Avril and Marilyn Manson's erotic duet, plus more of the week's worst songs

by Josiah Hughes

November 1, 2013

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Each Friday on Garbage Day, we rummage through pop culture’s trash cans and pick the week’s grossest item to keep forever. This week: Avril Lavigne and Marilyn Manson’s sordid duet, “Bad Girl.”

It was tempting to call Arcade Fire’s 15-hour existential mastur-stroke Reflektor the worst thing of the week and let the SEO work itself out, but I haven’t actually heard the album. In the same way that you’re doing yourself a service when you unfollow self-serious buffoons on Twitter and hide insufferable acquaintances from your Facebook feed, I’ve chosen to avoid the Arcade Fire’s smug U2 appropriation and the exhausting thinkpieces that come with it, and I’m doing just fine without it. Besides, it wasn’t just Win Butler and James Murphy hanging out in the studio that got my attention—this week was packed with uncomfortable collaborations.

First, there’s Eminem, who’s decade-long identity crisis has him attempting to regain his status as a lyrical monster while still retaining the grocery store playlist presence that’ve paid his bills in recent years. With that in mind, his new album is packed with hyperactive showmanship (“Rap God”) but also ill-advised collaborations that are at once ambitious and lazily predictable. Em already scored your mom’s favourite workout jam with Rihanna when they released “Love the Way You Lie,” and this week they followed it up with “The Monster,” a very weird, mid-tempo pop-rap song that’s got Rihanna on the hook and Em on the verses.

The problem here is that the song’s trying too many things at once—Eminem’s still an admittedly great rapper, and he’s spitting as quick as ever. Unfortunately, that also means he’s occasionally singing in a disgusting high-pitched voice, yodeling and talking like an alien. Yes, a yodeling Yoda.

Well what about the new Eminem songs that aren’t intended for gently swaying your hips in the checkout line? “Love Game,” another leak from the rapper’s new album, sees him going toe to toe with Kendrick Lamar, both of them being totally lyrically lyrical with their lyrics. On paper, it should be great—both of them destroy their verses, making for a technically incredible rap song. Aesthetically, however, it’s pretty damn gross—aside from an array of annoying as hell voices that they both switch in and out of, the beat’s a major disappointment. I get it, you’re referencing De La Soul by modernizing that Wayne Fontana sample. But when you modernize a vintage rock song, add turntable scratches and sing-songy rhyming on top of it, you sound like a different old school rock band. And that band is called Smash Mouth.

At this point, no one’s questioning Eminem’s ability’s on the mic. He’s one of the most talented rappers out there. But raw talent simply isn’t enough if you combine it with poor aesthetic choices. It’s the same reason a lot of people can’t stomach Dream Theater, Yngwie Malmsteen or the countless untouched albums on CD Baby created by ponytailed guitar shop salesmen the world over.

Then there’s angsty nu-metal leftovers Linkin Park, who’re no strangers to weird collaborations—their ill-advised 2004 Jay Z collaboration Collision Course was probably the first warning sign that Hova might not be as flawlessly cool as we once thought, and now he’s just a weird dad hawking iPhone knock-offs and fudging record sales numbers.

This week, Linkin Park released Recharged, their second album of remixes with weird collaborations. One such song? The Rad Omen remix of their song “Roads Untraveled,” which somehow features legendary Southern rapper Bun B.

Here, Chester Bennington, the band’s rectangular-glasses-wearing I.T. guy with the gravelly Veggie Tales voice, sounds like the wiener from Owl City atop a fist-pumping, Dance Dance Revolution-­worthy techno remix. But I wanted to hate it a lot more when I do—when Bun pops in for a brief verse, the song’s transformed into an enormously polished trap anthem. Too bad it’s so short before the song goes back to gross Linkin Park workout sing-along.

Not hating every second of a Linkin Park song has me feeling confused and alone, so let’s just move on to our girl Avril Lavigne. Without question, she’s got some incredible fake pop-punk tunes under her black-and-white checkered belt, and arena-sized hits like “Rock and Roll” and “Here’s to Never Growing Up” are perfectly sturdy rock anthems from her new self-titled album.

Now that she’s married to Canada’s greasiest bar-star rocker, however, I was really hoping we’d get some of the worst music we’d ever heard on the new album. Her Chad Kroeger collaboration “Let Me Go” wasn’t as awful as it could’ve been—in the Kroeger kanon, it’s one of the more pleasant creations.

Thankfully, there is a collaboration from the fiery pits of hell on Avril’s new album, and it comes from an unholy horde of songwriters—alongside Chad and Avril, “Bad Girl” was written with former Evanescence member David Hodges and features aging, fading shock rocker Marilyn Manson (who was also, according to Manson, Avril’s pre-Kroeger fuck buddy). We’ve found the worst song of the week, you guys!

The song’s called “Bad Girl,” and it’s even grosser than AUX.TV contributor Mish Way’s erotic fan fiction.

“Bad Girl” opens with Manson sneering (what I mean is that he actually sounds like Cyril Sneer from The Raccoons) the line, “Just lay your head in daddy’s lap, you’re a bad girl.” Ewwwwwww.

Even though you already want to wash your hands of this song (and potentially find away to hide your arousal), it hasn’t even started yet. Right after Manson says all that gross shit, the song kicks in with a gross faux-Manson rock shuffle, like a horrible cowboy-hat wearing Sonicbids band that somehow made it onto a discount Xbox game’s soundtrack. Then Avril shares her sordid sex requests, saying “I just want to be your baby / You can fuck me, you can play me / You can love me, you can hate me.” All of this daddy / baby talk adds a really disgusting element considering how much the music already sounds like a Gary Glitter jock jam.

The chorus is a pretty generic rock chorus, all crushing guitar chords and high-pitched yelping—think a nu-metal version of a very tainted “Tainted Love.” Avril tells Marilyn to “choke me because I said so” to which he replies, in a guttural growl that would be suited to a third-rate metalcore act, “don’t tell me what to do.” Dudes, that’s so gross. And what was Chad doing while you wrote this song?

Anyway, don’t turn it off, because around the two-minute mark, Avril starts singing “I’ve been a bad girl” in a bizarre AutoTune / guitar solo hybrid. Shit sounds so weird, especially with Manson’s whispering “bad girl” that punctuates every line. He keeps it going when the song ends, but by then Avril’s burst out laughing.

It’s all very disgusting. As a nice little palette cleanser, here’s an excerpt of the thank you section from Avril Lavigne’s liner notes, complete with winky faced emoticons and the wonderful phrase “friends forever, bitch.”

Tags: Music, News, Avril Lavigne, Bun B, Eminem, garbage day, Kendrick Lamar, Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson

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