I believe I've stated before that mainstream rock was hit and miss in the 2000s. Although Nickelback is tolerable on some tracks and Hinder isn't terrible, Simple Plan is beyond whiny, Buckcherry is just musical smut, Limp Bizkit was a thing, Creed is a band I would rather forget about and then we have Puddle of Mudd. I've never heard of this band before Rocked Reviews talked about the album Come Clean. Immediately what stood out to me was the vocal work, You know how I said Austin Josh was my pick for least favourite vocalist? Well, Wes Scantlin may give him a run for his money. What was it about the raspy voice that was so big in mainstream rock? It doesn't make the singer sound tortured it makes the singer sound constipated.
Whatever, amazingly this wasn't a song I chose entirely at random, as this song topped the mainstream rock charts. Once again for the cheap seats, this song TOPPED the mainstream rock chart. You know what else topped the chart? a little known song called "Aerials", the exact same year. 2002 was the year Puddle of Mudd reached number one just under a month after System of a Down. Was this song worthy of that accolade? What do you think?
The opening riff is meh, it's strum-along twang that is just boring. I understand basic riffs, some of my favourite opening riffs are basic, "Back in Black", "Smoke on the Water" and "Iron Man" especially, but those riffs got me hooked on the song. That is something that a good riff does, get you hooked on the song before the song truly begins. Wes' opening vocals are like if Austin Josh and Kurt Cobain had a child, which is not the worst sound in the world, but still a clichéd one. This kind of voice was everywhere in rock at the time, Nickelback, Creed, Hinder etcetera. I guess it spawned off from the grunge scene with groups like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but grunge is an off-shoot of punk with rough sounding instrumentals, mainstream rock is not a clean sounding genre. I guess you can qualify Nickelback as "post-grunge", but all of this? I give bands like Simple Plan and Buckcherry credit, they have vocalists that aren't annoyingly raspy, although with Simple Plan that isn't saying much.
Before the minute mark I'm starting to feel like this is a rip-off of a Nirvana song. I mean it may just be the vocal work but I'm getting major Nirvana vibes from this, the guitar-work even sounds similar.
Although I'll give this to Nirvana, they have written better songs than this. I mean, why have poetic lyrics when you can have "She f*cking hates me/ Trust she f*cking hates me/ La la la love" Alright, "Trust", why write that one word in there? To remove monotony? Well spoiler alert it didn't work, not because the lyrics are repeated a lot in the chorus, no but because there are only two times the lyrics are written. If it isn't for that reason, than why else? To shorten "Trust me"? Well that makes no sense. Also, "La la la love"? Really? you couldn't think of better lyrics to write than "La la la love"? I know La, la's are common to find in lyrics and they can work, but this is not one of those times, a time where it does work is "B.Y.O.B.", and I'm not saying that because I'm still bitter that this made number one alongside my favourite System of a Down song. The chorus ends with that by the way, making it pointless as well.
Have I mentioned that this is a break-up song, or at the very least, supposed to be one? Yeah, it's hard to guess </sarcasm>. The lyrics aren't as generic, but mostly feel woman bashing. I think the best lyrics are "She was queen for about an hour/ After that sh*t got sour/ She took all I ever had/ No sign of guilt/ No feeling bad" which, yeah I agree with Rocked Reviews, it makes Wes sound like a spoiled brat who had his mother take away his PlayStation as a form of punishment. The chorus doesn't help with that either, and the only way to not hear the song that way is to add context to the opening lyrics.
I'll admit the instrumentals get better as the song goes on, but they still have a Nirvana feel to them. I know that Nirvana was a large influence on modern rock, but that doesn't allow any group or artist to just rip the sound and copy it on their own. Marilyn Manson sounds nothing like Nine Inch Nails for a good example.
The music video is also hilarious, almost everybody in the video starts to randomly flip out and act as if they are having a stroke and a seizure at the same time.
Really, that is all there is to the song, Nirvana sound-alike instrumentals, lyrics that are similar to something other than what they are, a boring intro, a singer that sounds like a worse version of every rock singer from the time and clichéd lyrics, with a bafflingly bad music video.
This is not one of the worst songs of the decade, but it is a really bad song, and I'd like to remind you that this made number one alongside "Aerials". I'm the Entity of Darkness and, I'm glad this kind of music is behind us.
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