Hot Chelle Rae – Tonight, Tonight – Crumbs

I’ll admit it: this is a catchy song. But it’s also a pretty terrible one. Two out of five cupcakes. Crumbs.

Partying. Drinking. Racism. Yikes!

It’s been a really, really messed up week

Seven days of torture, seven days of bitter

And my girlfriend went and cheated on me

She’s a California dime, but it’s time for me to quit her

The last line is a bit offensive, as if the only reason he was with her in the first place was for her looks, but overall this verse is relatively harmless.

La la la

Whatever

La la la

It doesn’t matter

La la la

Oh well

La la la

Denial. Not terribly healthy, especially considering what comes next.

We’re going at it

Tonight, tonight

There’s a party on the rooftop top of the world

Tonight, tonight

And we’re dancing on the edge of the Hollywood sign

I don’t know if I’ll make it

But watch how good I’ll fake it

It’s alright, alright

Tonight, tonight

Oh, my goodness. This is a TERRIBLE message to send our youth. Are you hearing this? This is the message: if bad things happen (which they will), don’t worry about it, don’t express your feelings, and instead just party, and act recklessly, and pretend that everything is just peachy.

Yikes.

And it gets worse.

I woke up with a strange tattoo

Not sure how I got it, not a dollar in my pocket

And it kinda looks just like you

Mixed with Zach Galifianakis

So now we’re adding alcohol – glorifying alcohol! Glorifying hangovers and irresponsible behavior and overspending. Glorifying it for teenagers, who shouldn’t even be drinking alcohol at all, since it’s, you know, illegal. And while this last line is admittedly hilarious at first, it’s also another example of how our society has lowered its standards of entertainment to such crude humor.

Just don’t stop, let’s keep the beat pumping

Keep the beat up, let’s drop the beat down

It’s my party, dance if I want to

We can get crazy, let it all out

There’s nothing wrong with dancing, per se, but when you add alcohol to people looking for ways to distract themselves from their less than ideal lives, people do start getting “crazy” and THAT is when problems start happening.

It’s you and me and we’re running this town

And it’s me and you and we’re shaking this ground

And ain’t nobody gonna tell us to go ’cause this is our show

Typical – or rather, stereotypical – teenage invincibility and arrogance. Bleh.

Everybody

Whoa, come on, all you animals

Whoa, let me here you now

“All you animals“? Um, yuck. Definitely not something we should aspire to be.

Just singing like

Whoa, come one, oh, all you party people

Whoa, all you singletons, oh, even the white kids

I’m not sure what this is supposed to imply about “white kids” – that they can’t party? It’s not like this is something propagated in pop culture – but regardless of the implication, it’s still racist. Again, yuck.

Well. This seemingly innocuous pop song certainly opens up quite the can of worms. And unfortunately, it actually does reflect the overall message of American media. But fortunately, we can learn from this, and make a conscious effort to choose not to listen to this type of music, and not to follow these suggestions, and not to propagate these messages, because as consumers we have more power than we realize.