Music

How to find the worst music on the Internet

by Josiah Hughes

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, a garbagey grab bag from all over the stupid internet, from hickstown to Victory Records breakdowns.

If no one has heard of a band, and no one cares about them, they’re not worth writing about, right? Just let them do their thing, and the unforgiving, Darwinian ways of the music industry will eventually kill ’em off. Don’t bother wasting your time on terrible, no-name bands that are going nowhere.

In theory, that’s a nice sentiment. But sometimes the public needs to be warned, just in case a terrible artist manages to, say, find a niche audience in party-loving, mouth-breathing hicks (more on that later). With that in mind, I need to warn you about a new rock band.

This band has it all, from terrible rock riffs that sound like Garageband presets to thoughtless lyrics (“all this thinking has got me drinking”) to horrible releases (they recently followed up their debut The Pussy Magnet with Cock Fight 1, the first in a trilogy of releases called Cock Fight.) Their press release brags that their frontwoman “notoriously fired Patti Smith’s guitar-genius son from her riot grrrl band because he played too many solos” — so one of their biggest selling points is that the singer used to be in a band with a famous person’s son.

And I haven’t even told you their band name yet — Sassy Kraimspri. Yes, “Kraimspri” — easily one of the most visually displeasing misspellings I’ve ever seen. It makes me want to go on a sassy klingspri. It’s also the sort of terrible “rock ‘n’ roll” gimmickry that just might connect with an audience who let the infantile blonde girl from Gossip Girl become a bona fide rock star. So just be warned and keep an eye out so we can prevent a Kraimspri spree.

After all, we didn’t keep a watchful enough eye on big-budget punk and hardcore, to the point where powerhouse labels like Epitaph and Victory are a constant source of gross. This week’s “what happened to Victory” moment comes from a band called Tear Out the Heart, who’ve released a video for their song “Dead By Dawn.”

It’s another heavy-as-fuck metalcore song, complete with shots of the band perfectly jumping up and down in unison. Then, just as the sun is wont to rise every morning and set every evening, the necessary pop-punk singalong part comes in. Then the singing turns into an AutoTune part, and some arpeggiating digital synths come in. By the end, of course, there’s a choir of Cookie Monster vocalists ushering in a clunky metalcore breakdown.

Visually, the video showcases a dancer getting all interpretive in front of a circle of kidnapped men, presumably the members of Tear Out the Heart. They’ve got burlap sacks over their heads, so they miss out on her moves. Perhaps they’ll have to go check it out at their local community theatre.

There are few things that give me as many embarrassment goosebumps as when boomer moms describe things (usually an asymmetrical haircut, a slightly weird blouse, a terra cotta tea pot, or a vase with watercolour red chilies painted on the side) as “funky.” And while that adjective doesn’t always intersect with the actual genre of funk music, it does on Galactic’s new single “Dolla Diva.”

The song is at once funky and “funky,” a mess of derivative fuzz bass and funk guitar, plus some endlessly goofy white-boy sing-rapping. That’s all well and bad, but the lyrics bring it to the next level of cheese, and that title alone is some deeply disturbing funky mom material.

The phrase “Dolla Diva” is the sort of thing that’d be encrusted with shitty plastic diamonds on a tiara that someone would give to their coworker, a self-described cougar who trawls dollar stores for discount leopard print martini glasses and super-cateye reading glasses, at a Secret Santa.

Speaking of embarrassing adults, Eddie Murphy has used some of that Norbit money to launch a solo career as a soft-rockin’ dude. He’s just let loose a new acoustic ballad called “Promise (You Won’t Break My Heart),” and the video will send you into a near four-minute crisis as you nearly lose your mind trying to understand why it exists.

Simply put, there’s nothing that wrong with it. Murphy proves that he’s got a damn smooth voice, and the song’s clearly intended for wealthy adults hell-bent on proving just how clear the treble can go on their new Bose soundsystem. But it’s still a video of Eddie Murphy making eye contact with the camera and crooning out a sexy love song while backed by like 30 dudes with acoustic guitars and one synth preset.

Remember when I warned you about Sassy Kraimspri earlier in this column? I know you still feel weird about it, but had someone warned us about Moonshine Bandits, we likely wouldn’t be sitting here watching their new video for “California Country” together.

The band were formerly on Suburban Noize records, the label operated by Kottonmouth Kings that also works as the American home of all Swollen Members material (it’s crucial to remember that outside of Canada, the Swollen Members roll with the juggalos). Now, however, they’ve hicked it up even more, preparing a new album to be released on the decidedly down-home Backroad Records / Average Joes Entertainment.

“California Country” follows a long, rich tradition of hick party anthems from the likes of Kid Rock, Uncle Kracker, and the Hickery Pickin’ Hick Bwoys. (I may have invented one of those). Ultimately, it’s a goofy heehaw singalong, complete with AutoTune vocals, a proud California singalong, and plenty of nursery rhyme-calibre rapping.

Every man in this video fits the husky-gentleman-with-sunglasses-and-discount-streetwear look popularized by Guy Fieri and Smash Mouth. While they act all cool in their sick fitted hats and rockin’ mohawks, however, the real allure of the video is the lakeside boozin’ and hillbilly hodown, complete with countless scantily clad women.

At first glance, it’s hard to understand the appeal of this sort of thing, but even in 2014, the video’s only got 47 down votes out of 65,000+ views. Then again, it’s a simple, easy to digest hick rap song paired with flashing lights and bouncing boobies — the sort of tasteless ‘n’ proud music that lives forever. They may be Moonshine Bandits, but they’ve also managed to steal America’s hearts.