Hello Wednesday friends. Here's entry #2 on the 30 Day Song Challenge - your least favorite song.
This was actually almost as tricky as picking a "favorite song." I hate a lot of music. However, I also sometimes have really shitty taste. And I love my guilty pleasures. While some participants can easily reach for "Muskrat Love" or some Ke$ha song where she yells about brushing her teeth with Jack Daniels, I can't do that in good conscience because I actually secretly really like a lot of music like that.
My choice, therefore, is a song that made a significantly negative imprint on my fuzzy musical consciousness way back in 2000.
Mindless Self Indulgence's website describes them as "NYC's first industrial, jungle, rock, punk, techno freaks." I really wanted to like them. They had a girl bassist and a girl drummer and their frontman's name was Jimmy Urine. Their albums had funny names like Frankenstein Girls Are Strangely Sexy. They had a philosophy that was something vaguely punk, about partying and hedonism. Or something. At the stage of reckless 18-year-old shit-facery that I was at, I wasn't particularly interested in big musical ideas yet. Also, and most importantly, a boy I really liked was into them. I was willing to give them a fair chance. So I tried. I could never get into them. "Maybe I'm not 'metal' or 'hard' or 'cool' enough," I worried, whittling my mood ring around and around.
You know what? No. The reason I couldn't get into them is because they are one of the worst bands on the entire fucking planet. Their songs are sonic sewage laced with crystal meth and accented with diaper innards. I wish I could go back in time and slap that poor, slightly dim girl in the face. "NO! SHITTY! TRY THE WHITE STRIPES INSTEAD!" I would scold.
Awful as they are, the nadir of this band's career is, yes, their cover of the Method Man song "Bring the Pain." They turn it inside out and backwards, and Urine's garbled screaming/snarling lyrics are underlaid with beats that sound like they were mixed by a spastic six-year-old tweaked out on Adderal. Add to this the distinctly uncomfortable and liberal use of the n-word and you have yourself a bona fide trainwreck of a cover.
A final warning: Once you've listened to this, the original song will forever be tainted and its laid-back swagger forever devalued. Such the power of Mindless Self Indulgence's annihiliating shittiness.
I. HATE. THIS. SONG.
