'Watch Me Whip' is literally the worst song I have ever heard
The song "Watch Me Whip" is single-handedly the worst song I have ever heard. Before you get all bent out of shape, I do know that it's not to be some intellectual masterpiece of modern art; it is just factually a shitty song. Here's why:
Repetition:
This song takes repetition to a level rivaled only by songs written for 3 year-olds. The singer repeats his name a full 6 times before the third verse, just in case you were wondering who 'wrote'? No vocalised the script put in front of him. There were 980 'words' in this song. Is nae a word? Scratch that, I truly don’t care. Of those 980 words, three variations (Now watch, now watch me, watch me) represent 369 words. That’s more than ⅓ of the song for literally 3 words (and I didn’t include the single mentions of the word ‘me’). If we include ‘ooh’ (there are 84 instances) and ‘bop’ (there are 72 instances), which total 156, we have 525 out of 980 words made up of 5 words. I think we get the picture on this.
Simplicity:
The most complex word in this song is a tie between ‘Silento’, the vocalist’s (not an artist in my opinion) handle, the word ‘already’ (which appears literally once), and the word ‘superman’. Doing a quick tally, that means that 15 single word instances are 3 syllables. All the rest are 1 or 2 syllables. The vocabulary is not strong with this one. Look at that! My use of ‘vocabulary’ beat out this song by 2 whole syllables!
The culmination of the two previous points into the dumbing down of everyone who had the displeasure of hearing this song:
Pretty self-explanatory. Look, I get that the writer wasn’t going for a Pulitzer or a Grammy, but a quick hit that’ll be catchy and easy to remember. Fair enough. EXCEPT FUCK YOU YOU’RE LITERALLY RUINING MUSIC. Who am I to say what should and shouldn’t be written? An asshole, that’s who. One who is procrastinating other, important work.
Basically, by putting music out that has a grand total of about 30 unique words, you’re contributing to the lowered standard of quality of music. This is one step away from repeating one single word over and over for 5 minutes straight, which now that I think about it probably exists. Except that would have some comedic value at the very least. This shit, well it’s like a kindergartener took a crayon and drew a stickman (poorly, I might add), that was subsequently put up in an art gallery. Real, impressionable children will listen to this and think “ Wow, dad was wrong! I CAN skate in life only knowing less than the bare minimum needed to be able to read ‘See Spot Run’, which I never did because fuck books and education”. (Side note - That interaction wouldn’t have been possible outside the child’s head, since there are too many unique words used)
Now put on your tin-foil hats, because this is where I lose half of you with my bullshit. Songs like this promote the opposite of education. Like I said, it devalues a halfway competent vocabulary in the name of catchiness and a cheap ‘musical’ fix. When you see what can be presumably defined as success (ie having several hundred million views on Youtube and countless other radio plays), it sets a standard in young, impressionable minds. We’ve had many people trying to get past this dumbing down of society, like KRS-ONE, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon, and many others (No, of course not all of their songs). They were trying to create a more engaged people who reflect on the actual issues we face as a society, instead of making up a cute little dance to go along with your shitty track as your brain melts from lack of use.
Who is the target market for this song? For all the reasons I’ve brought forth, I believe the target market to be the typical vapid, vacuous consumer that doesn’t engage in critical thought related to anything more than whether the Kardashians look better in blue or teal. I realise that I’ve made a broad, fairly baseless claim, and yet I’m confident it’s pretty accurate. Songs like these placate the masses with their simplicity and safety. You don’t need to think, you don’t need to guess what it’s talking about, you just need to follow these three easy steps and you too can conform to the newest dance craze. Independent thought is the antithesis of this track. By listening to this, you are using time that could be spent thinking of ways to better the city/country/world you live in. Again, I realise that not everyone WANTS to engage with the world like this, but I will still stand by the claim that critical thought is better than being herded like a goddamn sheep by pop-music.
So what have we learned today? Well, mostly that I’m way too mad about a song. That’s a given. What I want to really stress is that this song is symptomatic of a larger issue at hand. Like the CIA funneling crack into ghettos, to me this type of music represents a concerted effort to quell independent thought. Ultimately it’s easier to listen to a catchy song with like 7 words than to actually sit back and think about why everything is kind of messed up.
