Coming up with examples of the supposed decadence and vapidity of popular culture has been a favored sport of the cane-waving classes for so long that it is far behind cliché. But every once in a while, there is a fragment of popular culture so banal that even those of us who appreciate silly pop songs are forced to shake our heads and wonder who makes/promotes/listens to this crap.
In February of 2000, Sisqo, formerly of R&B group Dru Hill, unleashed "The Thong Song" on the world. It quickly became popular, as pop songs do, and although it supposedly reached only the #3 spot on the Billboard Charts, it seemed to lurk around for quite a while. The song is pretty much what it says it is, a lyrical expression of a desire to see a woman's thong. The only two lyrics I remembered were the titular chorus, "thong thong thong thong thong" and "she had dumps like a truck". There are other lyrics, but they aren't as memorable as these.
The song was released at about the time that hip-hop, as a genre, had been absorbed into mainstream pop music, and the song is a perfect example of watered-down hip-hop/R&B/technopop. Only worse.
Also, while it has never been directly admitted, the fact that Sisqo is widely considered to not have women as his first priority makes the songs crass celebration of women's butts/underwear even more silly.
Also, according to wikipedia, the song was:
Inspired after attending his cousin Nelson's baptism
which really doesn't say as much about this song, or even about Sisqo or
baptism as it says about
wikipedia and the "
neutral point-of-view". If "neutral point-of-view" means you can just throw down "facts" about moronic songs based around looking at women's underwear were inspired by a
holy sacrament, then I prefer
our own traditions. But I digress.
There is one upside of all of this. If this song truly represents the nadir of popular music, it is all uphill from here. And this song is not a recent song. Although now that I am approaching middle age, it seems like it just came out recently, it is actually 11 years old, meaning that the kids of today can blame it on me much more than I can blame it on them. For the youth of 2011, The Thong Song is as relevant to their musical background as "Come on Eileen" was to me as a Nirvana-listening grunge kid in 1995. In other words, this banal, trite, borderline-obscene, silly, insulting song is probably forgotten, and that is how things should be!