I would just rather not.

This may not be a shocker.

Gwen Stefani can only write good lyrics when she is heartbroken. In today's post, I am going to send off 3 Gwen Stefani written songs, both for No Doubt and her solo career, from times in her life where it seems everything was just... okay.

First, we have 6 Feet Under. This song is just... morbid. I hope I never feel this way on my birthday. With lyrics like "Today is my birthday, and I get one every year. And someday...hard to believe, but I'll be buried six feet underground" set to an upbeat melody, something doesn't seem right to me.

Happy Birthday! I'm going to die someday!

I don't have much recollection of this story, but I've been told that as a little kid, I used to cry the night before my birthday, saying ridiculous things like "I don't wanna turn 5! I don't wanna get old and die!" So basically, Gwen Stefani has the reasoning of my toddler-self.

We move on to a song off the same album, Return of Saturn, that makes me not be able to listen to the album straight through. This song is called Staring Problem, and if the word "staring" were ever the last word in a spelling bee she entered, Gwen would take home the gold. Or whatever you win at a spelling bee.

S-T-A-R-I-N-G. I can't stop staring! Take a photo, it will last longer.

And finally, the very obvious Hollaback Girl. At this point in her career, not only has Gwen gotten over her devastating break up with Tony, but she is now completely content in her marriage and the beginnings of her new family. Nobody knows what a Hollaback Girl is. Or why she's singing about what seems to be life in high school. This seems to be the general consensus though.
 

These songs are being shipped off. And if Gwen Stefani is ever single again, she's going with them. Someone try to remember air holes in the box.

-Rebecca

A Love Song of Epic Disaster

I know most of us are trying to leave the memory of the boy bands of the late ninety's behind. And I guess I was actually doing a pretty good job because when I stumbled across the musical disaster that I am going to present to you today, I did not remember Brian McFadden or that he was part of the Irish boy band Westlife. Quite honestly, I didn't remember Westlife. 

No big deal though because we won't have time to even discuss his previous crimes against music. We will have enough to discuss with just this one song. What song am I preparing to send off to Abu Dhabi today?

Brian McFadden "Just The Way You Are (Drunk At The Bar)"

I guess we can start with the awfully confusing mix of backwoods banjo and disco club beats. Who thought that was a money making idea? Not only does the combination not make any sense… it DOES NOT sound good. 

Next up for inspection are the lyrics. Brian claims that he wrote this song for his at the time fiancé. I sure hope she was flattered and her reason for leaving him wasn't over his romantic gesture. However the chorus, "I like you just the way you are, drunk and dancing at the bar, I can't wait to take you home so I can do some damage", sounds more like a plan for date rape than anything else. And as far as I am concerned Sublime wrote the only song about date rape that needs to be written.

So off to Abu Dhabi with Brian McFadden and his warped sense of romance and music!

-Cori

No Madonna, I don't wanna.

This past Sunday, I sat in my Nanticoke apartment watching the Super Bowl with some friends, and had the opportunity to check out this year's halftime show.  Before it started, I knew that the performance was going to be a trainwreck - it was just a matter of what was going to make it so terrible.  As the show kicked off, I heard the sentence that would define the entire experience for me, from recently-reinstated Chikara star Vin Gerard: "Hey look - it's that old lady that thinks she's Lady Gaga."

When this guy is judging your musical presentation, you know you're in bad shape.

It was at that moment I knew what my next shipment would include.

This song is probably the newest song to be sent overseas (eight days after the video was posted online!), and honestly, I knew it had to go the first time I heard it.  It's the new single from Madonna's MDNA album, called "Give Me All Your Luvin'."  And, without exaggeration, it's safe to say that this may be the worst thing she has ever put out, and that covers a lot of ground (anyone remember "Don't Cry For Me Argentina?").

So, here it is - Madonna's (third or fourth) big comeback.  On this track, she's paired up with M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj, who I'm sure has a post of his/her own coming shortly.  Within the first four seconds of the song, I'm pissed off, as they insist on spelling love "luv" like they're sixth graders passing notes in class or something.  As they pan out and show the entire scene, it's clear that M.I.A. has NO interest in being involved in this project whatsoever, as she has the most bored, uninspired look on her face in the history of music.  Nicki Minaj, of course, is on this like white on rice, like any other horrible music he/she has a hand in. 

The main problem with this song is that Madonna is, indeed, an old lady pretending to be young, much like Vin pointed out less than a week ago.  If she had written this when she was 26, I may have been able to forgive her, but of course, she's 53, so the whole thing comes off as a desperate attempt to prove that she's still hip and relevant.  There's glaring examples of this all over the video, with the most embarassing coming as she "dances" in front of a brick wall like she's in a club.  She's clearly not, and she clearly doesn't look very good doing this, but hey, it's not stopping her.

It's too bad, because it really should.  I think she needs a reality check, or maybe some guidance to figure out how old she is.

These guys know a thing or two about acting your age...or not.

This continues on and on, as she has football players taking bullets for her while she walks through the streets twirling her hair like a ditzy teenager, pretending she's not actually 53.  The whole thing just screams "I'M STILL YOUNG AND RELEVANT! PLEASE BUY MY RECORD! WHO WANTS TO HAVE SEX! ANYONE? I USED TO DO THAT A LOT! I BET I STILL CAN!" 

My message here is simple - anyone who ever claimed that Madonna is "timeless" is clearly delusional, as this song/video/cry for attention proves that theory to be false.  Off to Abu Dhabi you go, priority - the sooner we can get out of here, the better.

-Matt

Rated X for "X-tra terrible"

I bring you what I believe to be the worst song of 2011, “Brown Chicken Brown Cow” by (who was at one time one of my favorite country artists) Trace Adkins.  Trace is responsible for some great songs, many of them kitschy, but this absolutely “buys the farm.” The entire premise of the song is two lovers that run off to the barn to get freaky with one another – I say freaky because they’re apparently into having animals watch them.

Yeah, I know...I'm pretty disgusted too.

In the video, the 2 main characters and all of the farm animals just happen to be puppets. If Jim Hensen were alive he would not be impressed and I fully expect to see his Zombie incarnation come and find the producers of this video, but not eat their brains – because they’re not worth it.

So anyway, these two lovers run off to the barn, and in the process, put off all of their chores (“The tractor’s stopped!” Oh no!) so they can get it on “with no one watching”…or so Trace Adkins thinks.  In this scenario, our couple has a captive audience in the form of chickens and cows.This brings us to the “joke” (a term which I use loosely) in the song – if you say “brown chicken brown cow” at just the right pace, it sounds an awful lot like the stereotypical “bow chicka bow wow” porn music riff that teenagers have mocked (or, in reality, sang like it’s cool) for generations.  Get it?  They’re having sex!  In the barn!  With chickens and cows watching!  In the barn!  It’s so funny!

Or, in this case, it’s not funny at all.  Trace is capable of so much more, yet he came out with this pile of garbage.  Submitted for your approval - "Brown Chicken Brown Cow," by Trace Adkins.  I sure hope there’s a barn this song can run off to in Abu Dhabi, so that it can hide even better from the locals there, who should not be subjected to it.

-Ashley

Repetition and a creepy fat guy.

Alrighty then. Box to Abu Dhabi. Keeping the consecutive one post a day extravaganza posts going on this wonderful blog. Well it's ole Kev's turn to ship something out. And I got one that I'm looking to pick apart. One deserves a "dishonorable mention" before we move on here. A band that barely missed being the subject of a verbal annihilation was pretty much anything by the band O.A.R. Consider yourselves very lucky gentleman. You've been on my shit list since I've heard of your band, and oh I promise you, your college toolbag, hippie wannabe, jam band antics will feel my wrath one day soon enough, mark my words! Screw you guys. I'm sure your "crazy game of poker" consisted of chai mocha lattes with extra cream and someone taking off their shirt. Yea, fun. Bite me. Anyway, on to the roasting at hand. In the vein of O.A.R, comes a band that has been around a lot longer and had taken almost the same music stylings and has given people headaches other than your average "free spirited" tie-dye wearing turds in their early 20's that lack any good taste in music. Well, for video.most part. Let me remind friends I know that are "not of my genre of music liking" that this is not an attack on you, but I along with many others can not stand this guy or his wobbly ass feet. I'm talking about The Dave Matthews Band. They have many "hits" and have debuted on the charts with their album as you remember "Under the Table and Dreaming." Dreaming is far from what I have done when I heard these songs. More like musical nightmares that haunt me beyond the sleeping world. I mean we're talking about a guy while on tour, his tour bus dropped piles and piles and shit off a bridge, only to have it land on people on a boat under the bridge. Well it seems they've always been good at dropping shit in music video form in this little diddy they call "Everyday." I'm going to give you, the reader, a heads up, I tried to follow this video as much as I could and I'll try to break it down for you as I saw it.

Here we go. Observe.

Well, that was stupid. Video opens. Oh look it's a guy who looks exactly like the fat dude who was in that "Balls Of Fury" Movie that was not funny and stole roughly an hour and a half of my life I will not get back. So I already hate this fucking video. Seems that he has some pictures on his wall that are of other families and friends that are definitely not his, which already makes this guy a certified creeper. We also see here he's going with his "white trash with a hipster edge" look today as he straps those shoes on his feet and ready to steal everyone's oxygen out on the city streets. He appears to be offering..hugs? Wow, don't you ladies still wear those safety whistles because of guys like this? You should because it's obvious he's looking to cop a feel.Guys and girls alone denying this goof. Come one bro, these people have things to do and they don't involve hugging your smelly ass. Even pestering the poor garbage man. Wait, what is he a garbage man? What was that white thing that guy was driving? Not important, or my point. Moving on. We come across an old couple. Old man Jeb wants nothing to do with mongoloid boy here, but it seems Ethel decides to give this poor sucker a hug. I assure you she'll hear about it when they get to their black coffee and fish sandwich social down at the local Burger King.People are starting to hug him more now so I'm assuming at this point the creep's got a raging boner. Gross. Rubbing up on grandma at the street corner that wants no part of it, yep there it is. By this time the police should have been on the scene to remove this man. He's out of control. Doesn't this guy have somewhere to go? Alright, we got some angry white males to give him a reality check with a little push and shove of discontent. Meanwhile, I haven't mentioned yet this song is awful? Dave Matthews belting out those notes in the key of "skinning a cat". It's so boring. We get it "Every day. Every day. All you need is love. Every day." We get the them Dave, stop ramming it down our throats their chief. Now the man's in a news station hugging the cast. Looks like the the weatherman has a forecast for us Bob. Cloudy with a chance of weirdo touching everyone at central park today. Better bring a coat and a tazer just in case. At 2:15 in the video, come on man! The boys are trying to play some basketball man, get off the fucking court! Good job I bet that dude missed a block from an easy lay up from the other team. Fail. Okay at this point I can't stand the repetition of the idea of this video. Hug, hug, hug everybody. Now he's in a classroom. Who lets this guy on school grounds? Someone needs to bring this up at the next PTA meeting. Now he walks in on the band jamming out. We see the man that has made this unbearable video and song possible, good old Dave himself. I shake my head in disgust at this point. Hey violin player, nice leather vest bro. Dave Matthews continues to make eerie faces at someone off camera. Save it for the bedroom buddy. At least we don't see him doing any seizure dances with his legs. Okay so I found one good thing about this video, big deal. Not redeemable enough obviously.Now we got a hug fest. Hug a firefighter, hug a horse, sure! Whatever it takes to put an end to this insanity.Hugging the Blue Man Group, wow come on guys enough is enough. The end shows creeper hitting the sack. That's it all in a nutshell. I'll do a quick pre-determined Q&A for you 1.) Am I not a DMB fan by any stretch of the imagination? The proof is in the pudding my friends. 2.) Did a drink a little haterade today? Yes but only during this video. Big tall glass too, fruit punch flavor. Delicious. 3.) Are you sure you want to send Dave Matthews to Abu Dhabi? Had every intention to way before I even sat down to write this blog. "Crash Into Me" Dave? No I won't just the music store that carries an over abundance of your albums so they don't get played again. There you go. Pack it, stamp it, ship it. Peace out. Hope you enjoyed my rant.
Cheers

-Kev

They probably should just give it up...

          When "LULU" was first released last Halloween, I knew that within the first couple seconds that this whole record needed to be packed up and shipped to Abu Dhabi. For a while, I was deciding if this is the worst piece of crappy music ever to be produced, or brilliance at a level that’s beyond my mortal capacity to appreciate it. 

          Metallica were the pioneers of thrashmetal in the 80s-90s, playing to sell-out crowds in stadiums. The ‘Black Album” was released in ’91 and has since sold well over 15 million copies. Ever since then, they have attempted to alienate its fan base album after album. Lou Reed of the esteemed Velvet Underground and best known for his solo counterculture anthem "Walk On The Wild Side,” make up the second half of this travesty. I am actually having a difficult time finding anything good with this project. Just look at them:

This picture looks a lot like a “Weekend at Bernies” reboot:

          A long time ago, German playwright Frank Wedekind wrote a series of plays, which tell the story of a tempestuous woman named Lulu. A century later, Metallic and Lou Reed decided it was a good idea to write a musical narrative with this excellent story. Clocking in just under 90 minutes too long, this train-wreck of what they consider music sounds a lot like the recording of a Metallica practice where a drunken old man wanders in from the cold. For some reason, they give this man a microphone, and allow him to regurgitate whatever comes to his mind while they roll the tape. The music seems so disconnected from the lyrics, it is like they recorded each separately and then mashed them together. It is very similar to the William Shatner rendition of Rocket Man which is definitely in the brilliance category:

          Every once and a while, James Hetfield interjects his, for lack of a better word, what we will call, chorus. My favorite lyrics of the whole album come during the chorus of “The View” where he professes his true identity, “I am a table!” Another excerpt: “If I pump blood in the sunshine and you wear a leather box with azaleas and I pump more blood and it seeps through my skin. Will you adore the river, the stream, the trickle, the tributary of my heart.” No, that is not the cryptic writing in your little sisters diary; those are legitimate lyrics. This is so bad, I would need a couple posts just to sum it all up, but instead of subjecting myself to it, I'll wrap it up here.

          Submitted for your approval to be packed, and shipped directly to the city of the Father of the Deer. Maybe we will look back on this record in 100 years, and change our minds. I think that if this was the human races’ first impression on an intelligent alien race, I’m pretty sure it would end up with the human race becoming decimated.


 You probably shouldn't watch this:

-Todd