Lord. Hear my plea. Cancel Matty. I’m begging you. And maybe after that you can look into Phoebe. Love, bloc

in before the obvious “deathstyle maintenance” joke

So: hey! I hate this fucking song.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I worked at a water park for two years as a teenager between college semesters, and they had a playlist there of maybe 40 or so songs that repeated over the course of the day. Typically you’d hear the same song two or three times if you were working there for a full day, which I usually was, three or four days a week.

We’ve heard this before from people in the comment that work or have worked retail, but: That kind of repetition, especially while doing really boring, menial work for $8.50 an hour, really changes the way you listen to a song! Some songs (“Superstition,” “Hazy Shade of Winter,” “Fergalicious”) reveal themselves to be enduring classics that give you pleasure to hear them even in a context that terrible.

Other songs are THIS. I cannot hear this song without thinking about the smell of stale chlorine. This song sounds like pissing in the kiddie pool because you’re not allowed to leave your post for another hour. It sounds like sunburn on the top of your feet. It sounds like idiots insisting they can take their fucking infants with them down the giant water slide. I’ll just hold him in my lap, it’s fine, what’s the problem!

Every time I hear this song, I hear all the worst parts of it. Leona’s overwrought, soap-opera singing and the lyrics about how NO she WON’T let go of this relationship, even though everyone around her tells her she’s being insane, it’s FINE, she’s bleeding everywhere but she doesn’t CARE… oh my god will you shut up, Leona, go to somebody else with your stupid self-created problems, I have to keep staring at this stupid river ride or I’ll get fired!! Go to therapy, jesus!!!

It’s great that Tom can find so much to enjoy about this song, but it’s a 3/10 for me.

Ian Cohen’s culture is not your costume.

The people complaining about phoebe are just the same as the people complaining about people complaining about phoebe.

i on the other hand,a person who is complaining about the people complaining about the people complaining about phoebe, am not complaining.

I wish my combination of drinking and antidepressants and eating poorly made me look healthy.

Criticism is more than “recommend” or “don’t recommend” — if we can’t talk in depth about culture then we’re losing a large part of it.

You have the nerve to ask if I remember Jesse McCartney? Does this enhanced CD that I got free from a soda lid at Sbarro in 2005 and that I still have readily available to share at a moment’s notice for some unaccountable reason answer your question?

Sounds like you suck

Hey y’all. Haven’t commented since 2020 but I’m back. In that time I’ve taken a new job, moved back to the west coast, and had a kid.

I think it’s great that in this day and age, there can still exist artists like Jai Paul who manage to maintain an all-but absolute veil of mystery regarding their life and work, yet also manage to sustain interest. On the other hand, I would really love to know what they hell is up with this dude, why he seems to refuse to release more music and his apparent allergy to a world that absolutely rides for him. Very curious to see how this show goes, and what it might catalyze.