Rusko Star - "Attention Whore" (2007)

Rusko Star - "Attention Whore" (2007):

This image is really all you need to know.

Have you ever watched a music video with someone like Ke$ha or Britney Spears, and wondered what it would be like if a man were singing it instead? What might talking about posting photos to social networking sites or acting like a “bitch” look like if a man did it instead? Well, pop singer Rusko Star is here to answer that question once and for all!

Look, I'll admit that bubblegum pop isn't my thing. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite of my thing, so I am a little out of my element here. But this song was just so bizarre to me that it demanded a review! I mean, when is the last time you saw a generic female pop song performed by a male model? I can't think of the last time!

Let's get this review started...

Let's begin with Rusko Star himself. Unfortunately, information is pretty sparse, (I couldn't find anything substantial on AMG or Wikipedia), but he's been doing music since at least the late 2000s, and “Attention Whore” was the first song he uploaded to YouTube. It's also his best known track to date, apparently you can be less than internet famous. He's produced other music since then, and basically kept his image of a Real-Housewife-but-as-a-guy image intact. The only other notable thing I could find out about him is that he's a male model.

The song itself was made in 2007, and believe me, it really shows. The production sounds like any other pop song from the late 2000s, down to the sampled claps in the percussion and the synthesizers being put on the "strings" setting, with the whole track having a very digital feel. It's basically every complaint I've ever heard about pop music over the past several years in one song: there's no real instruments in this whole track because it sounds like it was made with ProTools. Lyrically, this song is also very 2007-- there's even a reference to uploading pictures to MySpace! Actually, that line about MySpace brings up a good point: how will all the songs that reference current-day social networks like Instagram or Facebook age? Because this song doesn't really bode well for them.

Mom! Grandma's listening to her old people music about selfies again!

As for Rusko's character in the song itself (please let it only be a character), it's pretty unbearable. The song is about an “attention whore,” and my god does it deliver! Apparently Rusko can't be out of the limelight for five minutes (“Look at me!/ Talk about me!”). It's like someone took all the worst parts of teenaged girl's vanity and made a song about it, with the end result being just as narcissistic as you'd think. If you met someone like this in real life, you'd probably start inventing excuses to not be in their company. Really bad excuses too, like sorting a sock drawer even though you only wear sandals.

The only way you can make this song more bearable is if you assume it's coming from the opposite point of view, of someone who will never have enough attention trained on them. If the song were about an attention addict instead, it would make for a pretty interesting song. For example, the acoustic version of the Weezer track “Can't Stop Partying” turned a generic pop tune about hitting up the clubs into a song about being addicted to partying just by singing the song over an acoustic guitar. It's an interesting example because you hardly ever see party songs interpreted that way on the radio. If Rusko had written it that way, then "Attention Whore" would be like the "Can't Stop Partying" of vain people.

With all that said, I'm not so sure that interpretation holds up because Rusko seems pretty shameless about being so needy. He isn't ashamed about needing so much attention, he's proud of it! Lines like “I'm such a fucking attention whore” at the end sound as convincing as those people who always say they're fat when they really aren't. Come to think of it, teenaged girls say that a lot too, which means I've come full circle.

Conclusion:

Really, the only point of interest in this whole song is Rusko himself, who basically sung a fairly generic pop song. It makes an impression because Rusko's a guy, and doing songs like this as a guy is pretty rare. With that said, if this song were sung by a woman, it would have simply blended into the musical background. I would only recommend you listen to this song if the idea of a man singing this sounds funny or interesting to you.

Limp Bizkit - "Break Stuff" (2000)

Song titles may be less dangerous than they appear.

Rock has been around long enough now that there's a genre for almost anyone: there's surf rock for the surfers, art rock for people who want to experiment with their music, punk rock for people who are pissed off at the system, and stoner rock for people who, you know, do drugs. Limp Bizkit, on the other hand, seem to be catering to a different crowd: douchebags. I never knew we needed an entire genre of music made by and for complete douches, but apparently Limp Bizkit did. They're officially the first douche rock band in America.

We may as well begin...

If you were wondering why something felt “off” about this song, it's because there's only two notes in this entire song. There's two notes in the verses, and the same two played in reverse for the chorus. And it isn't like some bands where they still try to put little flairs into two-note grooves, like the bass line for “No One Knows” by Queens of the Stone Age. Honestly, “Break Stuff” has some of the flattest, most unimaginative instrumentation the band could have mustered. The end result is that this whole song, especially the “moshpit” section, just drones on and on forever. It just drags on to remind me that I intentionally listened to this song on loop for your entertainment needs. If it weren't for the moshpit section, you'd almost never have known the song re-looped.

It's also interesting that their main musical inspiration, Rage Against the Machine, still managed to have interesting instrumentation despite only using a few notes themselves. For example, “Bulls on Parade” still manages to have several interesting elements going on, like the bass line or the different sections of the song which keep the song interesting.

Although I don't usually talk about the music videos when I do reviews, it makes sense to talk about it here. There were a lot of guest appearances in the music video, including Eminem, Snoop Dogg, and for some reason, Pauly Shore. What really burns though is that Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers was also in the video at the 2:03 mark. And all I can think of is that there was so much wasted potential there.

"What should we do with Flea?"
"Have him hump the amplifier!"

It's practically a sin to have one of the most talented bassists in alternative rock appear in your music video and not play something on your song. It's like getting Eddie Van Halen in your music video and not having him play a single note of guitar. It's such an obvious move. At the very least, one of Flea's funk grooves would have brought something musically interesting to this song.

Of course, the main reason I reviewed this track wasn't to critique the bland instrumentation or poor use of bassists, it was for the god-awful “2edgy4me” lyrics that sound less convincing the more I hear them. If you read the words before actually listening to the song, it comes across as a man who is pissed for no reason at all. Going back to Rage Against the Machine, their singer Zach de la Rocha was always angry for a good reason in their songs (*cough* politics *cough*). The band is basically the definition of righteous fury.

But what is Durst pissed about exactly? The song never gives a reason for why Durst is so angry: was it because his girlfriend broke up with him? Was it because his dog got run over? Was it because the batteries in his remote control died and he had to watch CSPAN? Nobody knows! Lines like “You don't really know why/ But you want justify/ Rippin' someone's head off” don't happen in a vacuum... unless you're Fred Durst, evidently. If this song gave Durst a proper motivation (or ANY motivation) to be acting like an angry asshole, then I would like it a little more. For all I know, maybe there's a good reason he's angry.

Instead, Durst wrote this song about waking up being irrationally angry for no reason at all. The very first lines in this song are:

“Its just one of those days/ When you don't wanna wake up/ Everything is fucked/ Everybody sucks”

which is kind of absurd. It just paints this mental image of a man who wakes up angry, brushes his teeth angry, showers angry, puts on clothes angry, makes scrambled eggs angry, and so on. This song sounds less like it was written by a "dangerous" person, and more like it was written by a spoiled 15 year old boy with anger management issues. Or a douche.

Sauce:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_Stuff#Music_video

http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-11-26/video-breakdown-limp-bizkit-break-stuff

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/limpbizkit/breakstuff.html