In the column I wrote last week, I wrote about songs that meant a lot to me that I wish I could experience hearing for the first time again. this week, I thought I'd flip things around, and talk about some other songs that were memorable on the first listen, because of much I loathed them. Some of them have grown on me, while others still make me cringe whenever I have to hear them, while others have become enjoyable simply for their comedic value. In any case, that first time will always be magic.
Limp Bizkit - "Rollin'"
I enjoyed nu-metal a fair amount during my elementary school years. years, but I distinctly remembering hearing this for the first time, and thinking Fred Durst and company had finally taken things a bit too far. At least "Nookie" was about something (specifically, nookie), while their cover of "Faith" was kind of funny, and gave them an amusing introduction to the mainstream. This time, it was just a bunch of random swearing, and while it was funny, it wasn't funny for the right reasons anymore. It was one of the band's last big hits before they gradually became a laughingstock. As nu-metal continues to gain reconsideration from a guilty pleasure standpoint, this song might have a resurgence, but me for it was the moment when Limp Bizkit's ever-slipping claim to legitimacy came to a screeching halt. But it was funny.
This song came out in 1997, but I somehow managed to not hear it until late 2011, and which point I wondered where it had been all my life. I try to not judge Christian rock too harshly - it has it's place, along with a seriously devoted fan base, and even if it's not for me, I can respect. But this song is just too damn awful for words. For one thing, it's basically a slow jam dedicated to the guy's daughter. No, that probably wasn't his attention, but it definitely comes across that way. it also goes on for nearly six-minutes, and features the sappiest lyrics known to man. This song has somehow become a wedding staple, where I can only assume it pulls off the near-impossible task of making the Cha-Cha Slide look good.
Ke$ha - "Tik Tok"
I don't hate this song quite as much as I did when it came out in 2009. Maybe because several other even-more-deliberately-vapid pop songs have come out since then (including a few by Ke$ha herself), or maybe it's another case of Bad Music Stockholm Syndrome - where you hear a terrible song enough times that you start enjoying it. Whatever the case is, nothing will ever replace the first listen, where I wondered how something so dreadful could possibly enter the ether, much less the mainstream. The song was stupid for the sake of stupid, and I still don't get why the line about brushing your teeth with a bottle of Jack is supposed to be clever. But hey, maybe I'm just bitter because I wake up in the morning feeling like I have far less disposable income than P.
Diddy.
Starship - "We Built This City"
Still a monument to just how terrible a song a good band can write if they just put their minds to it. Grace Slick was a rock n roll icon in the 60s, but by the 80s roll around, her anti-establishment rhetoric sounded decidedly dull and commercial. But the man, the first time I heard the infamous Traffic Report that comes about two-thirds into this song, I just broke into hysterics. There's also the feeling that this song was meant to be completely sincere, and at no point did they realize the song lacked all of the charm and attitude that made their earlier classics mean something.
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