Just give me a reason / just a little one's enough / that you shouldn't be embarrassed by this sooooong...

Let me preface this post by saying that I am generally not that snobby about music. Yes, I am a professional musician and music teacher, but I love crappy pop too, and I have more than my fair share of guilty pleasure music on my iphone. 

That said. On the way home from Boyfriend's house tonight I had 94.9 on the radio, and I heard (for what was probably the third or fourth time today) that new song by P!nk (whom I generally like) and Nate Ruess (aka the guy from fun., whom I generally enjoy). The other times I heard it I just clicked the station over because it sounded like a shitty song, but this time I listened, because the radio dude announced that it was a "new song by P!nk and Nate Ruess of fun.!" I was totally stoked, for like two seconds. I wasn't a big fan of fun. at the beginning, because, well, all I'd heard was the overplayed stuff on the radio, but then a friend of mine sent me Aim and Ignite, and I loved it. Seriously, if you hate fun., do yourself a favor and listen to Aim and Ignite, and then you can just go on to hate how much they've changed. And P!nk...she grew on me. As a person, as a performer, as a musician, she grew on me. I hate to say it but I made her work for my respect, for some reason I really didn't want to like her, but in the end, I totally do.

So anyway.

I was stoked. For like two seconds, but then the music started. I was sitting at the traffic light at S. Lynnhaven and Silina, and I was horrified to immediately recognize the awful song I'd heard on the radio earlier. I just didn't realize it was P!nk and Nate Ruess. I mean, I recognized their voices this time around, but I think my brain just refused to believe two artists I like would produce such crap.

Both of these artists are genuinely talented musicians. Feel free to politely disagree with me, but I recognize the heart, soul, hard work, and real talent that goes into their music. Yeah, neither of them is like...top of the world amazing. But they both have a good handle on what they're good at, and they do it. Both of them write, arrange, and perform their own music, and both of them have created music that have moved me in some way.

That said, WHY DOES THIS SONG SUCK SO MUCH ASS?

Um...FYI, don't ever google image search the phrase "Suck Ass".

"Just Give Me a Reason" (it doesn't even have a creative *title*) has awful canned percussion, a boring melody line, an unimaginative chord progression and a static beat and rhythm...and it hardly shows off what these two artists can do. The entire last bit of the song is sung in unison. You get two artists together whose vocal ranges and abilities mean they can do some pretty fun and cool stuff together, and you make them sing unison? For the entire last half of the song? Why?! It feels like the song was building up to a climax that somehow got interrupted, and then they tried to casually saunter away like nothing happened. Like they got caught masturbating and tried to play it off like they were just scratching their leg, but then the person who walked in wouldn't leave so they had to awkwardly commit to the scratching-the-leg bit for longer than they wanted to. (I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But that's the only comparison I could really draw at the moment.)

Another thing - this song has lyrics that sound like they came out of a 13-year-old's angsty poetry notebook (complete with "DO NOT READ - YES I MEAN YOU!!!" scrawled across the front in angry bold ballpoint pen). To prove this point, I dug into my (GOD AWFUL) old journals from when I was in Junior High and found a song I wrote that I feel is comparable. First are the lyrics from "Just Give Me A Reason" and below it are lyrics from the bridge of a song I found in my notebook from when I was 13 years old, writing about how heartbroken I was that my crush had no idea how much I liked him, and how I was never going to love another boy ever again (unless he gave me a chance):

Just give me a reason
Just a little bit's enough
Just a second we're not broken we're bent
And we can learn to love again
It's in the stars
It's been written in the scars on our hearts
That we're not broken we're bent
And we can learn to love again
("Just Give Me A Reason" Moore/Ruess, 2013)

Tell me what I'm doing wrong
I'm not that special but I can still love you
We were meant to love
I may be broken
But I have a heart that can hold the stars
Give love the chance to be ouuuuuuurs [i wish i could say i didn't actually write it that way in my notebook but i did]
We should have this, you and I
Or I may never love at all
("Tell Me" Loyola, 1997)

I'm going to take a pause here and facepalm rather hard over the fact that I just allowed those song lyrics to go public. *deep breath*

It literally sounds like Ms. Moore (you did know her name is Alecia Beth Moore?) and Mr. Ruess wanted to collaborate on something and they were all excited and then some record exec cut in and goes, "well hang on there, guys, we own your asses, and therefore I am going to make you record this song that my daughter wrote last night because I forgot to buy her a birthday present this year and she'll totally love this. You're the guy from that band, right? Okay. Do it."

You can practically hear the disappointment in their voices throughout the song. They know it sucks. They're almost apologetic. The vocals sound half-assed and unenthusiastic. I got no emotional response from hearing any of it. It's almost like they were like, "Goddamnit...let's just get this shit over with."

"Goddamnit, I'm missing Game of Thrones for this shit."

...It sounds like it was written specifically so it could be covered on Glee.

On the one hand, it's awful. Just awful. On the other...well, it prompted a rant, didn't it? So it's getting attention? Maybe they're just trolling us. I have no idea. All I know is that this song fucking sucks.