Have you ever found a song and just replayed the living hell out of it?
I don’t know why this thing hits me like a sledgehammer from the special personal collection of Peter Gabriel.
But I keep replaying the thing, over and over. Here, watch this thing we called a “music video” a hundred years ago when this cable channel appeared that showed music videos ALL DAY LONG. Brilliant business model. People send you videos, you play them, you sell ads–it’s a license to print money.
The only way this could go wrong is if you stopped playing free music videos and started paying money to produce stupid reality shows.
Here’s the music video, which I hadn’t seen until I wore out this song on Spotify or whatever:
It smacks you upside the feelings, doesn’t it? That twist in the end makes M. Night Shyamalan jealous. Super rare to have in a song. As a writer, I could not love the lyrics more. The repetition with a purpose, and the twists each time–beautiful.
This is why I love the genre Angry Acoustic: songs are stripped down, lyrics actually matter, and they tell stories instead of the usual pop song that repeats the same lyric 3,423 times until you bring out the shot glasses and down some Draino.
I have replayed this song again. I’ll play it more today. And I hope other people find this song, and that each time it gets hit on Spotify or YouTube, she gets paid, because Lizzy, you deserve it.
VERDICT: 11/10, give is more of this. MORE MORE MORE.
SPECIAL BONUS: Acoustic version, which also rocks. If you search the series of tubes, there’s also a sped-up version, very Alvin and the Chipmunks, but I will not link to it, because that is sacrilege.
Listen: unless you live in an ice cave, you listen to music and have seen 5,923 music videos. Most of those are forgettable.
There are reasons for that.
Your typical Generic Music Video features shots of the band pretending to play their instruments as the lead singer pretends to sing. They’ll shoot in an alley, to pretend to be gritty and real. They’ll shoot on a beach while looking pretentiously at the sunset. They’ll shoot on a rooftop, thinking they’re The Beatles.
For variety, an ambitious band will try a music video that tells a story. This is hard, and expensive, like filming a short movie. Instead of a zillion-dollar budget for a big band doing the alley-rooftop-beach thing, we’re talking a bazillion-dollar budget. Thriller was not easy or cheap.
If you clicked that link, yes, professional music videos run from $20k at the absolute lowest end to $500,000 or more. It’s a joke (except true) in Hollywood that rich men with girlfriends who think they should be a singer will spend far more than this to hire a producer, cut a single, and get a real director and crew to shoot one music video. And yeah, there’s a chance that singer makes it, simply because a talented band back in Des Moines, Iowa doesn’t have that money supporting them.
HOWEVER: I come here to praise Jungle, a fun band that did something that entertained the hell out of me. It’s not a lame video of the band playing, or a pretentious short film that flails. You don’t even see the band, not once.
Here’s the video I saw. Watch it, then we’ll talk smack.
How can you not love that song and video? It’s full of joy, with interesting choreography, constant shifts, always something new.
Here’s what blew me away: they didn’t just make one video. They did an entire movie of this based on their album Volcano.
And it rocks. The thing just works.
Sure, musicals aren’t new, and actors have danced on Broadway since forever. I’m just happy to see this come back, hard, to give us something fresh again with music videos. We don’t need more pop stars singing “baby baby baby” or rappers bragging about their Lambos and boats. I am not surprised or impressed by country singers driving beat-up pickups while singing about beer and duck hunting.
Jungle has impressed the hell out of me. Here’s the movie, and all I have to say is 11/10, give us more.
Yes, this is a music video, and we will play it because MTV resolutely refuses to do their damn job. Have a look and listen, then we will TALK ABOUT ALL THE THINGS.
First off, I come here to talk smack about lyrics, not the actual music video. The video is fine. It’s not blowing my mind and it’s not making me close my eyes and chant a lullaby to make it go away.
The words are what we are here for, and the words are GOOD.
Dissecting the lyrics, but not in an icky dead frog way like biology class
Let’s go after the first few lines:
Half of my high school got too drunk Half of my high school fell in love With the girl next door In their daddy’s Ford Half of my main street’s mini skirts Half of my main street’s dressed for church It could use some rain And a fresh coat of paint
Such a great way of painting a picture of her hometown and the people who live there without giving everyone the same hues and textures.
Because let’s be honest: half of all pop songs are about getting drunk, and half of all pop songs are about falling in love, but few pop or country songs dare to have a lot of nuance or subtlety. They’re more likely to hit you over the head with a single message, like, “I’m on a BOAT!” then repeat that message six hundred times.
Now, the chorus:
Half of my hometown’s still hangin’ around Still talkin’ about that one touchdown They’re still wearin’ red and black Go Bobcats, while the other half Of my hometown they all got out Some went north Some went south Still lookin’ for a feelin’ half of us ain’t found So stay or leave Part of me will always be Half of my hometown
Oh, here we go. I don’t really have a home town, being born on a military base we left after a year. Kept on hopping around bases in the Germany and the Holland and the New York–so if you put a Glock to my noggin and asked me for a single detail about my hometown, couldn’t tell you a damn thing. Throw a blindfold on me and ask me whether an F-15 or F-16 is flying overhead and I’m you’re man.
However: we now live in a one-stoplight logging town, where half the town does show up to wear maroon and gray every Friday night and is still talking about that one touchdown. So I feel these lyrics in a way that Justin Bieber could never reach me with the lyrics of his masterpiece, “Baby, Baby, Baby.”
Half of our prom queens cut their hair Half of them think that it ain’t fair The quarterback moved away and never came back Half of my family is happy I left The other half worries I’ll just forget Where I came from Same place where they came from
I could not love this more. Beautiful lyrics and they do touch on the touch choice facing anyone from a small town: stay for family and neighbors and friends, or leave for opportunities and dreams. Totally get that.
Now we get the chorus again, so I’ll delete that chunk and give you the next real bit. Say hello to the bridge and the closing:
Backroads raise us Highways they take us Memories make us wanna go back
To our hometown, settle down Talk about that one touchdown Raise some kids in red and black Go Bobcats, while the other half Of my hometown was in the crowd They knew the words They sang them loud And all I wanna do is make them proud Cause half of me will always be Knoxville, Tennessee My hometown My hometown
Heard this song again and again, making the ending anything but a surprise. I know exactly what is coming. And the last lines still hit hard.
VERDICT
Here’s the deal: I enjoy pop songs and Angry Indie Acoustic stuff far, far more than country music. However: country and rap songs tend to tell this thing we call a story. They also get more inventive with lyrics, echoes, and reversals with wording.
The Chicks song, TRAVELING SOLDIER, is a freaking masterpiece.
Do the lyrics to MY HOMETOWN do the job? Paula Abdul would say, “Yes, yes, a thousand times, YES!” but she’d mean it and Emelio Estevez would mean it this time and they’d still be married today. Ben Affleck and J. Lo, do not listen to this song, move to a small town, and get married to each other or another human being again. Hold off for a decade or two.
Kelsea Ballerini nails it in a few hundred words. Seriously, count them up. If you don’t count the repeated chorus, it is shocking how few words she uses to do a complicated job of making us see her hometown and feel all these choices and people.
The business of music–and movies, books, plays, and all other art–has always been rather upside down when it comes to artists getting a decent share of the monies so they can, I don’t know, pay the rent.
And it’s no secret that musicians have had a rough time lately, just like other creative types, with people no longer paying cash monies to download mp3’s after they stopped swiping their debit cards for CD’s and cassette tapes and eight-tracks and vinyl. Yes, some hipster types still buy vinyl. Just not nearly not enough to support bands.
So musicians, big or small, rely on selling tickets to live shows along with T-shirts and other merch. If they are famous, and lucky, they get decent money from streaming sites.
Might be a musical revolution
Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are both going in a different, smarter direction with concert movies.
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Movie snagged $128 million million in it’s opening weekend. Not week, weekend. AMC alone said it got $100 million in advance ticket sales. This thing will break all kinds of records.
Beyoncé might go on and break the new records. It could get huge.
Why this is brilliant economics and marketing
Concert movies or documentaries aren’t completely new. The size and impact of these two movies, though, will shake up everything.
What’s hilarious is I doubt the expenses are that high. If you’re already putting on a concert, with lights and roadies and backup singers and musicians and dancers–it is not that much extra cost to hire professionals to film during the show and behind the scenes. It’s not much more money to hire a director and editors to go through all that footage to shape the best movie.
Shooting a movie from scratch, now, costs a mountain of cash. A single Marvel movie can run $200 million to $300 million. Or almost double, if you add in marketing. Nobody understands Hollywood accounting, not even Hollywood.
One music video can run up millions on the tab, since you’re also starting from scratch and need dancers, sets, and days to shoot it.
The numbers aren’t all in yet. But I would bet every dollar in my pocket, and yours, that the return on investment for Taylor’s movie and Beyoncé’s film will both be absolutely bonkers.
These two mega-movies will also boost the health of AMC’s stock, causing millions of redditors to lose their minds, refinance their mortgage to buy more stock, and get divorced when their spouse does not understand why their life’s savings got lost on some kind of NASA-related quest to “go to the moon.” Pro-tip: do not do this.
Will this be a trend? Yes, yes, and yes
So yes, this can and should start a trend.
I am only a casual fan of Taylor and Beyoncé, and would never spend a day & night driving to Seattle or Portland to shell out $300 or $500 to see a live concert plus more cash for a hotel because I would not make it home until oh-dark-thirty along with dinner and breakfast and all the things.
Yet I would happily, happily spend $19.89 (symbolic and funny, very nice, Taylor) to pop down to a local theater and watch the concert movie. Absolutely.
And the same would be true for at least 50 other bands, big or small, that I adore.
Can it scale down to smaller bands?
Absolutely. Medium-popular bands could easily spend a lot less and still come out with a cool concert movie.
Even local bands could pull this off. A band in my backyard keeps cranking out great music videos on a shoestring. Love them.
I’d much rather pay to watch a concert movie in a theater than wait around for a band to get close enough for me to drive or fly and see them.
Honestly, I’ve seen fewer and fewer movies in theaters lately after coming down with Superhero Movie Fatigue.
It would be seven separate flavors of awesomesauce to see a hot trend of new concert movies coming to our theaters, week after week. Bring it. I will buy popcorn.
Listen: it’s hard enough to make it as a rock star, or any sort of musician. So props to Vince Neil for becoming a star in the first place.
HOWEVER: it is a sin against the rock gods, and possibly a class B felony, to sell concert tickets that cost as much as the average American’s mortgage when you are (a) entirely too trashed to sing, (b) unable to sing without a killer team of audio engineers in the studio, or (c) too lazy to memorize the lyrics to a song you’ve been singing for, I don’t know, 30 years.
Here’s a video of the crime in progress:
So yeah, Bad Lip Reading wouldn’t touch this, since it’d be like a 300-pound defensive end for the Seahawks hopping into a Pee Wee Football game. There’s no challenge.
Here’s the original, so you know that actual lyrics to this song DO exist.
And yeah, the lyrics are not insanely hard to remember.
THE ACTUAL LYRICS
Lyrics from azlyrics.com, which is like the musical oracle to me:
KICKSTART MY HEART by Motley Crue
When I get high I get high on speed Top fuel funny car’s A drug for me My heart, my heart Kickstart my heart Always got the cops Coming after me Custom built bike doing 103 My heart, my heart Kickstart my heart
Ooh, are you ready girls? Ooh, are you ready now? Whoa, yeah Kickstart my heart Give it a start Whoa, yeah, baby
Whoa, yeah Kickstart my heart Hope it never stops Whoa, yeah, baby Yeah
Skydive naked From an aeroplane Or a lady with a Body from outer space My heart, my heart Kickstart my heart Say I got trouble Trouble in my eyes I’m just looking for another good time My heart, my heart Kickstart my heart
Yeah, are you ready girls? Yeah, are you ready now?
Whoa, yeah Kickstart my heart Give it a start Whoa, yeah, baby Whoa, yeah Kickstart my heart Hope it never stops Whoa, yeah, baby
Kickstart my heart
When we started this band All we needed, needed was a laugh Years gone by… I’d say we’ve kicked some ass When I’m enraged Or hittin’ the stage Adrenaline rushing Through my veins And I’d say we’re still kickin’ ass
I said, ooh, ah Kickstart my heart Hope it never stops And to think, we did all of this to rock
Whoa, yeah Kickstart my heart Give it a start Whoa, yeah, baby Whoa, yeah Kickstart my heart Hope it never stops Whoa, yeah, baby
Whoa, yeah Kickstart my heart Hope it never stops Whoa, yeah, baby
Whoa, yeah Kickstart my heart Give it a start Okay, boys, let’s rock the house
That’s all
Kickstart my heart
VERDICT
Listen, I get it that everybody’s got bills to pay: alimony, child support, rehab, attorneys, bail, a team of hairdressers, PR folks, agents, roadies, dealers. Some of those folks are expensive.
And I understand the life cycle of a rock band involves starting out playing birthday keggers and living in the van until you get that one break and a hit song and maybe a killer album and a serious concert tour and piles of cash and a lead singer who thinks he’s better than the band and a band that breaks up and a solo career that goes nowhere and a bunch of middle-aged dudes who need to pay the mortgage and that’s why they’re playing at your county fair. I’ve seen VH1: BEHIND THE MUSIC.
But I also understand that life has second acts, and sometimes third acts. Professional athletes not named Tom Brady often understand this. Your average NFL career lasts three years. Three. So smart pro athletes, rock stars, actors, and other famous peoples save their pennies, invest those pennies, and plan for a second career when they inevitably get hurt or too old for this stuff.
Vince Neil is too old for this stuff. He’s not the science experiment known as Keith Richards, who can never die. As a human being, he needs to consider other ways to make money, or find meaning, aside from grabbing the microphone and disgracing the memory of songs that fans would like to remember in a better way.
But maybe the money is too good. Dunno. Not buying a ticket.
This is another in a series of conversations with Tyler B., lead singer and bass player of the punk band ONE PUMP LOTUS.
RED PEN: You said there’s another batch of music you discovered. Tell me about it.
TYLER: Riding back from the last gig in the van, and standing in the rain while we tried to fix the alternator, we drilled down on about the least rocking instrument on the planet. The lamest of the lame. What’s your champion?
RED PEN: The accordion, all the way.
TYLER: Nah, you can, like, embrace the cheesiness of the accordion. I’m talking about xylophone, the absolute top of the mountain for shit you can’t play in a rock band. I mean, two-year-olds grab tiny drummer sticks and smash on those things. So I went looking for bands that figured out how to make the xylophone absolutely bang, which should be impossible.
RED PEN: Show me what you found.
TYLER: I didn’t dig up just one of these unicorns. I have four of these suckers. Four, man. Alright, first up is the Violent Femmes, who went wild with the xylo on GONE DADDY GONE.
TYLER: Second song is Gotye, which I can’t spell or pronounce, so you’ll have to google that or ask ChatGPT to make up a story or whatever. And you know the song. It’s the one you play after a bad breakup to really swim around in a puddle of pity, then you play I WILL SURVIVE by Cake to get jacked up and ready to hit a gig and find somebody cool at the after party.
TYLER: Third song is all synth and xylo, and it’s the one you put on repeat at 4:20 when you need to mellow out for an hour. Because if you aren’t calmed down, or asleep, then you’re on something stronger than caffeine and need to get straight.
TYLER: Last song, and the absolute best Banger with Xylophones, is CRUEL SUMMER by Bananarama–did I say that right?
RED PEN: I hope so. Spell-check cannot help us with pronunciation and ChatGPT will tell us that Bananarama is what happened when the The Gap merged with Banana Republic.
TYLER: All that is over my head. Okay, what makes this even sweeter is this is the big song from THE KARATE KID, the original back when my mom was like twelve, not the remake with kung fu and Jackie Chan that sucked. I mean, Jackie Chan is cool, but how do you spend like a hundred million dollars on a movie that’s a remake of something perfect and pack it full of kung fu–in China–and call it THE KARATE KID? The studio execs who said yes to that thing were doing way too much blow.
So back to the song, which doesn’t just include xylophones as a backing instrument, or ease into them. Nah, they went hard core xylos right off, like they hooked up the biggest amplifiers on the planet to those things, and kept on hitting you with wave after wave of xylos like it’s a musical battering ram. You gotta love it.
RED PEN: Are you incorporating this into your music somehow?
TYLER: Oh yeah. We got this new song that totally integrates xylos with thrashing guitars and booming drums. I’m like totally training on this set we got at Goodwill and Tyler A. swears his uncle knows how to hook those things up to our spare amplifier.
This is the second in a series of musical conversations with Tyler B.. lead singer and bass player for the punk band ONE PUMP LOTUS.
RED PEN: What song led you down this path of musical discovery you’re calling Badass Acoustic?
TYLER: Just listen to this, okay? It killed me. (Tyler pulls up the following clip on his phone.)
Here’s why I was feeling this one so much: most songs, they’re overproduced, with a fat wall of sound from start to finish.
This song starts off with the singer and the guitar, boom, that’s it. Gritty and raw. Only later do they layer on other instruments, and when the drums kick in, my God, it just hits you.
RED PEN: This band is listed as country in some places, and others call them indie or folk. Why are you coming up with this other label?
TYLER: Because I don’t recognize the power of the media, or the Man, to dictate how you and I talk about music.
And I can tell you this isn’t country, while indie makes me think of politics or people doing their own thing in general–writing books, making art, whatever. Indie could be a local death metal band that doesn’t have a record deal and dresses up in dinosaur costumes. Doesn’t tell you a damned thing about the music, right?
If I tell you it’s Badass Acoustic, there’s no confusion whatsoever.
And this way, you can encompass a lot of music without pigeonholing people. When my uncle Harry passed, we found all these weird plastic things with tapes inside them, and if you shove them into this Pinto that Madison drives, a freaking relic, music still comes out, so we kept popping plastic deals in there and finding Badass Acoustic treasures like big tsunamis by Tori–wait, that’s wrong. Hold it, Little Earthquakes is the album, here we go.
I mean, that album is angry and creative and musical gold. I guess you could pigeonhole her into some kinda genre like Angry Piano Girl, but that’s limiting would things for no reason. Don’t care if it’s a piano, a guitar, or a freaking lute, if the band is mostly acoustic and has that vibe, we’re talking Badass Acoustic.
RED PEN: Why does this music appeal to you so much?
TYLER: It’s like the books and movies I like to watch versus the ones I quit after five minutes. If the whole thing is happy and perfect, or completely predictable, what’s the point?
Don’t give me your standard pop song “baby baby” lyrics or somebody rapping about how cool and successful they are and how many Lambos are in their garage. Give me something that’s interesting and tough and real. A song where somebody’s struggling to get through the day, or to live with their mistakes. A show about a villain who’s bad and can’t change, and there’s no Hollywood ending. Take me someplace that’s raw and emotional and not perfect at all.
That’s what I like about Badass Acoustic, and why we’re experimenting with a new acoustic track. Does this mean learning more than three chords? Yeah, it does. But there’s a freedom in stripping things down and putting that volume knob at three instead of eleven. The audience can hear all my words and when we do add drums, and a secret instrument I can’t talk about, the whole thing builds and builds in a special way.
RED PEN: What’s next for ONE PUMP LOTUS?
TYLER: If we make enough money in these next two gigs, we can pay for a new tranny on the van, and then we’re saving up for some serious studio time to cut the tracks, “White Coffee” and “Decaf.”
I heard this song on the radios when it came out, and it was Good.
Yet I only just now saw the music video, in the year 2022–and my God, the thing is fiery balls of amazing.
Check it out, then we’ll talk smack.
Here’s why I could not love this video more: they went all out and crammed every possible internet meme and Random Person Turned Internet Famous into a short music video.
Not one or two or three. Everybody they could possibly find and convince to do this thing.
Their commitment to the gag makes it not only ten pounds of fun packed into a five-pound bag—it makes this video insanely rewatchable, because if you blinked twice, you missed a dozen things, and if you didn’t blink, you are a spy for the Lizard People from Planet 9, and we will find you.
Weezer has been a band since before you were born, so it gives me joy to see that they’re still cranking out these things called “albums” which aren’t really a thing anymore, and I hope they are genuinely ageless and make music forever and not continue to exist by dint of being preserved by All the Drugs like a bazillion rockers collecting Social Security while still on tour.
VERDICT: 11/10, and please give us another video like this every 5 years, because the interwebs are always making new people famous for a hot second.
Yes, you can make a case for THRILLER, which is epic and famous and spawned 6,459 videos of people doing the dance moves.
Yet this scrappy underdog of a song by Warren Zevon is the rightful king of Horror Gondor.
What we have here is pretty simple. There’s no giant production budget, no army of backup dancers who all spent six hours getting zombified in the makeup trailer. No bigshot Hollywood director making a quick buck.
Warren Zevon gives us a quirky little song about werewolves that take us in unexpected places.
He humanizes them without taking away their essential and bloody werewolviness.
My favorite lines are those little lyrical surprises–the werewolf looking for some good Chinese food and wearing bespoke clothes. Best line of all is the aside at the end: “His hair was perfect.”
This song is perfect. It cannot be improved upon.
LYRICS
I saw werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand Walking through the streets of SoHo in the rain He was looking for the place called Lee Ho Fooks For to get a big dish of beef chow mein
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London Ah-hoo Ah-hoo, werewolves of London Ah-hoo
You hear him howling around your kitchen door You better not let him in Little old lady got mutilated late last night Werewolves of London again
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London Ah-hoo Ah-hoo, werewolves of London Ah-hoo, huh
He’s the hairy handed gent who ran amok in Kent Lately he’s been overheard in Mayfair You better stay away from him, he’ll rip your lungs out Jim Huh, I’d like to meet his tailor
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London Ah-hoo Ah-hoo, werewolves of London Ah-hoo
Well, I saw Lon Chaney walking with the Queen Doin’ the werewolves of London I saw Lon Chaney Jr. walking with the Queen, uh Doin’ the werewolves of London I saw a werewolf drinkin’ a piña colada at Trader Vic’s His hair was perfect
Ah-hoo, werewolves of London Hey draw blood Ah-hoo, werewolves of London
What the people and soldiers of Ukraine have done is incredibly impressive, creative, and heroic.
I’ve watched and read about this war since the day Russia invaded, and want to hail the heroes who are liberating so much of their land in the last two weeks. Books will be written about them. I will forever be impressed by the courage of the Ukrainian people and the leadership of President Zelensky.
On Mondays, I usually post (a) obscure music videos that need to be shared or (b) make fun of popular artists who spent more than the gross national product of Paraguay to create a music video that should not exist.
Today, I want to post my top five favorite music videos coming out of Ukraine during this war.
These videos may not seem important. Yet from the very first Bayraktar video, I believe they helped boost morale inside the country and galvanize international support in a way that policy papers and numbers never could.
First up is a solid, traditional choice: use a rock song as the soundtrack for footage.
The Red Pen of Doom 