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PaperclipPerfector  11hr ago (text post)   507 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 24, 2026

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Candidates for most agonizing recent song?

I submit for your consideration Lucinda Williams’ World Gone Wrong, a shambling eulogy for the Current Moment. Naturally, it’s seeing a lot of airtime on my local radio.

While I could provide any number of objections to its lyricism or production, I’d rather take a page from Clench Racing’s lesser-known cousin: Complete the Poem. Use your skill and judgment to complete the following lines.

A lot of people getting put on the street
It’s getting harder ___
He comes home every night ___
And wonders how much longer ___

If you need a hint, imagine the most drawn-out warble possible. The relevant rhymes should jump right into your brain.

I wasn't ready for the AAAA rhyme scheme.

A lot of people getting put on the street
It's getting harder to stay off the street
He comes home every night past tents on his street
And wonders how much longer till he's out on the street

A lot of people getting put on the street

It’s getting harder to skeet

He comes home every night to beat

And wonders how much longer he can use my feet

to beat his meat surely.

No, no. This is soulless protest music for gen-X, not gen-Z.

I really can't come up with a clear answer to this. Pretty much anything by Tate McCrae or Sabrina Carpenter or virtually anybody else in this new generation of pop artists is about as aggressively painful as it gets, to be honest. After a while everything melts away into the same homogenised corpus of liquidised shit that is modern pop music. It's virtually all irredeemable, there's no sense talking about "worse" or "better" in such a context.

At least stuff that's unintentionally but parodically bad such as Liz Phair's lyrical and musical masterpieces (Bollywood, U Hate It) are fun to listen to, these songs can't even aspire to that.

Tate McRae's voice is so annoying. She's lucky she's hot.

She's got that "heavy" kind of face that I'm really not a fan of.

As much as I think we've lost something in the way of common culture -- when I was a kid we definitely all heard the same music -- I've gotta say it's nice to be almost entirely insulated from modern pop music. Sometimes I go to a grocery store or a restaurant and hear what's current and can only shake my head in despair and irritation, but for the most part I'm just free, free as a bird, and like it this way.

Are you free as a bird or free as the wind blows?

More like Free Fallin

NB: Haven't watched the music video for a long time - it's such a 90's time capsule it hurts

Sometimes I go to a grocery store or a restaurant and hear what's current

I rarely hear what's current at a restaurant, store, or coffee shop. 95% of the time it's classic rock, and being in any of those places more than 30 minutes means a 100% chance of hearing a Buckingham/Nicks-era Fleetwood Mac song.

An Irish radio station recently polled their listeners on the greatest song of the twenty-first century so far. The winner was "Pink Pony Club" by Chappelle Roan. Jesus. It's not even her best song. Not "agonizing", just repetitive and irritating.

It wasn't a bad song until I had to listen to it 20 times a day. I predict that in 25 years it will have the same status as "Dreamlover" by Mariah Carey, i.e. it's so ubiquitous that everyone collectively gets tired of it and agrees to never speak of it again.

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