Ronnie Radke keeps ruining music

by Josiah Hughes

January 10, 2014

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Each Friday on Garbage Day, we rummage through pop culture’s trash cans and pick the week’s most disgusting item to keep forever. This week, Radke’s back.

Just over a week in, 2014 is already shaping up to be a garbage year like none other. From all your friends’ bad tweets about their new year’s resolution being 1080p and how they’re still writing 2013 on their checks, followed by the relevant kicker that no one writes checks anymore, to a general feeling that everything’s exactly the same as it was two weeks ago, there’s plenty of garbage to sulk and/or revel in.

Thankfully, Garbage Day is all about finding joy in the trash heap, and enjoying every moment of hateful, sadistic torture-listening. And while it’s a relatively slow time of year in the music world, there’s still plenty of ridiculously awful stuff to dig into all around the web.

What did you get for Christmas? I was treated to a bougie new coffee maker. While it’s capable of making the best possible coffee, however, the final product is still dependant on the quality of beans that are put in there. That’s why I’m strongly considering a batch of Rockin’ and Roastin’ coffee beans, a new venture from Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer.

Just look at this ad:

The aging dad-rock timekeeper wouldn’t just slap his name on any coffee beans — these ones have a post-Ed Hardy dragon on the label. They also boast the tagline “a rockin’ bag of beans from Joey Kramer of Aerosmith.” I don’t have a bag o’ Joey’s beans just yet, but I can only imagine what they’ll taste like — a nice aged flavour, with tasting notes of Dippity Doo hair gel, backstage Cool Ranch Doritos, and male anti-aging cream. Love me some dork roast.

Speaking of coffee nerds, those same dweebs that used to show-off their jelly bracelets and a shockingly deep knowledge of hair straightener techniques have now graduated from early 2000s emo-dom into a world of rustic, authentic trousers, perfectly pulled espresso, and Mumford-lite alt-folk. Their hero, Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carabba, has moved on with them, forming a new folky folk project called Twin Forks that harkens back to a time when real music just felt realer.

The group have just released a lyric video for their new song “Cross My Mind,” and it’s just as cringeworthy as you’d expect — twee-ass whistling, bouncy percussion that’s just a beggin’ for some stompin’, and a goofy sing-along chorus about how “good company is hard to find.” Suburban normies feigning an expertise in typography will find a lot to love in the video’s text work, which is surely a free font called “Heartfelt Olden Days Signage” or whatever.

Thanks to the heartless, shameless, relentless folks at Fearless, there’s always a swirling mass of garbage swarming through our eardrums. After ruining 2013’s Christmas with their Punk Goes Christmas comp, they’re deviously crafting their next move.

Rather than giving us a full 12 months to recover, they’re already plotting a comeback, with their Punk Goes ’90s Volume 2 set to arrive this spring. The first leak of the album comes from a band fittingly called Get Scared, and they’ve covered Lit’s anti-straight edge anthem “My Own Worst Enemy.”

With beefier guitars and giant drums, it starts off sounding pretty good. Then, the corny nü pop-punk lyrics come in, the screamed vocals do that emo hype man thing where they emphasize certain lyrics, and the chorus goes into double time.

For a band that looks like this, there’s a disappointing lack of mouth-breathing metal parts or wannabe goth posturing. It’s not even that bad of a cover, actually. But let this be a warning — this spring, there’s going to be a Fearless Records compilation of ’90s covers. Brace yourselves for crabcore Collective Soul or something.

When I was an angsty teen (though still old enough that I should’ve known better), I was a huge metalcore fan. I even travelled to Seattle once to see the following bands share a bill: Zao, Underoath (deep into their screaming Jars of Clay phase), Unearth, From Autumn to Ashes, and a then-unknown opener called Coheed and Cambria.

Even then, when I found things like whiny nose-singing and chongo breakdowns and youth large t-shirts with four silkscreens on the bottom right corner to be the ultimate in cool, I still couldn’t understand the appeal of Coheed and Cambria. Now that I’m older, I’m still perplexed.

This week, the fuzzy-haired emo-prog masters delivered a live session for Guitar Center, where they power through some overblown guitarmonies on their ridiculous guitars while making sensual guitar faces. The man sings some ridiculous prog lyrics that were most likely written by that matted mass of hair, which has presumably seeped its way through his skull, driving roots deep into his brain and now controls his entire body.

Nerds gonna nerd though, and making fun of Coheed and Cambria for playing a Guitar Center session is like going to a brony convention to make fun of bronies. It’s like going to a jam rock concert and shooting Phish in a barrel. They’ve found their niche in the ultra geeky music store crowd, and I’ll let them have it.

The worst offender of the week will always be the worst offender as long as he keeps making music. I’m talking, of course, about pouty-lipped Warped Tour sexpot Ronnie Radke.

Emo’s raddest bad boy Radke has moved past merely ruining rock music, finding new inspiration in the rap world. His new song “Stupid Boy” sees him rapping atop a slowed-down rip of Drake’s “5am in Toronto” beat. Because every song’s sounding like Radke featuring Radke.

Radke slowly brags about how he might lose his case (either the alleged connection to a murder, or the arrest for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend, or the arrest for throwing mic stands at his audience, or…) because there are no females on the jury. Then he brags that there are no guns on his waistband, but he knows “a few dudes that are willing to catch a case, man.” Um, is Ronnie Radke threatening to hire a hitman? I thought only Christian metalcore dudes did that.

Like the true mic-destroyer he is, he double times his raps, shouting out Amanda Bynes for some reason, before adopting a nasally alien voice (think an extra wienery Kendrick Lamar martian voice) as he sings. I’m just going to transcribe the whole chorus, because there are no words I could possibly add to do it justice:

“I’m just a stupid boy and I know why / Spending all my time on the wifi / And I wonder why / I do not have a life / All I wanted is a bitch to fuck me / But all these stupid bitches wanna love me (girl voice: ‘You’re cute’) / But inside I am ugly / U-u-u-u-u-ugly.”

Hmmm, what else. Radke brags that he fucked the game up, “you could call it sodomy.” Then he brags that he has a mistress, at which point a girl smashes a glass and threatens to kill him.

Oh yeah, then he has another Kendrick moment, channeling “Control”:

“Is this what I’m supposed to be? / A motherfucking cracker, it’s in my genes / I rap better and faster than anybody in the rap scene / I’m already rock king.”

Then he switches up Eminem’s “Rap God,” nose-singing “I’m beginning to feel like a rock god.” Later, he literally brags about his hatred of women. No metaphor, just verbatim, “My hatred of women growing bigger with each day that I’m living.”

Anyway, the song goes on for five-and-a-half minutes and is without question the worst thing to come out this week. And to think, there are 11 more of these creations on the way when Radke releases his Watch Me mixtape any day now. Life is a rich and varied tapestry, guys.

Tags: Music, News, garbage day, ronnie radke

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