Thursday, April 25, 2013

Annoying Song of the Week: fun. "Some Nights"

Okay, new feature: we share our most hated earworms with you, because malice is more fun than misery.


The band: fun. 
The song: "Some Nights" 
The part that is currently playing in an endless loop in our brains:
"Oh-oh! Oh oh whoa-oh! Oh oh whoa-oh oh-oh!"


Why Ouisi hates this band: The band name makes up for its lack of capitalization with unnecessary punctuation. That's unforgivable right there. And the lead singer's face and voice illicit a gut feeling of rage within me, which is strange because they aren't that bad and I don't like feeling angry at anybody, especially somebody as innocuous as this twerp.

Why Patrick hates this band: This band looks and sounds like something that the 1980s rejected for being too annoying. Also, the lead singer looks like an emaciated Mark Wahlberg.

Why Ouisi hates this song: I get a bad vibe from this song, like it was created specifically to bother me. When it comes on the radio, I instinctively wrench my earbuds out, and I'm afraid I'm going to rupture an ear canal.

Why Patrick hates this song: When I hear this song, I feel like I'm stuck in a bar full of drunk white people who won't stop singing.

Every time this song comes on the radio, Ouisi wishes it would be replaced by:
Of Monsters and Men, "Mountain Sound"


Every time this song comes on the radio, Patrick wishes it would be replaced by:
U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"

Commentary:
You know what bands are doing now, is that they add in and layer on everything they can possibly include. It's a reaction against the horrible alt rock of the late '90s and the early aughts, which tried to sound minimalist and stripped down and DEEP AND MANLY but sensitive at the same time. 

Now the bands are experimenting with lots of instrumentation and harmonizing multiple singers, and trying to sound grandiose.

But this guy has a voice built for easy listening. My dentist put on Whitney Houston while she was cleaning my teeth last week, and I can imagine this guy warbling on the lite rock stations in ten years.

What? The video is of the Civil War? This is. . . this is disrespectful. And the drum beat is completely wrong for marching! And you have to go through a full minute of Union/Confederate romance to get to the song.

The lyrics aren't great. Not bad. It's a song about a discontented guy, but it's being sung by the most chipper-sounding band since Smash Mouth. That doesn't come across as ironic or subversive; it's just a mismatch.

So that's "Some Nights." We are releasing our earworm to you, and may you never have a day's luck with it.

5 comments:

  1. I had so much joy reading this, the best part was "and the lead singer's face and voice illicit a gut feeling of rage within me" I very much enjoyed this.

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  2. I actually like this song. That is, I like the beginning. It starts going downhill as it continues to add levels of bravado and auto-tune. Overall, it's not a pop song I would have picked on, since it has much more substance than most of the pop/rap acts out there, and the lyrics reflect the state of mind of lots of people these days.

    The music video is completely over the top and out of place, however. I pictured this video taking place at some suburban party, where Mark Wahlberg-impersonator is walking around looking sullen and disenchanted with the festivities, and then the video ends with him running down the street into the distance, supposedly looking for something to stand for. That would be infinitely more fitting, and more likely the actual series of events which led to the lyrics of this song.

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    Replies
    1. Yep-- it's well-constructed and well-performed. It's not BAD. It's just super, super annoying, through its deliberate catchiness and the yodeling Auto-Tune and the pretentious melodrama of a Civil War battlefield standing in for the inner battle of this young man's mind. The reason we picked it is that it has successfully lodged itself in both of our heads and we can't shake it out, and so we feel much more anger towards it than we do towards anything else right now. Which means that the producers have won, because we are sure thinking about their song.

      Thanks for the input! Does your group of musicians have any videos?

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    2. I don't know if Steely Dan or the Roots have music videos...is that what you're asking?

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  3. Loved the song-- thanks for the link. I'll have to put fun. on my wish list.

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