Hey, it's a party in the USA

It’s a Friday night, and I’m probably going to be going out to the bar at some point, just like I do most every Friday night. Just like I did last night, and just like I did the Thursday, Friday and Saturday prior to that (where I’m at there’s really not much else to do on a social level). In that time, something has come to my attention (and it’s definitely not that I’m a better dancer than I’d previously thought): The astronomical hit song by teenage sensation Miley Cyrus, called “Party in the USA,” is all over the place. I haven’t been to a bar for more than two hours since I came back to school this fall and not heard that song at least once. The DJ at the bar my friends and I usually go to on Thursdays normally plays it twice, and people go absolutely crazy both times. It’s almost like it turns some kind of switch on in people at the bar that just makes them want to dance. It inspires people to dance slightly more than ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and maybe even Men Without Hats’ seminal classic, “Safety Dance.”

Normally, I don’t really get too excited about these kind of viral songs that absolutely everybody is listening to (“The Macarena,” “Who Let the Dogs out,” that song about Applebottom jeans and stupid fucking boots, most everything by Michael Jackson since his untimely passing except that song he made for Free Willy, etc.), but this song really, really has impressed me (I’m saying that I like it enough to put it on my iPod), and it seems significant because nothing about this song fits the mold of music that I usually find impressive. It’s a song that doesn’t make a lot of sense lyrically, the singer doesn’t really have a captivating voice or any other extreme talent that I can discern (I don’t think the song would be much different if it was sung by someone like Gwen Stefani or Lady Gaga) and it doesn’t seem like the instrumental portion of the song is very complex either. I’ve even been told that Cyrus said she didn’t know which Jay-Z song she was talking about in the song because she didn’t write it and doesn’t even listen to Jay-Z. That makes her and my Mother the only two people in the entire nation that don’t listen to Jay-Z--my Mom would rather get down with Nas. Or Bob Carlisle and/or Kenny Rogers.

So, I’ve been really thinking a lot about why I like it so much, and two definite things have come from it: 1) It truly is a pretty solid song regardless of true artistic merit and 2) My life is the biggest fucking waste of time ever.

For one thing--and I believe this is the foremost reason that I and any other person that’s not a girl between the ages of 4 and 14--it’s the catchiest song that I have heard in a very, very long time. It rivals songs “You Get what you Give,” by The New Radicals, and “Shout,” by those black dudes that play at the party in the movie Animal House, and, of course, “Mmmbop” by Hanson. It’s so catchy that the actual intensity of its catchiness makes me want to just frolick out onto the dance floor and put my hands up, because they are indeed playing my song. I also want to nod my head and move my hips, both like yeah! More importantly than that, though, the catchiness of the song makes me forget that I’m a 22-year-old that will be (hopefully) graduating from college in a few months with a bad haircut and little hope of getting a job in my chosen field. It provides an escape that I usually don’t find in the music I listen to, a kind of joviality that--and this could be bad--makes me think that I’m totally capable of busting a few good moves. (I find escape, but when your favorite bands are Brand New or Bright Eyes you kind of just escape to an even more depressed place than you’d previously been, which actually makes me wonder why I listen to that kind of music virtually all the time. Maybe I’m the idiot, along with Jesse Lacey and Conor Oberst, and people like Britney Spears and the Jonas Brothers are the geniuses.)

Another thing about this song is the absolute cunning involved with it (even if Miley herself doesn’t realize it, which I think might be 100 percent true judging by an interview I just watched where she said she didn’t think it would be popular and made it for her clothing line or some stupid drivel like that). Pretty much as soon as she got astronomically famous in the young kids category, it became the cool thing to do to hate Miley Cyrus and Hannah Montana and anything else that she was associated with. I don’t know exactly why this is, but it’s kind of like how older kids despised Barney and Power Rangers whenever I was a kid. It’s also kind of like how I hate Nickelback. I mean, when I reached a certain age, I didn’t like Barney and the Power Rangers because some part of society dictated that I shouldn’t, so I went along with it. In reality, I shouldn’t have given two fucks about Barney, because if I didn’t want to, I never had to watch his television show or buy any of his purple merchandise. All of the time that I probably spent in my formative years railing on Barney could’ve been spent doing Hooked on Phonics or improving my right-handed lay-up. I also never have to listen to a Nickelback song if I don’t want to, and I guess they’re going to be around whether I dislike them or not. I’ll just have to keep avoiding them, like I do with people that are bigger than me that I’ve made fun of or conversations about my immediate future.

***Having said all of the above, I would still like to make it clear that I will continue hating Nickelback and being vocal about it until they are completely publicly disgraced to the point that they stop making music.

I think that maybe people see these things and begin to hate them because they’re making assload upon assload of money off of an impressionable market (little kids and whoever it is out there that buys Nickelback records) by doing things that we feel we could do ourselves given the opportunity. I suppose it’s natural to get pissed off about things like that. The fact that I’m actually aware that I fall into this and hate on certain people or entities for these reasons makes it all the more impressive to me that Cyrus broke down mine and many others’ defenses. She has broken into a market of older people with just one song. It’s unbelievable. The same people that have hated this girl are now dancing to her song in places that she isn’t even old enough to get into yet.

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t dislike Miley Cyrus, or that if you do it’s because of her undeserving fame. Maybe it’s because you think she’s a no talent ass-clown with a terrible personality. Maybe you just don’t dig on the raspy voice. Maybe you don’t like anybody that is of the Billy Ray Cyrus bloodline. Hell, I don’t like Miley Cyrus.

All I like is her one song. And it’s a song that shouldn’t be taken seriously (because apparently Cyrus doesn’t even take it seriously). I guess that’s part of the appeal for me, to listen to a song that is extremely dumb but catchy. I don’t give a fuck if the singer is too stupid to tie her own shoes or give timeless classics like “Big Pimpin’” and “99 Problems” at least one try (if nothing else, these kind of songs could keep her from becoming delusional about a woman’s place in society). Like it or not, the sheer fame this song has garnered will make it one of those ones you hear occasionally ten years from now, so you may as well embrace it. I plan to, because it will be a gateway back to my senior year of college, when I had not a care in the world, was listening to really stupid songs while drinking Miller High Life and sweating on a dance floor.

If you choose not to embrace it, though, just take solace in the probability that she’ll be completely addicted to some kind of hard drug by 2020 and will be, as a personality, completely eviscerated from the public eye.