Auditory Abominations: "The Fear" - Lily Allen

So, apparently 2009 is going to be my pick for worst year in music. In some respects this makes sense, every music nerd always says that the 90s died in 1994 after the death of Kurt Cobain, well the 2000s are similar in that they kind of died out around 2007-2008. If you look at the music scene of the early 2000s, yeah there was a lot of pop and electronic, but there was also quite a bit of rock here and there, even if the bands weren't good, they were successful. I've already talked a lot about early 2000s mainstream rock but that scene just kind of faded out in the late 2000s to be replaced with the more marketable pop princesses of Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and the like. Much like how the early 90s was the heyday of the grunge scene, then it shifted into gangster rap and mainstream rock, the early to mid 2000s was the heyday of rap and hip-hop, and mainstream rock before it shifted to pop music. Which brings us to today's specimen!

The song opens with, I don't know if it's a keyboard, a guitar, a bass or what, it's a confusing sound that sounds like all three of them, and yet none of them at the same time. It also doesn't help that the opening lines are "I want to be rich and I want lots of money."

Being fair, I did put the cart before the horse with that one, as the song is a lot like "Royals" in that it's about the problems with the lifestyle celebrities endorse. However, I think I should point out, what made "Royals" a good song was that it was using it's lyrics to mock the lyrics of hip-hop songs that were popular at the time (I say that like it was released a long time ago). This song's lyrics are "here is something in a celebrity based life-style, isn't it awful?" and aside from the chorus, that is really it, it's like "We Didn't Start the Fire" if there was no historical aspect to it.

The chorus itself sounds vaguely auto-tuned, which is odd because Lily Allen is not a terrible singer, being up there with Lorde in not having a beautiful voice, but still sounding good. I can't help but think of Cher's "Believe" when I here the chorus, which was one of the first commercial recordings to feature auto-tune. To give you some perspective, it's like watching a CG animated movie from the mid to late 2000s and saying the animation reminds you of Toy Story, the first movie with movie quality CG animation, except in that case Toy Story actually did look amazing for it's time.

Speaking of crappy club songs, this song uses a lot of electronic effects for I don't know. I mean, I don't think this was supposed to be a club song, and with that strange keyboard/guitar/bass sound that goes with it, it sounds kind of out of place.

The song has a good theme and some decent lyrics here and there, and being fair this isn't the worst song I've ever heard, but when I have a song that came out after this to compare it with, I'm naturally gonna, and I think that "Royals" is the much better song, because unless I was really paying attention, I could easily mistake this song for endorsing the celebrity life-style. However, I think what also makes this song inferior to "Royals" is that this song is boring. Not even comparing it to "Royals" again, I've heard this theme done before in "Californication", the music is something I have also heard a lot of before and even if Lily Allen has a decent voice, she sounds half asleep in this track.

I'm the Entity of Darkness, and next time, something special.