Auditory Abominations: "Ocean Avenue" - Yellowcard

Goodie, I get to talk about pop punk again. Despite how often the genre gets a bad rap, I honestly don't hate this genre, I like Blink-182, I don't mind Fall Out Boy, I don't hate songs like "The Middle" or "Sk8r Boi", so why does this genre get such hate? Well, because this is one of those "Play it safe" genres, those kind of genres that get you guaranteed success, but aren't really anything challenging, and being honest, nothing really memorable either. You know all those videos that are like "The 2000s summed up in one video" or "These song clips will bring back memories"? Those are filled with nu metal, rap metal, pop punk and the like because those genres plagued the early 2000s, you could not escape the mega giants of Good Charlotte or Limp Bizkit, I assume, I never listened to the radio as a kid because, why would I when I could turn on the TV and watch SpongeBob?

Anyway, most of the pop punk stuff has, done the barest of bare minimums, it showed up, people heard it, people liked it and now people hear it and go "Hey I remember that song!" and then go on to listen to whatever they were listening to before. This is the kind of song someone plays to poke fun of the 2000s, a pop punk "Play it safe" band that nobody outside of the teenagers actually liked, and the only reason they liked it was because it was played on every station at every hour. This is why I listen to Alt. Rock stations!

But why am I looking at this song in particular? Aren't there other worse pop punk songs I could look at? Yes, but this one is sticking out in my mind currently and I want to send this genre off with a swift kick goodbye, unless I decide to look at Good Charlotte.

The opening riff is short, I'll give it that, it wants to get to the song as quickly as possible, but it doesn't sound good, or talented at all. I hear the opening bit and it sounds like a warm-up, and not in the same way "Sweet Child O' Mine" was a warm up for Slash, more like a warm up for someone who hasn't played guitar before.

The largest problem with these "Play it safe" genres is that they really do sound all the same. Ryan Key sounds like most other pop punk frontmen, maybe a bit less nasally, but in general still the same. It also doesn't help when he puts emphasis on a word by dragging it out.

The instrumentals also don't really do this genre any justice, if anything they may be the biggest problem with "Play-it-safe" genres. The instrumentals of this song at least, sound better than they would for a band like Simple Plan, which isn't saying much.

The lyrics are also nothing special, I mean, they're nothing like "Addicted" or hell even "Untitled", they're just about a place the band members grew up. I think that is my biggest problem with the song, it is the very definition of "Play-it-safe", even if that wasn't the intention, it does absolutely nothing with itself, except for the chorus where the frontman is almost drowned out by the instrumentals.

Nothing about this song is "it's own" really. I mean, even a pop-tronic song like "Lights" I can still tell is it'w own song. Even awful Katy Perry songs are at least her own style of music. This is just, pop-punk for the void. It's made and thrown into the ether in hopes that it will find some popularity. I do not like songs or artists or labels that do this, for this is not what music is. I don't think this band is entirely like this one song, that would be dumb to think, but this song itself is just so bland and generic that I legitimately can't hate it, I can hate the things surrounding the song, but the song gives me so little that I can't even muster a strong negative emotion. So with all that said, can I really consider this music?

I'm seriously asking because, even "Mr. Blobby", which I don't even want to dignify as music, technically did give me a strong emotional connection, albeit a very strong negative one. Even "Chained to the Rhythm" at the very least, gave me some emotional connection, even if it wasn't a very strong one. As this song went on, I've lost emotion in it. This song sucks, but even than I can't say that because I can barely feel anything for this song. I have no feelings towards it.

That is something I've very rarely come across in a song before, so I think next time will be a song that did give me a strong reaction.

I'm the Entity of Darkness, and let's forget this genre even existed, alright?

Auditory Abominations: "Addicted" - Simple Plan

Hey, I've already talked about Simple Plan. Yeah, last year I reviewed the song "Untitled", which may just be home to the most generic set of lyrics I have ever heard. Well, see there is a reason I'm looking at Simple Plan again, and that reason is, "Untitled" is only one of their bad songs. I don't think I'm going to do another Simple Plan song after this, although "I'm Just a Kid" is also utterly terrible. The reason is that, "Untitled" is not the norm of bad Simple Plan, much like how "Glycerine" is not the norm of bad 90s music, "Untitled" was a completely different beast to slay than this. Although some of the main problems are still prevalent, the frontman is annoying and the instrumentals never get passed anything other than Meh, it has different problems than "Untitled" does. So, here is my second look at the worst band my country has ever spat out, opinion subject to change of course.

So, how does this song start? With what sounds like the bastardization of "Sweet Child O' Mine". This opening guitar riff sounds horrible and I feel like if it played on repeat it would cause a headache in two minutes. Aside from that, the frontman still sounds like a castrated Bob Dylan with a nasal cold, and the rest of the instrumentals don't really do much. However, that is not the worst part about the opening lyrics.

When they say "Addicted" they have to pause before they finish it, so essentially they are saying "I'm a dick, I'm addicted to you". Which is the worst pick-up line I have ever heard. I mean, "I want to know what love is", "Everything I do, I do it for you", "When I dream, I'm doing you all night", they all got nothing on "I'm a dick, I'm addicted to you", yes, I'm giving apologies to Foreigner, apparently you can sink lower than "I Want to Know What Love Is".

Okay, giving this song the benefit of the doubt in that this song might be a break-up song, no. You should not ever have say, "Hunny, I'm still a dick... Still addicted to you!" If I heard that, I'd cut all ties immediately.

The chorus itself tries to be sort of energized, but it just sounds the exact same as other Simple Plan songs. I mean, what is the difference between this song and "I'm Just a Kid", aside from the incredible line of "I'm a dick... I'm a addicted to you"? The chorus has many moments where the music pauses, and instead of putting emphasis on a specific line, they stop just to start as soon as the frontman begins again.

Also, the chorus makes me realize something I hate about break up songs, most of them are one sided. I get the idea that you only have your own thoughts on how and why the break up went, but I find that the best break up songs are not always the "I want you back" or the "I hope you die and rot alone where you belong" kind of songs, more a song like OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" which actually focuses more on the break up effecting other people within the family, and has some great lyrical contrast between Andre and Big Boy. Another good example is Gotye's "Somebody That I used to Know" as it actually focuses on the post break up, they are glad it's over, but he doesn't want to be cut out of her life. Also, Adele's "Someone Like You" which is a beautiful song about trying to move on, and they were all successful songs as well, each of them topping the Hot 100 in America.

Although comparing the songs success wise, this song peaked at number 45, so the general public all admits that these kinds of songs are not the best love songs either, but then you realize that this was the third single released from the band's debut album. This song, over a song that had one of the members of Good Charlotte that could have given you even more hits.

They chose a song that is at best an even lamer version of The Proclaimer's "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" which has it's charm and it's place in music history. You know what this song is at worst? A generic, par for the course Simple Plan song. I would much rather listen to Eamon's overly angry, rude and trying to hard too offend "F*ck It (I Don't Want You Back)" because even then that is a song that is about moving on, although one of the worst songs in that category.

I knocked out every problem with this song before the song even reached it's two minute mark. Thank whoever invented the pause button, and that is a true testament to a song's poor quality. You see, "Mr. Blobby" and "Starships" both got worse as they went on, "Swalla" and "Bawtidaba" both had so much lyrical problems that I could not end the review at just one minute of the song. A lot of the songs I cover I listen to entirely because they often change, get worse or just have such awful lyrics that I can't ignore them all. This song doesn't sound like it will change, and for three, almost four, minutes we get awful singing, bland instrumentals and a subject that has been before and since in different and more importantly better ways.

I'm the Entity of Darkness, and next time I'm going to try something a bit different...

Auditory Abominations: "Twitch" - Bif Naked

And yet another song in the "Bad song from a good artists" category.

Bif Naked is a Canadian rock musician with some songs more rock like, such as "I Love Myself Today", and others a bit more pop punk, like "Tango shoes", and this one is definitely more pop punk, but that was not the deciding factor of this being my next blog review, which is especially great because I don't have to talk about pop punk in the 2000s yet. In fact this song has been on my list since I started doing these blogs, and since the last song I looked at had several major issues, this time I'm going to look at a song that really only has one major issue, but oh man is it a big one.

The opening guitar riff is very... Teenage pop punk style, it just sounds very I don't know, odd I guess, but hey if My Chemical Romance has taught us anything it's that opening riffs are not the be all and end all of a song, so hey maybe there could be some good in this song after all, right?

Bif also sounds very teenage on this track, which makes her sound very...
Gwen Stefani, who was actually around the same age as her when this song came out. Yeah, the song really sounds like teenage rock which would be fine, except that it sounds so, odd. I can describe it, it just has a weird overall sound to it. It's like Bif Naked here wanted to be an Avril Lavigne or other pop punk princess, when her best songs are usually the more rock sounding ones like "Moment of Weakness".

If that was the only problem with this song I probably would not review it, but the lyrics also are nothing to celebrate. The vocal performance is very clear so there is no issue hearing the lyrics, but the lyrics are mostly just Bif sing-talking, or talk-singing I guess, about her boyfriend, or something, right after she says things about this boy she immediately says that "He has a girlfriend/she is my toy!" but then the chorus states that she is the only one making him smile.

Since I'm still single, I don't really know the "it's complicated" feeling of love, but I don't think that's what she was going for. In all honesty, I don't know what she was going for, it's just her talk-singing about her boyfriend and that's it.

Oh and if you're wondering why the song is called twitch, it's because the chorus states "Sometimes he'll twitch for no reason/it's just a twitch and it's part of his style." I don't get it, I really don't get it.

I disliked this song when I first heard it, but when I was younger it just made me feel awkward, but now that I am actually analyzing this song, I find that I don't like the teenage rock sound, the lyrics that make little sense, the uninspired sounding pop punk instrumentals which sound like something a teenager would play as their second riff after "Smoke on the Water". I guess the teenage rock sound is part of the style of the song, but I honestly don't find it to appealing. If I want teen rock I'll listen to "Sk8er Boi", wow anybody else remember that song?

Oh well, I'm the Entity of Darkness and, I guess listen to a better song of hers, I really have nothing to end this on.