Music

Listen to Corey Hart's EDM mid-life crisis comeback

by Josiah Hughes

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, Corey Hart is BACK.

Sheesh, that was a rough week. Rob Ford said the most quotable thing about cunnilingus since Michael Douglas blamed his throat cancer on lady diving. The Christian metalcore guy who tried to have his wife murdered has yet to be prosecuted. There was plenty of racism.

That a washed-up Ontario “horrorbilly” perfomer named “Hooch” exists is bad enough, but he also unapologetically revealed plans to wear blackface. When AUX called him out on it, he pretended he wrote the article. No, bro. If anyone’s gonna do an elaborate hoax on the AUX site, it’s gonna be me. Although if you actually are an elaborate self-parody, a man named Hooch playing horrorbilly is pretty funny.

The perceived racism wasn’t limited to Ontario, however — Lily Allen also drew the ire of bloggers all over with her video for the new single “Hard Out Here,” where she criticized the female objectification of the music industry while hiring some female dancers to pull off twerking dance moves just like any other video. Except she was singing about how what they were doing was bad while they were doing it. Also, they were all women of colour. Some real Allensplaining going on over here.

There’s plenty to unpack from that video, which many (including Lena Dunham’s Twitter followers) have already done a good job of. I won’t add to the clutter except to say that, controversy or not, this song is terrible and doesn’t belong anywhere near your earholes. No one needs this boring, bad, overly earnest trash. If you want to hear someone criticize twerking, ask your clueless boomer uncle what he thinks about Miley Cyrus.

Speaking of overly earnest trash, there’s a new Christmas song from the objectively unbearable Christopher Drew, who makes misunderstood tween hearts swoon as Never Shout Never. Easily the most unbearable part of the Warped Tour movie (which is saying a lot — the movie also included this dweeb), Drew refuses to wear shoes and socks, walking around barefoot like a faux-hippie putz who “thrifts vinyls.” At one point, he even sustains an injury after jumping off a speaker cabinet. Because he refuses to wear shoes or socks. Everything’s just more real and down to earth and full of heart without them, you know?

Anyway, this little pissant has a new Christmas song called “Meet Me Under the Mistletoe,” where he trades tooth-hurtingly saccharine lines with Dia Frampton, a reject from the first season of The Voice.

The recording is so clean and scrubbed of edge (or even low-end), it feels like it could give you instant tinnitus. The ostensibly “classy” brush work on the snares crackles through the head, recreating the headache one gets when smelling all of Bath and Bodyworks’ holiday scents at once. If you’ve ever hoped for a folk version of Owl City’s aggressively clean-cut nasal pop, this is for you. Never Shout Never makes Chris Carrabba sound like Will Oldham.

Enough Christmas stuff, though. It’s mid-November and I already hate everything. Instead, let’s visit everyone’s favourite friend Corey Hart, who’s shot an appalling video for an EDM remake of his song “Sunglasses at Night,” an ironic karaoke hit enjoyed for all the wrong reasons.

In a Billboard interview, Hart brags that he’s held out to the countless people who’ve wanted to rework his song. Aside from a select few, Hart generously offered a benevolent hand to Chicago EDM duo Papercha$er, who’ve turned it into “Night Visions (Sunglasses).”

With a new vocal track courtesy of Hart himself, the song sounds like, well, a dad doing an overly dramatic karaoke version of “Sunglasses at Night” at his local Senor Frog’s Ibiza night. Papercha$er’s music is mostly uneventful, building a gross straight-into-Garageband guitar tone up until it peaks with, you guessed it, a fist-pumping EDM chorus. It all just sounds like recording software presets.

“Did I know that it was going to have this enduring quality to it and it would have been this massive hit song on so many levels? No, but I didn’t not believe it,” Hart said to Billboard (though they used the phrase “Hart pontificates,” which is just absolutely beautiful). “As an artist, there’s a duality to being vulnerable and insecure but confident about what you’re doing. That’s what makes artists stand out. I have that duality. I have the insecurity and vulnerable side and I also have the confidence.”

It’d just be a sad attempt at reliving the glory days if it were just the audio, however. The video for “Night Visions (Sunglasses)” is really everything — Hart wakes up, browses through his closet full of “cool dad” paisley dress shirts, throws some water on his heavily bronzered face and squints at his many ear piercings while he brushes his teeth. He’s really giving off the impression that he’s got his shit together, though I’m pretty sure I see some holes in his white t-shirt at the 15-second mark.

From there, Hart checks out a babe who’s chilling poolside. She takes off her clothes at the exact same moment that he sings “take off your clothes,” which is a nice literal touch. But hang on, rewind that. The full line is “Sister kiss the sky, take off your clothes.” Corey, buddy, are we to believe that this is your sister that you’re ogling? [ed note: THAT IS HIS DAUGHTER. HIS 15-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER.]

Whatever, stop thinking about that. The edits are too quick to worry about whether or not this vid is about incest. Cut to the chorus, and Hart is on his third or fourth coloured t-shirt. Buddy blew his paycheque on some $7 H&M swag. Up close, while he sings, it starts to become clear that this is exactly what Tom DeLonge will look like in 10 years or so. He’ll look like a very cool EDM star with a killer t-shirt collection.

A couple more shots of Hart in his baller divorcee mansion, and he’s soon ripping around in his convertible, CD player on full blast and sunglasses on during the day. Yeah, not just during the night you fucking idiots. You can’t tame Corey Hart.

Inexplicably, the video’s female costar (possibly playing the sister that Hart wants naked) is soon sitting in the back seat of the convertible, feebly strumming a Les Paul with her thumb to the rhythm of the pulsing EDM chorus. Don’t ask questions.

Next shot, we get Corey walking around with a suit on, wearing the same sunglasses he was wearing before. He must’ve blown his sunglasses budget on t-shirts. After a brief spoken word interlude from Hart’s sister/lover, we see him perched up on a bed, holding the Les Paul from earlier and singing “The universe is trying to tell us something / Everybody needs to join together now.” Oh shit, Corey’s trying to force us into his Les-Paul-sister-sex-t-shirt-cult.

Basically, the rest of the video sees Corey posing in different variations on the aforementioned outfits as he delivers his world-saving message about wearing sunglasses at any damn time of the day you want. There are more shots of the model, who whispers sweet nothings into some other dude’s ear (is he also related to them?), a chess game and a maze. The final shot, Corey Hart looks directly into the camera, his hands in a prayer formation, and I’m not convinced he’s not Derek Zoolander.