Nickelback: Dark Horse (2008)

Nickelback: Dark Horse (2008):

Like browsing reddit, this album leaves you feeling vaguely gross.

You know how I once said that the worst part of Nickelback is creepy songs like “Just For”? Well, it turns out Nickelback, not content to see me in my usual agony, tried making an entire album of Chad Kroeger's creepy sex jams. Nickelback must've known I was going to make these reviews, and wanted to see me in pain... in 2008!

The good news is that Nickelback seem to be easing up on the country sound they had going in The Long Road and All The Right Reasons. The cheese factor, not so much. Anything that isn't going for a heavy metal/ post-grunge sound is a cheese factory. The band are really losing a lot of variety (or whatever variety was left), because they only seem to have two kinds of songs on the whole album: the Cheese Fests and the Raunchy Songs.

Let's get this review underway...

Track 1: Something In Your Mouth

Jesus fucking Christ, even hair metal bands from the 1980s would blush at all the womanizing in this track! The song is about a girl who hangs around bars, and sleeps around a lot. She dances around in a thong, and does nothing but hit on men. I wonder if that's her day job? 

Yeah... the way Kroeger wrote this track is definitely for the male mind. I mean, just look at this chorus:

You're so much cooler when you never pull it out
'Cause you look so much cuter with something in your mouth!

Gee, wonder what Kroeger's talking about here? I'm only one track in, and I already want to puke. Lovely!

Track 2: Burn It to the Ground

Can I burn this album to the ground?

Kroeger doesn't seem so much to write detailed stories in this album, he seems to write moods. This seems like a pretty generic party song that checks off all the common tropes from the list. I swear I've seen dozens of songs use these exact same lines before.

Track 3: Gotta Be Somebody

This song is about Kroeger trying to find "the one" for him, but it makes the thematics of this album more confusing. Wasn't Kroeger talking about having causal sex at a bar two songs ago? From what I read about this album before I got to listening to it, Dark Horse was supposed to be an entire album of raunchiness. But this just sounds like the song that gets played at the end of a romantic comedy while the credits start rolling. It hardly seems raunchy to me. In fact, this album oscillates between the cheesy songs and the raunchy ones, which amounts to tonal whiplash!

Track 4: I'd Come for You

It's like “Gotta Be Somebody,” but somehow even cheesier! Remember when I said earlier that the sexism resembled a hair metal band? Well, apparently they're picking up the over-the-top power ballads like hair metal bands, too. This song has a similar feel to Bon Jovi's song “I'll Be There for You” (Which you shouldn't confuse for the Friends theme song).

Track 5: Next Contestant

Well, that was smooth. We went from two over-the-top cheesy tracks about love and “finding the one” to a song about two people shagging like rabbits. I know one of the themes of this album is supposed to be about sex, but the way things are written in the song isn't sexy at all. Lines like “Yeah, we're gonna go until our legs give out” don't sound like a turn on to me, they just make me feel tired. Other lines are pretty weird here too, in fact this song gets weirder the longer you listen. It goes from “Yeah, we're gonna do it hanging upside down” until we eventually get to “I wanna cover you with Jello in the tub”

Well, now I don't even want this!

Nickelback has officially ruined Jello for me. I can't believe I just said that, but I did!

Track 6: Just to Get High

Considering that Nickelback wrote that song about hanging out with drug addicts in a back alley on The State, I can believe that the events of this song really happened. The focus of the song is how addiction deteriorates the quality of your life, and destroys the relationships around you. Not a bad subject for a song, of course, but it's been done quite a few times. In fact, there are a lot of great songs about how destructive addiction is.

For example, Bad Religion made a song called “Billy,” which was about how addiction can destroy your life. However, it was written in a way that showed the humanity of the main character. The point of the song is how this could potentially happen to anyone. Lines like “He couldn't break the chain of slow decay that seemed to drag him/ Just like a fatal tie toward the other side” indicate that it wasn't anything Billy did wrong, it was involuntary. It destroys all his personal relationships when “he then exchanged his friends for a needle and a spoon/ and he threw his future away.” By the end, the song asks:

“So where is the justice when no one is at fault

And a human life is tragically wasted?

How fragile is the flame that burns within us all

To light each passing day”

“Just to Get High” lacks that depth, though. It does talk about how drugs can be so destructive, but without the humanity that “Billy” has. Kroeger does say that he can see his friend slipping into drug use, but Billy is just more powerful because of how identifiable he is as a character. When I look at this Nickelback song, it's harder to see anyone slipping down that dangerous path. This song is trying to be dark for the sake of being dark, when showing Kroeger's friend's humanity would have made it more compelling.

Or maybe I just wanted an excuse to listen to Bad Religion. Either/or.

Track 7: Never Gonna Be Alone

Another cheese-fest of a Nickelback song, this time about Kroeger regretting not spending more time with a girl. If this were another band singing the same song, I could believe it, but this coming from the same band that made "Just For," and a song about having sex covered in Jello. So you might say I'm a little skeptical.

Track 8: Shakin' Hands

When I first saw this track title, I thought for sure it was going to be about how when a man wanted to court a woman, he had to shake her father's hand to get his approval. In reality, though, not so much!

There isn't a whole lot to this song. It's about a girl who moves to Los Angeles to get into the movie industry, but winds up doing adult movies. Pretty much par-for-the-course for Dark Horse, but one line really caught my attention:

        Well she ain't no Cinderella
        When she's getting undressed
        'Cause she rocks it like the naughty Wicked Witch of the West

Hot.

 












You know, the Wicked Witch of the West. She was a sex symbol! [citation needed]

How is it that Kroeger still can't write a song about sex with sex appeal? First sex covered in Jello, and now getting turned on by The Wicked Witch of the West? What's wrong with this album?

Track 9: S.E.X.

Gee, wonder what this one's about? Such a mystery!

This might be one of the worst tracks on the album lyrics-wise, along with “Something In Your Mouth.” Just like other Kroeger songs about sex, this track has a lot of creepy moments. How is it that after 12 years of releasing albums, Kroeger couldn't tone down his inner Creepy Denny's Stalker a little? It boggles the mind!

The first lines of this song really sets the mood. The mood also makes me nauseous!:

        No is a dirty word

        Never gonna say it first

        No is just a thought that never

        Crosses my mind

And if you were wondering, no, those aren't just fluke lines. This rest of the song really is that awful. Actually, this is probably one of the tamest lines in the whole thing. Almost every single line in the verses is at least this gross, if not more so. I might need a bucket!

Moving on to the chorus, it's honest-to-god one of the all-time stupidest things I've ever heard. I can't believe Chad Kroeger wrote these lines down, and nobody told him they were so goddamn moronic:

        S is for the simple need

        E is for the ecstasy

        X is just to mark the spot

       'Cause that's the one you really want

This is about the furthest thing from sex appeal I can think of. It sounds like a poem a boy in middle school would write to a girl to impress her, only to have the girl think it was creepy. Kroeger apparently has less game than a 13 year old boy. If that's not embarrassing, I don't know what is!

The chorus continues, and carries those creepy vibes from the verses:

        (Yes!)

        Sex is always the answer,

        It's never a question,

        'Cause the answer's yes

        Oh the answer's (Yes)

        Not just a suggestion

        If you ask a question

        Then it's always yes

I... what are you doing, dude? Do I even need to explain this one? Because almost every single line here is just wrong! Dead wrong, in fact.

Let's just move on before the sheer stupidity gives me an aneurysm!

Track 10: If Today Was Your Last Day

These lyrics sound exactly like those inspirational quotes you get off the Internet. You could take almost every line from the verses out of context, and print it on a coffee mug or an embroidery circle.

Here are a few random excerpts just to prove my point:

        “That first step you take is the longest stride”

        “Every second counts 'cause there's no second try,”

        “You know it's never too late/To shoot for the stars”

Seriously, I think I could make a killing selling these quotes printed on some crappy merchandise!

Track 11: This Afternoon

Well, so much for Nickelback trying not to be a country band. It sounds like a country song about a redneck party.

Kroeger's story-centric songwriting feels kind of disjointed in this track. There's not a lot of narrative flow, it's random events that just happen. There's no lesson to be learned, or realization to be had, it's a stream of events.

Conclusion:

For an album that was supposed to have been "raunchy" it sure wasn't all that scandalous. There were songs about finding "the one", songs made up of nothing but inspirational quotes, and two generic party songs. The songs that are about sex are either bizarre (having sex covered in Jello) or just plain gross ("...You look so much cuter with something in your mouth!"). It didn't really break any major taboos, but it did succeed in making me feel vaguely disgusting. If you're in the mood for something that's so-bad-it's-good, then some of this album is a good listen.

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.