is in the car, I am far more likely to tune in to top 40 radio.

The Black Eyed Peas held a stranglehold on the first part of the summer of 2009 with the mega hit Boom Boom Pow.  I am reluctant to admit that I absolutely love the song.  I have never been a fan of the Black Eyed Peas’ poppy drivel – the songs My Humps and Don’t Phunk With My Heart compel me to shove a screwdriver into my eye and rapidly jiggle it back and forth, in hopes of fatally damaging my cerebellum.

However, Boom Boom Pow is an entirely different animal than BEP’s previous work.  In many ways, it is a perfect pop song, deftly combining elements of techno, hip-hop and pop with a clever hook by tranny Fergie. 

BEP’s followup single, I Gotta Feeling is another pop tour de force.  Granted, the song is quite repetitive and the lyrics are utterly inane.  Yet the yell-along chorus and the catchy, distinctive synth stabs of the beat help to form an incredible summertime track.    

The aforementioned Black Eyed Peas tracks will forever remind me of the summer of 2009.  Unfortunately, several other far less worthy songs have intruded upon my summertime experience and are now indelibly ingrained into my memory.  I blame top 40 radio and by extension, boqueen, for introducing this dreadful music into my life.

The following is a list of overplayed songs from the summer of 2009 that I will forever regret hearing.

 

Jamie Foxx – Blame It
I have always been impressed with Jamie Foxx.  Genuine crossover successes are rare, but, much to my surprise, the actor has proven to be an exceptional vocalist.  In 2009, Jamie Foxx decided to embrace AutoTune. 

When I first heard Blame It, I assumed that it was a track produced by an up-and-coming artist hoping to emulate T-Pain, Kanye West and the plethora of other artists that have leveraged the technology to mask their own shortcomings as a singer, impressing mindless pop fans with the computerized tones of the trite effect.  I was utterly stunned when I found out that Blame It was a Jamie Foxx track.  After all, Foxx is genuinely talented.  I could not understand why he would mask his tremendous vocal ability with such an insolent effect.

Foxx took extra care in dumbing down the content of his hit single as well.  “Blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol” the track stutters, a far cry from the personal, introspective lyrics upon which he built his music career upon.

With Blame It, Jamie Foxx is clearly attempting to produce a catchy pop song, singable and memorable by even the most intoxicated of club patrons. 

Foxx succeeded, effectively urinating upon his credibility as a musician in the process.

 

Sean Paul – So Fine
Dancehall artist Sean Paul has been virtually absent from the airwaves since 2006.  I saw this brief hiatus as a blessing; I had hoped that the Jamaican rapper had decided to retire and move on to more worthwhile endeavors, such as picking sugarcane in his native land.

Paul’s music is remarkably formulaic and predictable.  Each song contains between four and seven words that are intelligible, followed by his rapid-fire delivery of syllables and sounds that may or may not be actual words.

“Just let me be there for you anytime,” he intones before embarking on a frantic lyrical journey: “Baht the blurt fee quock dem dop-dop nyop schloo plue.”

The dizzying morass of sounds is impossible to comprehend.  While the songs give me a migraine, I feel fortunate that I am not afflicted with epilepsy, for I have no doubt that Sean Paul’s voice is capable of inducing violent seizures. 

I briefly considered that Sean Paul might be attempting to communicate through his music, so I consulted the Interwebs for the lyrics to the So Fine.  The results were slightly more coherent than gibberish.

“You’re so fine, my girl, broke out and wine.  Mash up me brain, you a mash up man mind,” Sean Paul boldly proclaims in the chorus.

“Hang him up like picture inna photo hall,” he continues. “Every man wan buy new protocol.”

I realize that artists take a great deal of creative license when crafting lyrics.  This is particularly true in reggae music and its derivatives.

However, Sean Paul’s music is drivel whether it is read from a lyric sheet or rapidly spoken in a Jamaican accident over a throbbing beat.

I prefer artists with a command of the English language. 

 

Pitbull – Hotel Room Service & I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)
You may have never heard of the artist known as Pitbull because his resume sucks.  He is notable for two tracks.  The first is Culo, which as throbbing techno song with a Spanish title that is roughly translated as “buttocks.”  Shake, Pitbulls collaboration with the Ying Yang Twins, received heavy rotation in 2005 for no apparent reason other than the fact that the Ying Yang Twins were popular at the time.

Both songs capitalized upon the brief popularity of producer Lil Jon, and both songs quickly faded into obscurity.  In other words, up until the release of Calle Ocho, Pitbull was less relevant than Right Said Fred, Lou Bega or Toni Basil.

Pitbull’s moniker is quite fitting, as he has deposited two steaming lumps upon the pop music world in 2009.

I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) is an epic tale of Pitbull’s personal experience with intergender relationships.  Insightfully, he repeatedly ruminates, “I know you want me.  You know I want you.”

Such intensely personal revelations are indicative of an artist who is willing to bear his soul for the world to see.

Hotel Room Service is yet another epic journey into the mind of the savant known as Pitbull. 

“Forget about your boyfriend and meet me at the hotel room.  You can bring your girlfriends and meet me at the hotel room,” Pitbull bellows, demonstrating his exceptional songwriting abilities.

Pitbull goes on to describe the evening’s agenda.  “Two and two, I’m gonna undress  you.  Then we gonna go three and three, you gonna undress me.  Then we gonna go four and four, we gonna freak some more.”

I was overwhelmed when I realized that McCartney-Lennon could not hold a torch to the creativity of my canine idol, Pitbull.    

 

3OH!3 – Don’t Trust Me
Out of all of the terrible summertime songs, Don’t Trust Me is by far the most insipid of the lot. 

The song combines a pedestrian techno beat with vocals performed by individuals who evoke images of polo-shirt wearing, drunken fratboy meatballs.  A clichéd electronic hook rounds out the sonic disaster that has become the darling of Chicago top 40 radio .

“She’ll never leave me woah-oh, woah-oh, oh-oh,” the chorus explains. “Don’t trust a ho, never trust a ho.”

“Shush girl,” the vocalist instructs, “shut your lips.  Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips.”

Clearly, the song is teeming with raw creativity, from the clever rhyming of “oh-oh” and “ho” to evoking the name of a brilliant deaf-blind woman that was born nearly 130 years ago. 

Aside from the lyrics themselves, I find the lead vocalist particularly grating.  From all available evidence, he is not good at rapping or singing or talking.  In fact, the song sounds like it was produced by a group of stoned college students who happened to run into a friend with ProTools gear.

The success of Don’t Trust Me is utterly remarkable.  Two imbeciles, completely devoid of any discernable talent, collaborated to create an audio abomination that eventually became a platinum single.

Fortunately, summer is officially over.  Autumn will surely bring a new batch of loathsome songs that will further compel me to smoke a cigarette while bathing in a tub full of kerosene.

In a few short months, I am sure that I will be writing about how The Little Drummer Boy haunts my nightmares.

4 responses to 'Terrible fucking music from the summer of 2009'

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1. So you know I love you and I always read and enjoy your blogs. But I hate these songs so much that I don’t even care enough to read a review that I’m sure eloquently describes my feelings towards them. This is the same reason that I haven’t listened to radio in years (other than talk radio of course).

   CC

   09.02.09 11:39 PM

    

2. CC, tell me more about you affinity for talk radio. I hope that Roe Conn is in your diet.

   bokeen

   09.03.09 01:09 AM

    

3. It’s funny because this has been a terrible year for mainstream music but an excellent year for indie music in general. I despise every song you mentioned in this blog almost as much as I despise Brett Favre.

   Ok…that’s not true. I hate Brett Favre a lot more.

   Shak

   09.03.09 09:45 AM

    

4. These are the wet farts of the music industry. Shame on you for making your ears listen to them.

   Geordi LaForge

   09.03.09 11:56 AM

    

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