Recently I’ve been listening to a few popular American anthems in an attempt to stay in touch with my people. I’ve got Asher Roth’s “I Love College” and 3oh!3’s “Don’t Trust Me” going and I’m totally awash. (If you don’t know them, please listen to the songs at the bottom of the page, a la SGtBB.)

This music is terrible. I mean truly godawful stab-yourself trash. I’ve been told before that I’m a snob and that I’m no fun and I accept both accusations with open arms if the ability to swallow trash like this and call it nourishment is the measure of an open-minded guy who knows how to have a good time.

I will admit that at moments like these I occasionally wonder if I have just grown old and out of touch. I wonder if time is relative and I begin to entertain the idea that the strangeness of yesterday is not fundamentally different from the strangeness of today. I did, after all, have quite an affinity for, say, “The Humpty Dance” in my day. I believed that it was my chance to do the hump. (And only in fourth grade!)

But, frankly, “The Humpty Dance” was a song about a guy with a nose as big as a pickle, even if that pickle was an obvious substitute for his penis. Asher Roth and 3oh!3 are presenting something quite contemporary that offers little in the way of substitutions. What do these songs say about who we are now?

Asher Roth could be indicted on Pat Boone/Vanilla Ice charges—accused of creating a melatonin-appropriate version of a music that was once distinctly cultural—but such charges would be simplistic, too racially exclusive and, I think, would disregard the known fact that the cesspool known as contemporary “rap” radio offers up enough garbage to start a broccoli farm*. Any claims to rap’s ongoing role as a people’s folk expression were abandoned long ago (perhaps when Will Smith welcomed us to Miami?). Besides, Roth was endorsed by hip-hop giants DJ Drama and Don Cannon and his flow could be worse.

Let me suggest, instead, that these songs spring up from the heights of a hedonistic leisure culture that has developed in America. This culture may be the lasting legacy of the fortunate side of an equality gap that has widened since the Reagan years. These are the fortunate children created by the generation after the baby boomers. They are the Paris Hilton years. A generation of privilege beyond compare.

A generation that loves college, even if there is sometimes a bit of irony and satire in their delivery.

I have no qualm with hedonism and leisure, but their manifestations are interesting in relation to privilege and the culture at large. We must consider it some form of privilege for $100,000 to be spent so that 18-year olds can take part in the not-totally-overblown activities that Roth (as our resident armchair sociologist) so succinctly describes with catchy little phrases like “time isn’t wasted if you’re getting wasted” or “do something crazy!”

I mean, what colleges are we talking about? Probably not community colleges. And I don’t think commuters can get this drunk all the time. In fact, this sort of consistent alcoholism would even be difficult for someone on a work-study scholarship to pull off, though I’m sure a few have succeeded. This is college-as-four-years-of-hanging-out. It is a culture making the most of its elaborate privilege while it can. Will this culture soon be gone with the more frugal disposition of “The Great Recession?” (These hedonistic trends are no less dominant in art circles and it will be interesting to see if that trend, too, wanes. But that’s another thought for another time.)

Musically, the predecessor to these songs may be “The Bad Touch (Discovery Channel)” by The Bloodhound Gang (who place incredibly high on the please-don’t-ever-procreate list—to be joined by Mr. Roth and those Colorado gentlemen soon enough).

On to 3oh!3. The name alone makes me think I should sign up for medicare. Their reference to vegetarianism urges a return to my carnivorous college years. On “Don’t Trust Me” they are far more fetishistic in their approach to women than the Bloodhound Gang’s hope for primal attraction. It is the notable breakdown of the song that truly disturbs beyond reason, when they sing:

Shush girl, shut your lips / Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips

Pause for a minute and look at these assholes. They rep Boulder. Their fantasy of the mute lover (keep in mind, the chorus is “Never trust a ho”) is dark enough, but buried in the third verse are even more sinister suggestions of drunken vulnerability, violence and a hint of disturbing rape fantasy:

Bruises cover your arms / Shaking in the fingers with the bottle in your palm /
And the best is, no one knows who you are / Just another girl alone at the bar

Don’t worry, it’s not like a lot of people are influenced by this sort of thing. The song only reached #7 on the Billboard 100.

You can blame these young men for their lack of creativity and disturbed minds, but not for their popularity. A million unlistenable songs have been produced this year and I’m sure that plenty have lyrics that are misogynistic and regressive, or at least vapid. They say that you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs (and in New York City disposing of the yokes) but you also can’t make an omelet without someone to acquire the eggs and a chef to cook them. Futhermore, you sort of need someone to eat the omelet, otherwise it is just a pile of heated egg that becomes trash. (…follow the money.)

I won’t punish you any further by trying to explain the roles of each object in my analogy, but let’s just say that you don’t make summer singles like these without:
a) someone putting their major label ringtone earnings behind it (thanks Photo Finish Records by way of Atlantic!)
and
b) a bunch of people getting really into it.
[Asher Roth and 3oh!3 are the eggs and listeners (does that include me in the “no such thing as bad press category?”) are the diners!].

One last consideration is whether these guys are singing “in character.” Roth is certainly the height of affectation and his persona has undoubtedly been meticulously constructed by some marketing “genius.” And 3oh!3’s song is called “Don’t Trust Me,” coyly suggesting an unreliable narrator. They each offer ironic videos to distance themselves from their content. Still, I can’t buy it. Popular culture has never extended the “in-character” get-out-of-jail-free card to genres like “Gansta Rap” (though they do to Gangster films … racial bias, anyone?) and, accordingly, this leniency should not be offered up for “in-character” date rapists. We wouldn’t accept the popularization of a song written in the character of a jihadist from the Taliban or from the empathetic perspective of a serial killer. Casey Kasem would not tolerate that sort of shit.

Sian Evans wrote recently about the increasingly mainstream nature of porn-esque media. In this case, the prominence of such openly-misogynistic-yet-popular content begs the question of how women relate to these songs. I first heard 3oh!3 while watching a mid-20’s girl dance around carelessly by a hot tub. I know Obama’s got a new take on the Middle East, but what can he do about a culture that’s in love with 3oh!3? Look how far we’ve come!

All that said, it’s got a pretty good beat and it’s easy to sing along to. Guess I’ll drop the snobishness and see you on the dancefloor.

Postscript: After listening to “Don’t Trust Me” online the next 3oh!3 song was called “I’m Not Your Boyfriend Baby.” It sort of brought together the whining of Blink 182, dumbed-down Young Jeezy shouting, the club appeal of “What Is Love?” and strange sounds that suggested Ratatat had produced a Britney Spears record. The lyrics involve yelling at a girl, repping a home city (Boulder? Really?), and talking about tv. Couldn’t make it all the way through. Needed a drink.

Post-postscript: I could go on about these songs forever, but one thing that also really fascinates me is sample in the beginning of Roth’s song. I can’t figure out who the familiar sounding voice is, but it seems to be an early hip-hop sample saying “Ain’t goin’ out like a sucker, no way.” This elusive intro suggests something very self-aware and savvy about the production and Roth’s satirical bent. I have also included the original version of the song, which samples Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.” Rivers Cuomo refused to clear the sample despite being offered all publishing rights and, as a result, the current version uses a half-assed suggestion of the Weezer chord progression. Roth still goes in the volcano.

*I really hate broccoli.